A couple of restaurant pet peeves

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Peeve The First:

So yesterday I had lunch at Chili’s. Tab for a burger and a drink was $8.03. I put down a $20 and when the server appeared again, as usual, she asked, “Do you need change?”

What did she think, I was so inflamed with happiness by the service that I was giving her a 150% tip, for God’s sake? :confused:

When did servers start asking all the time if you need change from a bill? Of course I need change! If and only if I decide to leave a tip, I will do after the bill has been paid (presuming I am paying with cash – if I pay by check or credit card, I always include the tip in the payment).

I remember the days, not so long ago, when servers ALWAYS broght you change, no matter how small the amount. Sure, they may have brought you a dozen singles in a lame attempt at getting a better tip, but they did bring the change, without asking if you needed it. Of course you needed it – the tab was a certain amount, you gave more than that as payment, you get change back. Simple transaction.

And if you wanted the server to keep the change, you said so. “Keep the change.” Simple. Or “I won’t need change.” Or “No change – keep the rest.” Whatever, some way to indicate that whatever money remained was for the server to keep for the service provided.

Now, the servers always is if you need change. No matter what the size of the check and the amount you put down, it’s always the same: “Do you need change?” Put down a $100 bill for a $60 tab, same result: “Need change?”

Am I the only person annoyed by this? :mad:
Peeve The Second:

When did servers start asking, perhaps five minutes after they’ve served the main course, if you wanted dessert? I may very well want dessert, but I do not want to be asked that when I am just beginning to enjoy the meal.

A few times I’ve asked to speak to management when a server asked so soon after serving the main course if I wanted dessert. The manager persons are always falling over themselves apologizing – once I got a free meal out of it, even – but they never correct this. It seems to be restaurant mantra now that with the first “How is everything?” after the main course is served, the server also wants to know about dessert and coffee and all that.

Is this universal? I’ve experienced it mostly in Salt Lake, but also in Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, and other cities. (Or maybe it’s a western-U.S. thing?)

2

I have a problems with servers. It seems they pop by every 2 minutes to ask if everything’s all right – until I need another drink or a clean fork or the check. Once I actually need my server to serve, they vanish.

Any restaurant servers out there? Are you people taught how to know when to disappear, while at the same time making it look like you actually want to serve the customer?

3

A waitress did that to me too, but it was a sneer.
I had put $20 in the tray for a $19.96 bill.

She acted like I wasn’t planning to tip, or that I’d forced her to make two trips or something.

When she snarled “I suppose you want me to bring you change!” it was a challenge.

I said “Since you put it that way, Keep the pennies and I won’t have to tip.” She shoved the plate back at me and stalked off without taking it. So I put the $20 back in my pocket and left.

4

You server might not have even been paying attention to the amount of your bill when she asked if you needed change back. I don’t know how busy things were, but sometimes if you can cut a few corners it is nice and it makes things run smoother.
At one time you can hand out four or five different guest checks and not know who has what check. Bad service? It depends on how busy the place is. Two people there and server doesn’t know her guests from another is not a good thing. A section of 12 or so tables and four sat at the same time you try to get to them all and make them all happy.

As for the desert thing when I was working at Village Inn we had a promotion going for pie. If your server didn’t ask you if you would like pie it was on us. Much easier to drop off main course and remind them to save room for pie.
One again minimizing steps for both the guest and the server.

5

I was seated at one of two occupied tables in her section, and the other table (a party of two) had just been seated. And it was almost 2 p.m., which in this area means the lunch rush has long since subsided.

Sure, if they’re busy, maybe asking if I want change is OK. But not looking at the size of the bill I put down doesn’t cut it, no matter how busy it is. They should pick up the tab, figure out how much change (if any) is required, and return that change to the table, without asking if I want or need change.

Once more something I understand as a policy, but the restaurants I’ve been to do not have this policy. I think it’s more the servers thinking if they ask everything right away, they won’t have to come back to the table for God knows how long, and that’s just bad service.

I’ve never been a server, so I don’t have first-hand knowledge of the pressures servers are under. Perhaps I am way off base from the servers’ perspective.

But I have been a customer – thousands of times – and if making the customers happy is what they want, the restaurants are screwing it up in some ways…

6

Al, can I call you Al?
In that case I would have done the same thing.
Servers are taught better. Some people just don’t have the personality to be in the public eye. Hell, some people don’t have the cleanlyness to be in the public eye.
Have you guys ever had one of those kind yet? You wonder why the management would allow them to be out there looking and smelling the way they do?
I have trained people like that before and although it is hard to tell someone they need to clean up, you have to.
I have been in food service for 14 years and even I have complaints about service. They say that other servers are more critical. It’s true, but we can always tell when someone is giving it a good go, new, stressed, or just plain shitty.

I am sure that Satan will be along shortly. You tend to find the two of us in these kind of threads. No worries Drain, I just love to have a comrade in such situations. You have a great guy there! BTW hope you two are enjoying your time together.

7

Damn, I would’ve walked out too – amazing!

Utahns are known for leaving chintzy tips, especially based on the fact that many of them have HUGE families and leave maybe a dollar or two on a tab that may be $50 or $100 in even a run-of-the-mill “family restaurant.” (I’ve heard some food-biz people say it was the tipping habits of people in Utah that resulted in many restaurants adopting “15% will be added for parties of 6 or more”-type policies.)

But that doesn’t excuse something like this. Did you ever mention it to the restaurant mgmt?

8

My own personal hates:

Receiving the bill, which has a nice blank space left for me to fill in a tip and total it up. Of course, suspicious as I am, I’ve already checked the menu…yup, “service included”. When they try and get two tips out of me, I unerringly get mean.

Secondly, and I’ve only experienced this a couple of time, when the server tries a sob story on you. I was at a tapas bar in south London a few weeks back, and when the bill came for our drunken group we were trying to decide on a tip. We filled in the card receipt with a tip, but as the waiter came to collect it he whispered conspiratorially that we should leave some cash too, as the manager took all of the credit card tips for himself. Cheeky bastard. I might have been remotely sympathetic if the service hadn’t been so f***ing awful.

It’s true what they say, customer service has a loooong way to go here in the UK.

9

Another one I just thought of…

I know many people have difficulty calculating percentages. I am not one of these people. So I strongly dislike it when the check arrives, accompanied by a small chart: “Gratuity Guideline.” With various dollar amounts, usually $5, $10, etc. up to about $100, showing what the gratuity would be at both 15% and 20%.

And lately I’ve noticed, when I’ve paid by card, that the card slip you sign also includes such a guideline, based on the exact amount of the sale…! :eek:

10

And above all else, when the waiter complains that you haven’t left a big enough tip. Excuse me?

I was at a pub with some friends one time. The pub had its own restaurant and was regarded as a fairly up-market place to be. The food arrived late, and half of us had finished before the others got their food (late and cold). Already in a bad mood, but in a hurry to leave, we ate and asked for the bill. Annoyed at the poor service, we decided not to leave a tip. Boy, that went down well. The waitress (one of these snooty “this is just my weekend job - I’m actually in the media” types) went ballistic, complaining and bringing the manager out. Unfortunately, the friends paying the bill aren’t known for their restraint under pressure, so a full-blown row erupts.

You did not earn a tip. You lost our repeat business.

11

Ever noticed that the “TIP” line cmes AFTER the tax (and sometimes after meal + tax are subtotaled)? They are expecting you to tip on tax, although it’s always been my understanding that the tip is to be based on the price of the meal, not on the price of the meal plus the $$ the restaurant has to send the state & local government.

I hate relentlessly chipper waitstaff. One time I was in TGI Fridays (the WORST place for someone like me) and a moaned to my husband that they should let us wear a little pin or sign that says “I don’t want cheerfulness, just competent, unobtrusive prompt service. Do not attempt to cajole me into being jolly.”

Husband response: “I have something like that I wear every day. It’s called a scowl.”

12

A topic very near and dear to my heart…

I worked as a waitress to earn money when I was in college. I am very forgiving when I can tell the server is in a situation that is out of her control. For example, if my steak is undercooked, or the food is cold. But there is NO EXCUSE for rudeness. I don’t care how crappy your day has been. I just want to have a nice meal, and if I do, I will be very generous in my tipping.

As far the original OP, after she asked if I wanted my change, I would have asked her the obvious question. “Well, do you think I am going to leave you an $11.97 tip?” She how she squirms out of that one!

13

Um, Matt? I don’t blame that waitress one bit. My best friend manages a resturant, and my sister has been a waitress/actress forever. Best Friend went through a period of time when she was being sexually harrassed by the cook, who purposefully slowed her orders so her service would suffer. The wait staff can’t controll how fast the chefs prepair the food, they only control how fast your order is taken, the courteousness you are served with, and how full your water glass is.

That waitress obviously was serving you guys as fast as she could if she got the meals that were done out to you ASAP. She can’t control the other ones. To not leave a tip when someone is being paid a couple bucks an hour for backbreaking work is increadibly cheap. The LEAST I’ve ever left is 10%. I usually leave 20%, or 15% if the waitperson was rude.

Tipping is an outmoded practice that we should get rid of. In Germany, the tax AND tip were figured into the price of the food, and the waiter was paid a living wage. MUCH better system.

14

SwimmingRiddles - we would have had no problem with the waitress if it had just been “cold” food. But she had shown no interest in finding out why we’d been served in two “groups”, despite out enquiries. We were given the cold shoulder and the “so? what do you expect me to do about it?” line, and then she had the gall to complain about us to the manager.

I understand that servers aren’t responsible for everything that can go wrong. But there is no excuse for rudeness. Cold food was why we complained; her response is why we didn’t tip.

15

What about (non-alcoholic) drink refills? Some of the places I’ve been to either try to give you a refill when your glass is 75% full OR they completely ignore you until they bring the food, and then you have to eat with nothing to drink.

I won’t mention the place we went to a while back and didn’t find out until we got the bill that drink refills were NOT free - the SO had racked up $8 for Coke on a $15 tab. Yikes.

Chili’s - went there when the youngest was about 3 months old. Server brought her a menu and crayons. Nice gesture but…

–tygre

16

I worked at one place where tips were constantly shorted by a hostess.
When you serve you have to be on the look out for buspersons and hostesses. Now I have done both of these jobs also. But like in all jobs you sometimes come along some pretty shady people who could be making three times as much as you, but still take your tips.
I would never tell a guest that, but would be sure to pick up my tip asap after the guest leaves.

Just so you all know, servers have as many gripes about guests as you all do about servers. :wink:
My job is to let my servers know that you cannot take that attitude out to the floor. Go in the walk-in to vent.

Nothing like getting a bar crowd in and have a table of ten think that they are your only table in the resturant. I am a great server otherwise I wouldn’t be a trainer.
The people I am talking about are the ones where after you drop off the main course, the condiments and such, and ask them how everything looks and if there is any thing else they need that I didn’t bring, or something special they forgot to ask for. I direct that question to the whole table by standing at the end of it, and enevitably you get everybody to ask you for one thing after you bring back something for someone else, and then they are rude about it after telling me no they were all fine.

17

Welcome to the big time, Cranky,
My biggest peeve is going into a restaurant and sitting next to a family with a small child that has no business being in a public eating establishment.

It’s become such a dread that when the host(ess) asks, “smoking or non-smoking” I inevitably reply, “I don’t care – I want to sit in the no children section.”

SouthernStyle

18

I just experienced the absolute WORST service I’ve ever had. It was at Oglevie’s in Taos, Utah.

A group of four of us went in to get drinks, and maybe dinner. We stood in the bar for our first drink, then decided to eat so we sat down at the nearest empty table (this wasn’t a “wait to be seated” place). A few of us had been there many times before, and although it was busy, everyone said it was not unusually busy at all.

The table hadn’t been bussed yet, but it was in a good spot so we weren’t upset about that. We all needed refills on our drinks, so we were trying to catch our waitress. We sat at the table for a good ten minutes before we even saw our waitress, and when we did see her, she completely ignored us and went to the next table over. We kept trying to catch her eye, no luck. She disappeared for a while. Finally, one of us got up and went to the bar to order another round of drinks. In the meantime, the waitress appeared. We caught her eye because the table was still dirty, so we asked for a rag. She asked us if we wanted drinks/menus, and we said that we did, but someone had just went to the bar for drinks. At that point, one of the people I was with said “Hell, I’ll order my next drink now, because I’ll probably want it by the time it gets here.” so a couple people did that.

Waitress leave. Comes back a little later with a rag. Proceeds to wipe down 2 other empty tables before wiping down ours. We watch in amazement, wondering if we should have specified that we wanted a rag to wash OUR table.

Waitress leaves again. Comes back with drinks. I decide to order another drink - a pina colada - and as the previous one had been a little light I asked if she could ask the bartender to make this one strong. The waitress looked at me, obviously flustered. She says “No.” And that’s it. Flat out, “No.” We all sort of laugh. I finally figure out that she thought I was asking for a free extra shot, and once I told her I was not looking for freebies, but would gladly pay for it, she got the picture. At this point, we ask for menus, as we hadn’t gotten them yet, either.

Ten minutes later, the menus and drinks had finally arrived. We peruse the menus, make our selections. She hasn’t come back yet. In fact, we haven’t even seen her in a good fifteen minutes. We start timing things. 30 minutes after initially getting the menus, we decide that No, we are NOT going to order food.

We get up to leave, she comes running. We ask for our check, pay that amount, no tip. On the way out, one of the guys I was with talks to the manager. He says something like “We were going to eat, but after waiting 30+ minutes to place our order we figured it was hopeless.” The manager shrugs, and says “We’re busy, what do you expect?”

We all leave. We won’t go there again.

19

How large was the group?
She may have had to split the ticket between two cooks trying to get it out faster or you can only get so much food out at a time. Those big trays ar heavy!
Five pounds for the try, and then three pounds for the plate, toss in drinks to juggle, and you can stack those plates five to six on a tray depending on the expirience of the server. Then of course you have to take them through a crowded resturant with it up over your head or resting on your shoulder.
You all ordered at the same time right? Shouldn’t be an excuse, but sometimes if you have joiners it can get confusing.

20

I worked as a server many many years ago at Black Eyed Pea and Denny’s and faced every situation there is including being robbed and dealing with the clinically insane diner :wink:

I have a very simple system when I eat out. I was a server, and so I know what its like. I usually can break down the stations and tell what my server is dealing with, and I can see if she/he is interested in my happiness or not.

If I tip 15%…the server was mediocre! I calculate the percentage and then base my tip from there. If the base percent is less than $2.00 I leave $2.00, period…even if the bill is only $7.00.

My tips are usually about $5.00 for a typical meal and the most I’ve ever tipped is $100.00 on a party of 15. Our meal was probably about $250.00…

When you’re in a restaraunt, don’t think of how much to tip based on what your pie cost, thats stupid…did the pie refill your tea glass? Or did your server do that?

Tip based on the service…you’ll be a better person for it!

The gratuity percentage is an age old traditional system that should be used as nothing more than a jumping point.

You wait tables for just a week, and you’ll agree. I’ll never do it again in my life!

-SS