Couple of things I want to address:
The light bar with numbers is a call light. When the chef puts your order up, he’ll flick your number light on and you know you’ve got hot food in the window to pick up. Many restaurants have replaced the call light with vibrating pagers - each server slips a pager into his or her apron pocket and the chef will buzz you when your food is up. (Running joke where I worked was a server slipping the pager deep into a front pocket and telling the chef “buzz me every two minutes, I need a thrill tonight.”)
Separate checks - not always, but often, a restaurant will have several terminals for entering orders, so several servers will be ordering at the same time. This CAN result in your table’s individual checks being alternated with other servers’ checks, and since the chefs prep your orders as they come in, it can mean that one of your checks will be ready long before another one at the same table. At that point you either bring out the food that is finished while it’s hot and make everyone else at the table wait for theirs (a bad idea - people who go out to eat together want to eat TOGETHER) or you wait until all that table’s orders are up and bring out food of varying temperatures (also a bad idea.) Most places have twigged to this problem by now, and have some sort of computer code a server can enter that will accept each individual check but will not submit the order to the kitchen until the server indicates the table’s order is complete, but some places are still lagging on computer technology.
Overly-familiar servers - yep, I agree, it’s a problem. Many restaurants, especially chains, require their servers to be perky and familiar - the stereotypical “Hi! My name is Lisa! I’ll be your server this evening!” is policy in a lot of places. We KNOW you don’t care what our name is in most cases - but our job requires this forced perkiness. MOST decent servers can read their customers and can quickly tell when that is not going to fly. Unfortunately, your chances of getting a truly clued-in server is very much luck-of-the-draw.
Add to the mix the dreaded “secret shopper” – someone who gets paid by the restaurant to critique your service and will take off points for every time you do not adhere to the letter of the restaurant policy, no matter how stupid said policy might be. (At Ed Debevic’s restaurants in the Chicago area, servers are, or at least used to be, required to touch customers!)
Children, again - if crackers are available and the parent doesn’t object, kids should get crackers. Servers who object to the messes kids make should not be working in restaurants that serve kids! I’m pretty snotty about this - I realize children can be a burden to servers, but customer service is job one if you’re in the customer service business… and kids are your customers, too. All too frequently I see servers who act as though they are doing people a favor by waiting on them. It’s NOT an easy job, and often it’s not a fun one, but if it is the job you chose to do, you take the bad with the good and you do the best job of serving your customers that you can. I’ve been on both sides of the table, so to speak, and I can easily see everyone’s point of view on the subject, but when it comes down to my convenience vs. the customer’s satisfaction, the customer wins every time. Even if the customer is an unreasonable ass. ShadiRoxan noted that servers live on their tips and paychecks are minimal. That has been my experience too, and the way I look at it, the customer is the only person paying me, so he or she is my boss for the duration of their meal.
