They were on the SAME TRAY if you READ my posts. Imagine a tray with 2 sides salads and 2 hot entrees. They were both ready at the same time. She brought them out at the same exact time.
Salads wouldn’t win if someone’s hot food is ready. Salads would be after, because the people that placed their order first, should get theirs delivered first, plain and simple. That’s only fair.
Can you I ask you: WHY don’t you tell your server you like that type of service such as: "I would love it if I could get automatic refills without asking throughtout my service.
You missed my point. In the salad/entree scenario, the waitress was nice enough to grab the just come up entrees and put them on the tray with the salads, so entree-person didn’t have to wait. Because to take just the salads, and then go back for the entrees would be incredibly STUPID and waste time.
And why don’t I tell my server that? Because I don’t think I’m the center of the server’s universe.
NO, because as I said before, you have to WAIT for yours. If your steak is still cooking, WHY would you expect our server to just stand there when she could be bringing someone’s cooked food out as you said “Mine took half the time”, so by the time you get yours, it’s 15 minutes later let’s say. It would be fair, because you wanted something that takes much longer to cook, so you get to wait longer.
HOW is that unfair if yours isn’t ready yet? It would be unfair if yours and mine were ready at the same time, on the same tray and the server would hand mine first instead of yours. It would be unfair also if let’s say turn things around, that yours was ready before mine by 2 minutes, but decided to wait that 2 minutes to take both out on the same tray. The server should go to deliver yours, then when mine is ready, deliver mine. Letting it sit there for 2 minutes would be stupid and making your food get cool.
How would you feel, out of curiosity, if someone said “Look, I’m not going to tip you/tip more than a dollar or two, and I’m quite happy if you don’t do anything more than just take my order, bring me my meal, and then bring the bill at the end of the meal. Please don’t come and ask if I want refills or how everything is going; if there’s a problem I’ll let you know. And I don’t mind if you bring other people their food first as long as my meal doesn’t go cold in the meantime”?
You see, to me, that’s more than fair, but I expect most of you will probably disagree…
Since she didn’t just take the side salads, she COULD HAVE HANDED THE FOOD OUT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH IT WAS ORDERED, THOUGH! There is NO EXCUSE in this world for that type of behavior from another human being that wants to get paid and is at the whim of customers.
None of this has to do with being center of the universe. This has to do with being fair. If it would have been the opposite situation, I would have HONESTLY HOPED that couple would have received their hot entrees before our side salads if we would have been that couple with the side salads. That’s the right thing to do. When I do see servers doing things in our favor out of order, they get bonus points in their tip, because they did things in the wrong order, but it benefitted me. I cannot control that they did that though.
But I ordered first and thus based on your logic should get my food first. Why should you get your food before me? It isn’t my fault that my food takes longer. You should have ordered something else. Isn’t that the moral thing to do based on your logic? Don’t you have any decency?
How am “I” to know your steak is only done medium and takes less time then mine? All I see is YOU are getting your steak BEFORE me. And based again on your logic that is unfair.
Or maybe you need to step back and realize that YOU don’t know shit about running a restaurant and nobody will ever do things the way you are suggesting.
I couldn’t even guess how many times I’ve eaten out during my life, and also how many times a server has walked up with a really big tray, set it down between our table and someone else’s, and served them first. I honestly don’t remember ever noticing, or even thinking about whether they got theirs first. All I think is “oh goody, food’s here!”
I’m also sure I’ve never noticed we were the one’s served first.
I call it “sport dining.” Customers who don’t seem to even care if they eat. They have a different agenda. They want company. They want someone to be mean to, they want to be really picky and critical; it’s like they use servers for what’s missing in their life. Now I can add this eery waiter fairness watching.
That and she forgot my water. I for one can not believe how selfish Kat is.
Well to be honest I am trying to determine if she/he has any morals or is just lazy. But I have deduced two percentage points off the tip to date.
If the drink is not ready, then WHY would I expect you to do nothing? You cannot bring me my drink, but you know what, we have had servers even though the bartender was backed up or busy, still come to the table to see if we were ready to order. It depends how long we waited for you to come back. If it’s like 2 minutes, I don’t expect you to come back, but if it’s like 5 minutes I would.
I wouldn’t expect you to have to serve our margaritas first before greeting them. That’s absurd!
You don’t understand. I am ONLY talking about things that the SERVER can control once the food and drinks are ready as far as things prepared by other co-workers and I am also talking about things the server can get themselves like refills or the check or extra napkins or utensils.
I am NOT talking about that you would have to do nothing until the hot food is done. That’s insane to do such a thing. I am talking about if you have let’s say 4 soft drinks(2 for one party, 2 for another party) on a tray, when you hand them out, you hand them out in the order in which they were taken in. Things like that is what I am talking about.
This is almost as good as the **Gonzo **thread. This one isn’t quite long enough, but I have to give **Springs1 **some credit. At least she posts relatively coherently, even though I do picture her waving her arms, jumping up and down madly, and periodically throwing herself on the floor, kicking and screaming.
With a large tray with 2 hot dinners and 2 salads, I would definitely have served the hot dinners first. Not because it was “fair” but because it was right. Hot food cools off and gets gross quickly, salads can sit on the tray longer without suffering ill effects (within reason, of course).
It sounds VERY FAIR. The waitress was coming to tell the customers a mini-greet, because she knew we were seated first. That’s what this scenario sounds like, for her to come to our table to get our drink order instead of theirs first.
For one thing, ANYTIME when servers have told us “I’ll be right back”, we don’t say ANYTHING, so that’s not rude.
Secondly, if they greet us, YES, we have EVERY RIGHT to order the full thing drinks, salads, appetizers, and entrees if we choose to order all of that or some of those. That’s not cutting, because we can order as much as we want to just as anyone else can or ask questions.
It’s not rude or inconsiderate if we would have been able to tell the server(couldn’t because they left before we got a chance to say we were ready to order when they said “I’ll be right back.”) That’s within our RIGHTS to place as much orders as WHEN WE CHOOSE. There’s no dining out RULES that state it HAS to go like the norm that you order drinks first/appetizers first, then the server comes back to get entree orders. We can place our food orders when we want to.
The problem was when servers said “I’ll be right back”, they really walked away extremely quickly to where we couldn’t say we were ready to order.
You are the one that doesn’t know shit about a restaurant. For one thing, any smart customer would know that if they ordered a well done steak, even if the customer by them ordered a well done steak, it may not be the same exact entree or made the same way such as no seasoning, seafood on it, etc.
If I would see someone getting a steak that ordered after me, I would assume they ordered their steak medium well instead of well done like me. Don’t you get this? It’s not about cooking times, it’s about that if you have things on a tray, you can hand them out in order, can’t you?
If I ask for a side of ranch and you do right after me, so our server brings out both ranches, which our server CAN hand mine to me first since I asked for mine first, then yours. There’s no reason to hand things out unfairly, NONE!!
Just so I get a ‘feel’ for your logic here. So if the second person orders a steak medium and the first person orders it well–it is okay if the medium steak comes up first and they bring that out first. No bad restaurant karma right?
But if they come up at the same time (which could easily happen as my order could have been a few mintues before yours) , then because they are on the same tray it is wrong to give the medium steak first? Is that what you are saying?
So medium steak up first, then 3 minutes later the well done steak comes up–all is great.
but medium steak and well done steak up together–then all hell breaks loose because the waitress had the audacity to serve the medium one first?
Wow. It is the tray—see now I get it. I didn’t realize the tray had such importance. Thanks for clarifying it for me.
btw–can I ask you a couple of questions? How old are you? And what do you do for a living? wait–one more–have you ever been a waitress?
The one thing nobody has mentioned, although it’s been touched on, is proximity to the kitchen Springs1’s two sets of diners are. If I were serving this diners and I was coming out of the kitchen with a tray of salads for both sets of diners, I would drop off the which was most convenient to get to first. I couldn’t care less which one of them ordered them first. The likelihood they would get their salads within a minute of each other is extremely high. That’s good enough for me and I’m guessing anyone else possessing an ounce of common sense.
There’s nothing wrong with maximizing efficiency as a server. In fact, it’s a very desirable trait.