It is a chronic hazard for women in service jobs like waitressing to be both required as part of their job to be extra nice and friendly and at the same time try to fend off lecherous creeps like your co-worker. The best case scenario is she tells her manager, and he or she deals with it appropriately. This might mean having a different person finish the service at that table, it might mean a friendly talking-to (‘we like everyone to have a great meal here but we do need our wait staff to be treated politely’), or it might mean throwing the asshole out on the street.
There are a lot of managers who don’t care whether their staff is harassed, as long as the customer is happy. There is not much a waitress can do to stop harassment if their manager doesn’t back them up.
I would say the best way would be for the waitress to dial back the friendliness and flirtation to the minimum professional requirement.
Of course it would be inappropriate of me to ask her on a date. I have a girlfriend. But apart from that, any number of my neighbors do me favors, or offer to. (I am fairly sure she lives in this neighborhood, given that we run into one another in the grocery store from time to time.) even if I were without the girlfriend, I would not be willing to start taking friendly offers of help as evidence of carnal intent.
I don’t know your personal situation, so if you are in a relationship, of course you might not want to ask people for dates.
What do you think “flirting” is?
It’s been a long time since I’ve dated. But what I eventually learned is that sometimes women can be very friendly, but not actually want to be in a “dating” or sexual relationship with you. Others, they might actually DO want to be in such a relationship, but don’t overtly communicate it. Not having psychic powers, sometimes the only way to tell is to ask them if they want to go on a date. Sometimes they just want to hang out, which is fine too.
That said, a lot of guys look at every friendly gesture as an invitation to keep badgering a woman. I used to work with a number of “Rons” and they are tedious.
I would disagree with this though. With sufficient conversation skills it’s possible to figure out her degree of interest before you go through the formality of actually asking her out.
I know it sounds like I want to brag or something, but it’s more that I embarrassed myself and plenty of girls when I subscribed to the “just man up and ask her out” school of thought. It took me far too long to appreciate that it doesn’t need to be like that.
I’m not Bear_Nenno; but what I think is that “flirting” has a sexual component.
And I don’t think that sitting and talking with somebody necessarily has a sexual component. Neither, in some contexts, does straightening somebody’s tie.
Why is it that you, my father, brother, and DH can figure this out, but virtually no other man on earth can? My BIL has it un-figured enough for three men.
Uhh, consent? I’m going to guess that out of 100 times men think a waitress is flirting with them, it’s true a non-zero number of times, but that number is different from zero the way your odds of winning the lottery are different whether or not you buy a ticket.
This is above and beyond the call of duty for waitressing, but she could be doing it for the tips. How you guys got there could be someone’s doctoral dissertation in operant conditioning.
Annnnnd here we come to the heart of the matter.
Or the daughterly side. What’s the age difference here? Could you remind her of either her dad or her son?
There’s a guy I run into from time to time, who was the father of a classmate of mine, until she was killed in kind of a freak car accident when we were about 24. After that, every time he’d see me, he’d give me a big hug.
The first time I ran into him after my father died (I was 30), I had the overwhelming urge to, well, straighten his tie, pat his combover into place, and pick lint off his coat. I mean, really, overwhelming. I think we hugged twice that time.
Yup
I’m guessing she lost a bet.
Yeah. Becca may not have the hots for Skald, but I’m going to say that her interest is beyond waitress/customer. Maybe she just wants someone to talk to about movies.
Haven’t any of you ever just really* liked* somebody without any sexual attraction?
I knew that would be from The Onion before I clicked on it.
I apologize for not winnowing down the above; it is just too much trouble with my worthless eyes.
I am not sure of the age difference between me and Becca. my vision is such that I can only see details of a person’s face if we are at a kissing distance, which I have never been with her. she has mentioned having kids around the age of mine when I am there with them, which puts her between my ex-wife’s age (about 30) and me (about 50).
I agree with whoever said upthread that flirting has a sexual component in a way that simple friendliness does not. The conversation I had with Becca about the Avengers movie was because she enjoyed it so much and was surprised that I had as well, not realizing that it had come out before my eyes went to shit. But mostly it was because business was slow. I simply refuse to assert that I am so beautiful that every woman who does something nice for me is motivated by a desire for my form.
Becca and I are friends in two very limited contexts. she serves me food and I compensate her for her time, and we chat at the grocery store. Among the multiple reasons I don’t think she is hiding interest only because she’s at work is because she both knows my physical address and has my phone number, the ladder because I give my business card to any good customer service person I encounter on the theory that they might make a good hire for my company one day. Becca has availed herself of the latter bit of knowledge to recommend other persons for a job with my company she’s not shy; if she wanted to make a desire for a more intimate relation known, she easily could.
Why is that “embarrassing”? So she says “no”. Big deal.
But in general, I think I’m in agreement with you. I don’t know what it is, but in my single days, I kind of feel like I could always tell whether a woman was interested in me through a combination of verbal and non-verbal cues, body language, etc. Although this skill didn’t come without more than a bit of trial and error.
Look, not for nothing, but we are talking about a waitress here, not an Academy Award winning actress here. Which is to say a) we aren’t talking about some unobtainable standard and b) most waitresses are not putting on some “oh I really want to fuck you for tips” act. Hell, I actually assume the opposite is true. If a waitress or other service person is flirting hard with me, I assume she thinks I’m some rich Wall Street / tech bro who will take her away from her life of food service.
Well, it comes down to: to know if someone is figuratively interested in me, I try to observe whether they are literally interested in me.
So, generally it’s a good idea in casual conversation to try to put focus on the other person; people like it when you show interest. But if it’s someone I’m attracted to, I might also notice the extent to which they try to steer the conversation on to me.
If she doesn’t steer it that way, I might give her a chance by throwing out some statement about myself eg some hobby I’m into. Does she ask many follow up questions?
If im getting good feedback maybe I mention something slightly more personal, like an anecdote where I mention my emotions. How interested does she seem in my psychology, does she now share something more personal?
And so on. There’s no single point at which i determine she’s interested or not, but there are positive and negative signs. If she’s not interested, then fine, we finish out a friendly conversation.
But if things are going well, i might do a dry run of asking her out by mentioning that I’m planning on going to some event X or I enjoy going out to do activity Y, and see how she reacts to the imminent possibility of being asked out.
Really, I find the whole science / art / whatever of conversation fascinating. I wish I’d learned at a younger age that it’s something you can learn and improve on, it’s not just a matter of “be confident” or being born extrovert.
I feel the need to point out here that ties don’t need to be straightened. They just don’t. Ties are generally always straight. If someone adjusts your tie, it’s for a non-sartorial reason.
I respect you as a poster, but I couldn’t disagree more strongly with this or your previous post. Asking her out, even if the OP were available, would make for a lot of awkwardness and probably a different waitress, one who’s NOT inclined to set out the preferred sweetener.
Waitresses get sexualized, as some of my waitress relatives could tell you. Here’s a woman who’s known the OP for some time and obviously considers him a nice guy. Maybe she even has some affection for him. That does NOT mean she’s flirting with him. Thank God the OP recognizes that.
And Ron is a creep. He not only interpreted kindliness as sexual, but he assumed if a woman was kindly, she’d be an easy lay. shudder Ugh.
Sure ties need to be straightened, particularly when you can just barely see what you’re doing and they mostly appear as a shadow. My ex-wife, current girlfriend,stepdaughter, baby sister, and work wife have all straightened my tie one time or another cents my eyes went to shit. And only two of those women had any sexual interest in me.
Since apparently I am not going to get to go to bed tonight…
On top of all that, there is the issue that I would not wish to disillusion Becca about my intentions. If I were to ask her out and she turned me down, even if there were no other repercussions, I think there would be some part of her that said “Well, I am not as good at reading men’s intentions as I thought I was.” she would quite reasonably think less of me, I think, suspecting that my generous tips were less a reward for excellent service than an attempt to unzip her pants. both my integrity and my pride cannot abide that.
Sí. And I don’t care to invalidate the trust she showed in me by complaining about Ron by emulating his behavior.
You never had a 4-year-old son who had to go to a bar mitzvah.
The biggest problem with Ron, which Skald recognizes in his OP, is that he assumes that interest in one customer translates to “she’ll do anyone in her section.” Cripes’, even if she were giving Skald lapdances, she still might be less interested in Ron than than she is in a dead squirrel.
It sounds like Ron needs a pitcher of ice water “accidentally” dumped into his lap. Or a fresh pot of hot coffee. Or a bucket of pissed off rattlesnakes. I’ve never been a waitress but I’ve worked enough customer service jobs to know that there are lots of jerks like him out therewho think they can get away with harassing or hitting on a woman at work because she is required to be nice to customers.
Unfortunately most managers don’t really care if the underlings are miserable as long as the customer is happy. About all you can do is ask another server to take your place and hope the guy doesn’t make a scene when he doesn’t get “his” waitress.
I get the impression that Skald is talking about a local place that he has been going to for a long time. If you spend much time in places like that you see that regular customers are treated more warmly than average joes. They have their favorite waitresses and they talk and joke, and usually the waitress knows what they’re going to order right off the bat. And yes some of the waitresses flirt a bit especially with older male customers but it’s affectionate rather than romantic if that makes sense.
Too late to add. Waitstaff who have been at it a long time get to be really good at deflecting jerky comments without getting the customer pissed and also learn how to tell someone to fuck off without saying it in as many words. Personality and experience helps too. It’s easier to intimidate a shy teenager than someone 30 and outgoing.
