I readily admit that I might just be an old grump about this, but there’s a waiter behavior that annoys me in varying degrees. Here are four that I’ve experienced in order of annoyance from least to most:
At a “fancy” restaurant, the waiter picked up my cloth napkin from the table and placed it in my lap when I sat down.
At a chain restaurant (Red Lobster), the waiter picked up my silverware, which are wrapped with a paper napkin and a little adhesive band, removed the adhesive band and set my silver and napkin on the table.
At the casual Chinese restaurant near our house, when we order soup the waiter brings it in a big bowl and dishes each of us a smaller bowl at the table (there is still a fair bit left in the big bowl).
At a couple of pizza restaurants in the Midwest (I have never seen this in California), the waiter delivers the pizza to the table and proceeds to dish up a slice onto each of our plates.
I thought #1 was a little rude (like he assumed I wasn’t going to put my napkin in my lap) but chalked it up to “fancy restaurant service.” Can’t remember if he did it for the spouse as well.
#2 was a quirk of one particular waiter. It was annoying but I didn’t say anything about it.
#3 Is annoying but I can’t think of a polite way to say so, so I let it go because we eat there often and the waitstaff are very nice.
#4. Is REALLY ANNOYING and I will say something about it. Dammit, I like to select my own slice of pizza, and I consider it quite presumptuous of the waiter to think that he knows better than I which one I want.
So…am I hopelessly anal, or does this sort of behavior bug anybody else?
#3 happens at every Chinese restaurant I have ever been at. If it is any comfort, you are free to serve yourselves 2nds on the soup.
#1 is fairly standard “fancy restaurant” behavior; if you get up during the meal and leave your napkin on the table, they will re-fold it and put it on the chair (as a subtle signal that that’s what you should have done).
#2 would be annoying in any restaurant that has the cutlery wrapped in paper napkins with a rubber band, which is already annoying. It’s like he doesn’t realize what a cheapo restaurant he works in.
#4 I would stop him and say “Thanks, we’ll take care of that.” I’ve never seen it happen, but I don’t eat pizza out much.
So 1 and 3 pretty much standard for the venue; 2 & 4 genuinely annoying.
Roddy
#1 and #2 would be mildly annoying to me and make me feel like a child. #3 and #4 seem perfectly normal and I would not even notice this. Really, the pizza slices are not that different from each other.
Infovore, I consider posting something like this daily. I wish I wasn’t so bugged when people do things differently than I would, or than I expect, but it’s hard. I really want to be someone who doesn’t notice things like this, but no amount of trying seems to change this about me.
That is SOP at some “higher end” pizza joints, IME.
I’ve purchased a slice from a convenience store with a rotating tray in a glass hotbox. I’m a tiny bit skeeved about who else has taken a slice and how they have done it, but hey.
Actually almost never. For some reason, every midwest pizza I’ve ever eaten has been square. I consider this an abomination, but hey, when in Rome, right?
I do too, but generally not the first one. I assume that if I’m eating pizza, I’m having more that one slice, so it doesn’t matter to me how big it is. If I’m approaching the last slice, then I want to control the size, as I might want the smallest slice.
This is very dependent on personality. We went to Joe’s Crab Shack a month or two ago, and the waiter personally tied our bibs around our necks. I had to lift my hair up for him to do so.
I liked this very much and thought it was a charming idea. I was surprised to find that my SO, upon getting home, hadn’t liked it much and had been weirded out by it.
Number two is a little odd, but wouldn’t bother me. (I suppose it might bother someone who was a germaphobe.)
One and three are pretty much standard behaviours, aren’t they?
I rarely order pizza at a restaurant, although I’m in the Midwest I’m not sure if this is the norm. It wouldn’t bother me either.
In short, none of these things would annoy me in the slightest. They all seem like courtesies, really.
Does it also annoy you when the server offers to put fresh-ground pepper on your soup or salad, if they offer to let you taste the wine before pouring, light the candle on your table, dress Caesar salad at the table, etc? These things seem to fall under the same umbrella: things you are quite capable of doing yourself, but fairly standard restaurant protocols designed to make the customer feel like they’re being taken care of.
Well, admittedly this was many years ago when we used to go to Gen Con in Milwaukee. There was a pizza place at the mall near the venue (not a fast food place–a real pizza restaurant) and all their pizzas were square.
I’m in the Midwest (Michigan) and can’t recall ever buying a square pizza from a restaurant/pizza delivery joint. They’re all hexagonal here.*
*I’m kidding.
No, none of those things would bother me (though I don’t drink wine, eat Caesar salad or want fresh ground pepper, so they’re all irrelevant for me personally). The reason #4 bothers me is me being kind of OCD, I guess–different slices are different sizes, have different amounts of relative toppings (for example, one might have more mushrooms and less Canadian bacon, or the opposite), and I always like the first slice the best because it’s still piping hot and gooey.
I readily admit it’s irrational. But given that waiters are in the business of making their customers happy in exchange for tips (I still tip well even if they do this–they have no way to know of my irrationality if I don’t tell them!) I’d like a way to mention it offhand without looking like a twit.
Or…we just go to our favorite pizza places where they don’t try to pick our slices for us, and it’s no longer an issue.
