Greeting
When I go to a restaurant, this is what I expect and DEMAND:
I will be addressed as follows: “Hello kind sir, excellent to have your company at our establishment on this evening”
If it is morning then “evening” MUST be replaced with “morning”.
If it’s noon or after then they MUST say “this fine day”. Seating
I WILL be seated in a booth not too near the kitchen and not too near the bathrooms and not too near the front doors and not too near the noisy bar.
If the restaurant does not currently have booths then they should make that explicitly clear in any and all advertising including signage in front so as not to surprise me. For example:
The Diner
We do not have booths Order Taking
You will take copious notes regarding the specifics of our desired meals
Do not go on at length about the specials - there should never be more than 1 special
You will ask the lady to my direct left for her order first, if that person is not female then you will move in a clockwise direction around the table locating the first female for ordering
If the table is odd shaped then protocol insists that you locate the female at the northern most point of the table Delivering Food
You will NOT ask me whether I ordered X or Y
Part of your payment is to understand our requirements for our meal and one of those requirements includes which meal goes with which person
DO NOT slide any my personal objects out of the way to make room for the plate…it is my responsibility to provide adequate space on the table for my meal, if I have not done that then you are within your rights to return the meal to the kitchen without explaining why Refilling My Drink
Humans consume liquids at different rates, therefore you must invest some minimal energy at determining that rate and then refilling when one of two conditions is met:
Glass is at or less than 38% full
Based on the calculated rate, the remaining portion of fluid in the glass will be consumed prior to your next scheduled stop, including unexpected requests from other tables Tipping
If you are able to work within these very basic guidelines, then you will be rewarded with a generous tip, either 7.2% or $4.75, whichever is less
Single white woman checking in. I over tip as well when I eat by myself, just because of the stereotype. When I’m out with female friends, I check to be sure we are tipping enough and if not, I toss more money on the table.
I agree with you about how dumb it is. Doesn’t matter, I still do it. I’m certainly not going to bust your chops over it when I do the same thing.
I don’t think it’s a White Racism thing at all. It’s observed behavior. I can’t speak as a server, but I worked overnights as security in a restaurant, midnight to 5am, and saw a fuck load of no-tipping or mere pennies tips from black people. I also saw an awful lot of “I’m not paying because that burger (that I ate 100% of) was COLD!” shit fit temper tantrums to get out of paying. But then at the places I was at, it wasn’t just black people, young asians were really bad about it too. I watched a table of 8 college age Hmong kids make all sorts of special orders and demands, then leave no tip at all. Fuck, I had to work with the lone server in the place to make sure they paid all of their bills and didn’t conveniently ‘forget’ to pay some of their tabs because “oh, we thought this other guy paid it!” like they tried to pull.
Part of it may be the kind of people who go into a place at 3am to eat, because maybe a third of the white people didn’t tip either, but while that wasn’t true of the majority of white people, it was true about the overwhelming majority of black people.
So please, let’s leave both black tipping and “white racism” out of this, ok?
Well, my fellow over tippers, may our irrational guilt balance out the sheer assholishness of patrons who thnk it makes them big and powerful to treat waitstaff poorly.
What are you, the Lord of the Thread? I’m sharing my racism-relevant anecdote whether you like it or not.
Anyway, I worked in my aunt’s Mexican restaurant for a couple of years while I was in high school, and didn’t notice much of a difference in tipping behavior between black people and white people, so my personal anecdote, being offered later in the thread than your personal anecdote, wins.
I overtip mostly because of my years working in a restaurant, because I know what a shit job it can be and how much it sucks to have people treat you like you are their personal valet or heap mounds of abuse on you just because this is one of the only situations in their life where they are able to hold that much power over another human being. So I overtip.
Unless I have to wait forever for the check, and then all bets are off.
The OP complains when there is debris under the other table, the OP complains when the staff goes to clean that debris.
Pick one side or the other of this argument, you don’t get both sides.
Err, most of the highest end restaurants do this. I’ve had it done to me once, when I went to a five star establishment.
I have a friend who’s a nightmare about this kind of stuff. He gets £200 a week from his parents and was having a celebratory dinner to celebrate getting into acting (his father bought a production company). He asked for ice for his red wine, then we stayed and chatted for half an hour after the waitresses shift ended. When she informed us of this, he asked for a contribution from all of us - fair play. However, despite me paying more than my meal came to, the waitress actually came back to the table since she hadn’t been paid enough. One of our mutual friends said she’d get paid overtime, but three of my family members have at some point in their life waited tables and none of them have ever been paid overtime. He also complains that his friends don’t ever chip in, when I always do and never ask others to when I invite them out to eat.
Edit: He also asks for salty, sweet, then salty popcorn.
To the OP from a former waitress: Go fuck yourself.
BTW, to those complaining about the waitstaff kneeling down in front of you, its called “down service” and in some restaurants they make you do it. It’s supposed to be respectful. [rainbow]The more you know![/rainbow]
Gotta agree with this one. If the hostess or staff called you “Boy”, as in “hey boy…where is Sheriff Branford?” * Then, I could see your racial comments having merit. But listen Bro. You need to lighten up a bit.
The one gripe you have that has some merit is the sweeping one, but your description in the OP makes it hard to feelmsorry for you. Why not politely ask them to stop until you are finished? If that doesn’t work, seek the manager. Management can’t fix a problem they are not aware of. But you basically ruined your own breakfast by not opening your mouth. I understand your point that you shouldnt have to explain to anyone why sweeping next to a customer still eating isn’t a great idea, but the employee might be new, might not have a brain, or has something else on his mind. Sometimes people just aren’t thinking. That’s why we have the word “idiot” I. Our vocabulary, Bro!
Now ease up, and “slap my 'fro, bro!”
*. Bonus point if you know where this line came from.l
Only because you ain’t got no home training and didn’t put your napkin in your lap right after you sat down. It’s a social compact. Two-way street sort of thing.
I’ve been at a couple of high-falutin’ places where the waiter picked the napkin up from the table and placed it in my lap as soon as I was shown to my seat. He didn’t even give me a chance!
I don’t particularly care for this practice either, incidentally. It feels borderline gropey.
And yet, last time I sat at a table, spread my legs, and gestured to the waitress with my head, while mouthing “Go for it”, they asked me to leave. There’s just no winning with some people.
