Yes. Your behavior is selfish, immature and rude, mainly towards your dining companions. They are waiting to order their drinks and you’re drinking a beer. Your craving for alcohol overrides social niceties and the servers pick up on this. Also, it’s silly to say that you’re “saving the server some labor”. Their job is to serve you at the table and that’s what they get tipped on. If you really want to help them out, why don’t you go the bar and order one quick snack and start eating it before the other people at your table get their food. “Hey, wha’choo talkin’ 'bout? I’m hongry!” :rolleyes:
On July 4th, at 7:42pm, you posted this:
10 minutes later, you’re being seated in a restaurant and later you posted this:
It’s Independence Day, you’re out with your family/friends for a nice meal, and you’re posting on an internet message board. Really??
While ideally you shouldn’t have to wait more than 5 minutes for a beer, as a former server, that’s not always possible.
See it from the server’s perspective.
Table gets sat, server is taking the order for another table. They put that order in before coming to get yours. 5 minutes pass.
Server goes through specials and takes your table’s drink order. Another 5-10 minutes, depending on the complexity of specials and size of the party.
Server puts your drink order in the computer. 1-2 minutes.
Server gets the non-alcoholic drinks. 3-4 minutes.
Server waits at the bar to get the beer from the bartender. This could be waiting and ready, or maybe the bartender’s busy with people walking up to the bar to get their beer.
So how could this process go faster for the server? They could be all up in your business the minute you sit down, which most people don’t like. They could ignore other customers to prioritize the beer king, which isn’t fair for the other customers. The bartender could make the ticket right away instead of being busy with people walking up to the bar for drinks.
If you want a beer that badly that you can’t wait 10 or 15 minutes for it, sit at the bar. But you’re making the server look bad. Usually managers camp out at the bar, and if it’s busy and they need to help the front of house somewhere, they’ll usually start making drink tickets. So when you walk up to the bar, order a drink, and take it back to the table, the manager sees that the server couldn’t get you a drink fast enough. What they don’t know is that to you, “fast enough” is borderline unreasonable.
So no, it’s not rude, per se, but it’s also not going to endear you to anyone. If you’re a regular at said restaurant, why not strike up a rapport with the bartender and eat at the bar each time? They’ll recognize you, and be able to have a pint ready before you reach your seat. Stop making the server look bad.
If the intended time is 5 minutes, then I can’t see how he’s being unreasonable to expect no more than 10 minutes. Surely going over double the expected time is actually doing a bad job.
Most of the people in this thread have said that 15-20 minutes is too long. So I don’t see how you can argue he’s being unreasonable. His expectations seem to be in line with both the experience and expectations of others.
I myself never drink alcohol, so I can’t argue about that part. But I can say that I do expect the drink order to be taken quite quickly. In fact, I can’t recall ever eating at a restaurant that didn’t nearly immediately get your drink order upon seating. Heck, sometimes it was the person seating us who would get our drink order. In fact, when I didn’t know for sure what I wanted, I could see them getting upset at the delay, even if they had to remain nice and say they’d come back for me.
I do think your idea at the end has merit, though. If things are too slow, and you eat their often, then I could definitely see trying to set up a standing order so that they have a drink for you. If you think that’s something a server would be happy to do, then I would definitely recommend the OP do that.
If you are waiting 10 to 20 min. for a beer after arriving when you are being seated to eat, you’re eating at the wrong places. Unless, of course, part of that wait time is simply waiting for the table to open. In which case, going to the bar to get a drink while you wait is SOP.
Not rude as long as you say please and thank you (when appropriate) to the waitress and leave a 15% tip (it’s not 20% no matter what you’re trying to be indoctrinated to, unless the service is above and beyond)
“Tip creep” has pushed it up to 20% in…most? maybe? of the country? I know my servers will grouse if they ‘only get’ a 15% and im in an area that is slow to catch up with the rest of the country. And MY first reaction is always 'What? You got 15% Youre complaining"?
I kinda agree with you. I used to always tip 20% cause im in the business and i want to be a nice guy but tip creep has kept me from going further than that. Now i just slap down 20% and then a couple of dollars more and don’t feel the slightest bit guilty cause im just not Rockefeller and cant afford to be an outrageous tipper.
Yeah, 20% has been standard here for probably two decades; maybe only a decade and a half if I’m being generous. Now, it’s Chicago, so probably a more tipping area. It was 15% when I was growing up in the 80s, though. Pretty sure we have about a zillion threads about this topic, too.
