I have no idea why you and Stickler are so vehement about defending a waiter who’s being an ass in a way that I’ve never seen a waiter behave in decades of going to restaurants, and I think the fact that I’ve never encountered this at all (much less had to complain about it) speaks volumes about how acceptable it is. In any case, putting social pressure on someone to laugh at a joke when they clearly didn’t like the joke is clearly an attempt to manipulate their behavior, regardless of how much awfully formatted quoting/breaking up lines/replying you use to deny it.
Really, so you think that threatening to withold a waiter’s tip is reasonable behavior as a joke? That’s interesting, because typically making reference to not tipping is considered really bad by wait staff in these sorts of threads. Usually the response to anyone talking at all about any possibility of not tipping is… rather dramatically against.
You see, that sounds like a perfect response to me. The server could not have been left in any doubt as to the strength of feeling and if I’d been on the receiving end of it I know I’d have apologised immediately and switched to a more professional demeanour.
It is possible to misjudge a situation, apologise, and rectify it with no real harm done and that is much easier to accomplish of someone is clear and straight with you (which is what the OP did)
I’m right there with you on this. I don’t come to a restaurant to get ribbed about what I order, how I order it, or to do improv with the server. Bad jokes… okay, but for Chrissakes read the room, do not keep hard-selling your shitty jokes when clearly nobody’s buying it.
Just for the record, I never said that I was a fan of the ‘comedy’ in the OP. Just that if I had been eating with golffan, his response would have bothered me more because as customers we are not restricted in our actions and comments the way the server is. But if the server’s comment was manipulative and bullying, then wasn’t golffan’s response equally bullying, if not more so? The usual perspective, in my experience, is that the customer is perceived as higher up in the power balance. Assuming that is true, “fighting back” feels uncomfortably close to punching down to me.
Years ago, while crisscrossing the Heartland selling gently used toilet plungers, I stopped at a roadhouse somewhere between Wichita and Olathe for a bite. When the waiter brought my meal (an 87-ounce sirloin nicknamed the “Cowlossus,” the successful ingestion of which would earn my Polaroid grimace a place on their wall montage), he lowered the platter to the table with a grunt and said “hope you’re hungry!”
I froze. How could he be so callous, so cruel, to someone with a past eating disorder? I shrieked like a rutting peacock and bolted, running blindly down the exact center of the wet street as the camera zoomed out in a soaring crane shot and sad jangly guitar music came from somewhere. Were those tears streaming down my face, or raindrops? Exactly, my friends. Exactly.
It wasn’t the best joke. Sometimes when trying to be funny off-the-cuff, jokes fall flat and sound more douchy than intended. I’d give the guy a break and feel more sorry for him than anything, but obviously your mileage varies. I doubt the joke was said with malicious intent.
What I don’t doubt is that you’re plain wrong about it being bullying. He wasn’t trying to force anyone to laugh. It was a snappy remark at someone that didn’t laugh, probably meant to get one to laugh, and not forcing one to. Complaining to management is the douchier move by far.
Why is he having a second go at getting someone to laugh? His joke has already failed and there is already no need for him to be acting the comedian in the first place. It would certainly have annoyed me in the first place and I suggest the management need to know that someone they employee in a customer-facing position is so socially tone-deaf.
No, telling someone to cut out bad behavior, even if it’s done in a stilted overly formal way, is not manipulative and bullying. The idea that you get to push other people around but if they call you on it then magically they become the bully is itself manipulative nonsense that I won’t accept either. Also I wouldn’t be bothered by golffan’s comment at all and don’t see what there is to be bothered by it. It’s either overly formal as a joke or out of awkwardness, and while I might find it either pretentious or a flopped joke, it doesn’t have anything that would make me feel like he’s being hostile to anyone.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes - if you punch me, you get punched back. If I’m in a position where my punching back really hurts you, maybe you should avoid throwing punches in the first place. The idea that you being in an inferior position means I have to put up with worse behavior from you than I would someone in an equal or higher position simply is not the way the world works.
Most people who engage in petty power-tripping do it because they think it’s some kind of game, or they do it unconsciously, or they think they’re in the right to do it. Whether they actually have malicious intent isn’t my concern, and as a non-mind-reader there’s no way to determine that conclusively anyway. And like Novelty Bubble said, even if it’s just being tone-deaf but not actually trying to push people around, it’s the kind of thing that someone in a customer service position simply should not be doing. If someone doesn’t laugh at your joke, you don’t double-down, you just let it go.
I consider making a snappy remark intended to push someone to laugh at a joke they didn’t like to be low-level bullying behavior because it’s attempting to force a laugh in the ordinary meaning of ‘force’. And it’s certainly not something that I will tolerate from wait staff. Complaining to management when the wait staff engage in wildly inappropriate behavior is not douchey in the least, it’s how a restaurant is supposed to work. The idea that I’m supposed to pay money suffer through whatever a waiter does is just insane.
And again, this kind of petty bullying is something that I have NEVER actually encountered out in real restaurants, so is clearly not some normal, completely OK behavior that I’m blowing out of proportion.
Determine conclusively? IT WAS A DUMB JOKE! It should be your concern if the intent was malicious or not. That’s a big part of determining your own behavior in society.
Okay? So what? So you have determined that a joke that falls flat with one person should never be followed up. The punishment therefore shall be a talk with that person’s boss? I guess, since we are talking about someone in “a customer service position.”
And did you say “like Novelty Bubble said”? Oh, I see. Someone seems to be on your side on some level, so you’re going to gang up and push me around. Freakin’ bully! Not sure if you think this is some sort of game or you’re just doing it unconsciously, but I won’t put up with it. Straight Dope management will be hearing about this! I don’t want other members here to have to put up with your wrath. We’re here to enjoy ourselves!
It’s not. Ever. It’s a second attempt at getting a laugh. No force. No attempt at pushing another around. You sound paranoid. Seriously.
Of course, that’s because generally waiters have to tip out against a certain percentage of their receipts to bartenders/dishwashers/bussers. if someone screws up at their job, it’s fair to complain to a manager, even to demand that they be fired. it’s not really fair under any circumstance to make them pay for the privilege of waiting on you.
Yeah, look, I get it, I know how miserable the severs’ life can be. I was a bartender for a while.
But when I’m out to dinner, I’m out to dinner with the person at my table, not the waiter. Maybe my wife and I have something serious to discuss. Maybe I’m out with old friends. Who knows. But I don’t want the server to be a fifth wheel, an extra guest at the dinner. That’s not why I’m at the restaurant. I really don’t like being coerced into being an audience for his/her standup routine or whatever it is.
One night recently my three siblings and I met for dinner. We were discussing whether or not to kind of coerce my elderly father, now slipping into dementia, into moving into an assisted living facility or whether we could figure out a way for him to stay in his home. The waiter kept intruding on us, telling jokes, saying stuff like “why so serious? It’s Saturday night! You should be having fun!”
One of my brothers had finally had it, and jumped out of his chair and said “get the fuck away from this table. Don’t come back. Have the owner/manger come over and handle this table from now on.”
The owner/manager did come over, was intensely apologetic when the situation was explained, and personally took care of us for the rest of the night. And comped us a round of drinks afterwards.
And, in case anyone asks why we had this important and unhappy conversation at a restaurant rather than at home, the reason we met at a restaurant was because some of the other sibs had all flown in to have this discussion, and none of us wanted to do this at any of our homes, amongst spouses and kids. Completely reasonable. Not that we need a goddamn reason, as long as we were paying our bill.
That’s disgusting. The waiter, I mean. I guess I’m old and bitter and unamused, but I have never parsed exactly why I am supposed to be ‘having fun’ on a fucking Saturday night. As if I just got out of prison, or was in a drunken group of cement-headed woot-girls thrilled to be drinking buckets of mai tais. He should indeed be able to read his audience. A bunch of loud screechers at O’MyBunsBurn’s is one thing, serious conversation in a relatively sedate adult restaurant is another. This irritates me, because something similar happened after a tragic accident with a friend, we had left the hospital and stopped for coffee, and the waitress kept telling us to cheer up on this beautiful day the lord had made and offered to use her own dime to play a jolly song on the jukebox.
It’s cluelessness. It would be nice if everyone we encountered were so enlightened that they were able to think “not everyone here tonight is out to have fun. I don’t know what those folks at that table have going on in there lives, so I’ll drop the comedy bit and not encourage them to have fun.” But it’s not so. The waiter in that scenario was clueless, and importantly, obviously not trying to be a dick.
If I had to pick a disgusting action, it would be one making a scene where others are also paying for a pleasant restaurant experience by jumping out of his chair, cursing, and telling a clueless waiter not to come back to the table. No one had hot soup dropped on their lap.
But I’m not going to pick because I also understand behaving less than perfectly when one is going through a rough time. But the reaction was worse to all parties than a clueless server trying to do the right thing and failing.
Nope. Not disgusting. You know how women don’t like to be told to “smile!”? Well, neither do diners at an expensive, adult restaurant. Nobody likes being told that their attitude isn’t right.
This waiter had been given more than hints. He’d been given explicit requests to back off a bit. He was being a dick. He wasn’t trying to do the right thing. He was treating us as a captive audience. He was intruding on us, and we’d shown remarkable forbearance for about an hour before my brother flipped out on him. For a nearly $400 meal, plus tip (assuming this clown was going to get a tip), we should be able to enjoy our meal in peace.
Other diners had their experience disturbed? That was the waiter’s fault, not ours.
I specifically said I wouldn’t pick. But not liking something doesn’t make flipping out on someone in public fine.
You omitted that part from your story.
We disagree on what being a dick entails. Do you believe that he was trying to get under your skin? Or was he a server that was hoping he would get a good tip at the end of his serving you?
Wrong. One who “flips out” over a waiter cluelessly attempting to entertain when he shouldn’t be is the one responsible for flipping out. That’s not on the waiter. The disturbance to other diners was the fault of your brother. There are other ways to handle things effectively that don’t include flipping out and causing a scene. Always.