I can get you one of those if you’re interested.
My answer to the OP is that I spent so many years working in restaurants that it takes a lot for me to complain about the servers. Usually, I know that if there’s something wrong on the plate, it’s probably the kitchen’s fault, not the servers. I also know that people are human and just forget shit sometimes, so if I get ice when I asked for no ice, I let it go. I know they didn’t do it as intentional insult to me and it’s really not that big a deal. If something needs correcting, I’ll ask politely and I almost always get an immediate and sincere apology (they usually over-apologize and I have to reassure them that it’s really, really no big deal).
Some actions and questions become so automatic that they may seem like the server is unattentive or obtuse when they’re really just locked into reflexes (like automatically bringing water to the table. It’s a habit which becomes so automatic and unconscious that it’s hard to break for the rare instance where someone doesn’t want it at the table). I understand that too (I still get ice about 25% of the time when I ask for no ice in a drink).
The only things tht really get me perturbed are being ignored for long periods of time when I can see that the server is not particularly busy (or I can see them chatting for 15 minutes with the bartender) or if the server is unnecessarily brusque or rude. I once got a waitress who was obviously drunk. That was weird.
I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this one yet, but.
My only recurring restaurant complaint is when I order a refill on my drink when they bring my entree, and they’re so slow with the drink that I’m practically done with the entree by the time the drink arrives, at which point I no longer want it - I just want to finish, pay, and leave.
This has happened to me in a number of different restaurants, and I don’t understand it. The reason I want that drink is so that I can drink it with my dinner, not so that I can test my ability to wash down bites of my entree with small sips of the last half-ounce of my first drink, then have a fresh drink to linger over after I’m done eating, as I savor each moment of my grouchiness.
As far as I can recall, the only time I have ever turned a customer service rant into a Pit thread was when they screwed up my dessert order, by
(a) bringing the coffee LONG before they brought the dessert, so the coffee was cold by the time the sweetness arrived. Why do you think I ordered them TOGETHER?
(b) this was the part that was completely beyond the pale, in part because it is the reason my coffee got cold, but also because microwaving a butter tart and then slathering it in whipped cream is a crime against humanity.
I must be really easy to please. Other than the “big portions” thing mentioned above, which has nothing to do with the servers, I really can’t remember the last time I had memorably bad service in a restaurant.
Sometimes the service is slower that I’d like, but I can generally see that the reason is - not enough servers for the number of customers, again something which is not the fault of those who are serving.
I’ve never waited on tables, and it is one job I’d really not want to do. It looks like a heck of a lot of work.
My restaurant pet peeves:
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Servers who don’t know (and won’t find out) what drinks the restaurant serves. If the info isn’t on the menu, I’ll ask “What beers do you serve?” Half of the time the answer is either “Well, what would you like?” or “I don’t know… regular stuff…” I’d like to know what my options are before I choose. And if I try to just answer the “what do you want” question, it’ll take five tries before I hit on something they happen to serve, and then I’ve become that bitchy guy who gave the waitress trouble because they didn’t have some fancy-shmancy beer no one’s ever heard of.
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Waiters who stand too far away from me when they’re trying to take my order. If there are 12 people seated around the table, and I’m at one end, don’t park yourself at the other end and expect me to yell to you at the top of my lungs! Please just walk a couple feet closer so I can use my inside voice, and have a chance of you hearing me correctly.
Do they ever stab themselves with the dirty fork?
As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing wrong with taking leftovers home, and I do. However, the serving sizes are so large that I end up eating the leftovers for two or three days after the restaurant meal. That means I’ve had the same thing for three or four days in a row - I’d rather have less food to begin with.
Having said that, I know I have a small stomach or something so this is more of a thing with me than for the average diner. The other night I ordered an appetizer as an entree and still couldn’t even finish half of it and brought the rest home. It’ll make a good lunch today and no prep required - yay.
You’re not a child, you’re just behaving like one. She didn’t insinuate that you threw the pickle - she was making fun of your husband and your defense (if not giddy worship) of his classless action.
As much as you’re trying to backpeddle now, in your original post where you detailed your husband’s boorish behavior you seemed exceedingly proud of him.
Of course, now that people have made numerous comments about what a dolt your husband is for doing this, there is suddenly more to the story. Now he threw the pickle at the plate and it happened to hit the waiter’s shoe when originally (as you can see) you said he has (and could again) throw a pickle AT YOU. Babies throw their food at people, do you usually ask for a booster seat for him, too?
You’re demonstrating what a vile wench you are here by defending this exceptionally dumb caveman actions. You start with your haughty list of unpardonable sins of wait staff who dare cross you and your knuckle dragging, Missing Link of a husband.
Then you aren’t able to understand the meaning of volunteer. Hint: when one volunteers it is usually so they are not paid so the cost of their work is added to the PROFIT of the cause for which they are toiling. Yes, this means that the woman (probably a relative of yours considering her manners when dealing with wait staff) complained about the offending bread it was a meal she PAID FOR and Bo Bettie brought her. Of course, because the woman paid for her meal, she had every right to insult her for forgetting to remove the garlic bread. Well, at least in your world.
Lastly, you inform us all that waiting tables is a job that even a monkey could do. Wow. That is a clear indicator of what kind of nasty person lives inside that thing that sits on your neck. I’d say waiting tables requires the temperament of a saint when waiting on such low class, manners-challenged, smug, clueless, and nasty people like you and your husband.
Okay, here’s one of my complaints (not the “biggest,” or even that egregious, but here it is): the Recitation of the Daily Specials.
This would be a bit irritating anyway (why can’t they just put them on a chalkboard somewhere or put a printed insert into the menu itself?) but thanks to my partial hearing loss, the frequently high level of ambient noise in most restaurants, and the tendency of the waiters to mumble tonelessly like second graders stampeding through their first oral book report on the Heroes of the American Revolution, I’m typically obligated to smile and nod my way through sixty seconds of watching someone’s lips moving— politely feigning full comprehension of what to me sounds, at best, much like the “wah-wah-WAHH!” speech of adults in the animated Peanuts specials.
I probably already know what I want anyway, and it’s unlikely to be the pan-seared albino salamander in a reduction sauce of Calvados, Spanish chervil, and Strawberry Yoo-hoo with natto-truffle risotto on a bed of wilted dandelion stems, or whatever the hell you just said.
Club sandwich and fries sounds good. Please, no mayonnaise. I would never throw anything at you or any other server (I can’t even imagine the sort of boorish, socially stunted, petulant prick of a man-child who would actually do something like that*), but if my sandwich arrives slathered in that vile smegma, I will fantasize vividly about sucking it up as best I can using my drinking straw and blowing a mayo “money shot” into your cheerfully inquisitive face when next you approach my table.
*Excepting in cases of very severe mental retardation that would necessitate immediate commitment to an inpatient facility providing constant supervision to prevent said hypothetical severely disabled food-thrower from doing harm to himself or others; e.g., walking into the path of an oncoming freight train that “refused to honor his right-of way,” or reaching into the cage of a snarling, snapping pit bulldog in order to establish dominance by poking it in the eye with his forefinger. There is, of course, substantial controversy over the utility of expending public resources to keep such people alive, but these are fundamental ethical and philosophical questions outside the scope of this discussion.
Let’s say I’ve got the afternoon off. I head to a restaurant by myself, hoping to get a decent late lunch and possibly read part of a newspaper or book I may be working my way through. Even though it’s 2:00 PM, and the place is nearly empty, I’ll still occasionally find myself seated at a tiny table for two next to the kitchen or the bathroom. It’s not like I’m asking for a larger table in a decent location during dinner rush. The place is empty - why seat me at the smallest, worst table in the house?
*Preach it Brother!
*
I have a soft spot for Outback for that very reason. It was 4 in the afternoon, on a lovely summer day in hte bay area. I asked if I could sit in the patio. The hostess said the patio was closed. My waitress pipes up “It’s OK, I’ll serve him out there!”. 25% tip.
I can generally hear what they’re saying, unless it’s a very noisy restaurant. But even still, I gotta agree with you on that.
Because quite often, they go through each special in some detail, which means that by the fourth one, the details of the first three are blurring together or have just dropped out of the memory. So you’ve got to go back and ask, or they have to repeat the damned thing again.
Somebody is obviously taking the time to give the waiters their spiel on the specials, and make sure they know it. ISTM that in less time than that takes, they could sit down at the computer, type the spiel, review it, and print out as many copies as needed to insert into the menus.
Seems that it would be easier all the way around.
This one is my biggie. I drink lots - so I’ll finish several glasses of water and iced tea with a meal. Waitpeople who keep me filled up get big tips. Actually, the majority of places I eat do this well.
As for portions: I’ve observed that portion size is inversely proportional to the price of the entrees. I like big portions myself (and I never gain weight ) but my wife doesn’t. Lots of places have things like half a sandwich and soup, and somewhere (TGIF or Applebees or some such) is gambling on a reduced price, reduced portion option. We’ll see how it goes. Portions are actually better than they were 10 years ago. Soon enough you’ll all qualify for the senior citizen menu.
Despite the detailed description of each Daily Special, the price is usually omitted. And the price is usually pretty “special” too.
Chalkboards are good alternatives to printed menu updates. Rather traditional, as well.
The custom used to be that the man would place the orders with the waiter. Not that the man would decide: the woman would choose her own meal (they in fact used to have “ladies’ menus” with no prices marked) and the man would convey the choice to the waiter.
Outmoded gender roles, yes; absurdly controlling, no.
TGI Friday’s is doing this, at least the one near me is. The reduced portion seems to me to be a reasonable amount- it’s not so huge I was totally stuffed after eating it, but it’s not annoyingly tiny like the portions in really fancy restaurants.
Random lil related anecdote: at one point, RandMcNally and I were grabbing lunch or dinner or something at a random buffet in Vegas and- for whatever reason- the waiter totally took FOREVER to bring our drinks and then took even longer to refill them. Consider that the job of a waiter at a buffet is entirely based on drink service, Rand and I joked (quietly between us) that we were only going to give the guy a tip if we got 5 drinks a piece before we were done eating. We were totally joking laughing while we were quietly saying this between us.
Now, I’m guessing the waiter somehow overheard us, because he walked out with like, three glasses of soda for each of us. It was pretty damned funny and naturally, we left him a tip. The humor alone that he gave us from catching us saying that totally made up for his earlier slacking.
The upside, of course, is that we had lots to drink.
I read a message board for people in the service industry. I think I’m not supposed to name it so I won’t. I started reading it because it great for the morbidly curious about what kind of demanding assholes waiters have to put up and there are some AMAZING horror stories. After a while though the whole attitude of a lot of them has started to irritate me. I don’t know if the pet peeves they rant about that are shared among all of them. For example, if my boyfriend and I are going to a restaurant when we walk in I usually will use the restroom first while he gets sat at the table to get it over with. That way, I don’t have to get up during the meal and miss conversation or whatever. Apparantly this is the STUPIDEST MOST INCONSIDERATE thing EVER to do to a waiter. Complaints all around about “why cant guests have the common sense to let me get their drink order going before using the restroom so I don’t have to wait and comeback when everyone has sat down”
Wow I would never consider that to be common sense. I mean I wouldn’t go out of my way to be nasty or make things harder on them, But I don’t think of ways to actively make their job easier for them. They also complain about people running them. Like one person orders a drink and when they bring it to the table another person decides to order a drink. Sometimes I don’t know I want something until I actually see it and become jealous of it. A lot of the times when someone grabs a waiter’s attention to get something they literally bolt after that thing is said so no one else has a chance to chime in.
I hate seeing that look on a waiter’s face that they think I’m the biggest asshole ever when I dont have bad intentions
I thought I’d chime in as a research biologist with absolutely no speciality in the area of nutrition, digestion or functioning of the intestines or stomach. Whenever I hear people gibbber on about meat making them sick after having not had meat in a long time I always roll my eyes. I most often to respond to this by saying “its probably not the meat, youre probably just being a bitch” Even they go into the situation “blind” and still claim sickness. I still attribute these cases to bitchcraft.
From what I remember, proteases in digestion do response in a postive correlation to the amount of protein ligand that is present. So more protein, more digestive enzyme for protein, less protein, less digestive enzyme for protein. So it would make sense for someone to say that with less meat protein going through their system, their body wouldn’t be ready for a surprise attack of meat. BUT, proteases are pretty equal opportunity. There are a very limited number of amino acids that exist and so receptor cites on digestion enzymes are going to work for lots of different kinds of proteins. I saw someone above said something to this affect. That the same enzymes are used no matter what the source of the protein. So you would get sick if there was a both rapid and HUGE change in the protein levels. You would have to go from not having much protein at all to some sort of MASSIVE protein spike. a hot beef injection maybe. If the vegetarian in question is consuming dairy and eggs, their system is definately going to be prepared to handle meat protein levels.
So if its not meat protein maybe its meat fat you ask? The small intestine also seems to be pretty dumb. It don’t know where the fat comes from and it doesnt care. It just see it and says “lipase! check! bile! check!” Then breaks fat into small and large fatty acid chains and then those have two different adventures getting to the blood stream.
Anyways, my first guess is the problem is in your head. Maybe you didn’t know about the meat before hand but there had to have been a suspicion or a taste or something to make you think back and think the culprit is meat and not just food poisoning.
If a person really is physically sick I would guess that yes it probably is a change in the chemical environment that the body cant handle. The meat could have been contaminated. The nonmeat could have been contaminated. I mean the way we get meat now is we slaughter it, then ship it to some other country to be processed in a filthy warehouse for pennies, then they ship it back to us with severed thumbs, rat droppings and parasites in it for extra flavoring. Its a meat-related issue but what may be making you sick is not the essence of meat. It has nothing to do with meat’s meatiness.
And do you guys realize how freaking hard it is to digest green ruffage? We cant even digest cellulose. We have to rely on tiny tiny friends to do it in our intestines. Its a thankless job. So if something is “keeping you busy” I would guess an increase in fibrous veggies might be the cause. Like I said, I dont know if thats right but if I had a gun to my head, that woudl be my best guess