Waiter Rant (27 page)

40 Tips on How to Be a Good Customer

• 1.
  Make reservations and keep them. On a Friday or Saturday night it’s not unusual for 20 percent of a restaurant’s reservations not to show up—even if they confirmed earlier in the day. This happens because so many people in this options-obsessed cell phone–enabled world make reservations at two or three establishments and decide which one they’ll go to at the very last minute—usually without telling the other restaurant! Not only is that rude, it hurts the restaurant’s bottom line, forcing management to overbook. If you’ve ever wondered why your table’s never ready when you show up for your reservation on time, that’s usually the reason. Don’t blame the restaurant. Blame your fellow customers. With modern computer systems we can track which customers consistently screw us over and blackball them. Don’t let that happen to you. Make a decision and stick to it.
  
• 2.
  If you’re going to be late for your reservation, please call. We’ll hold your table. After half an hour you might not get the special table you requested, but you’ll still get in. An hour late? On a busy night turn around and go home. Don’t even bother.
  
• 3.
  Never say, “I’m friends with the owner.” Restaurant owners don’t have any friends. This marks you as a clueless poseur the moment you walk in the door.
  
• 4.
  Sit where you’re seated! Whenever the hostesses attempt to seat guests many customers (usually the females) will walk past the proffered seats and hunt around the restaurant for a better table. Please, let the hostess do her job. She’s only trying to seat customers evenly so that everyone gets the best service possible without overwhelming one server. And trust me, when your waiter overhears you whining about your table, he or she will know that you’re an annoying table snob who thinks you’re entitled to undeserved rock-star treatment and that, in all probability, you’re a bad tipper to boot. You haven’t even met your waiter and you’ve already got a strike against you.
  
• 5.
  Leave your children at home if at all possible. Don’t get me wrong. I love kids. Just not in high-end dining establishments. Smart parents who can’t get a sitter will dine at a restaurant early and dash off before their little angels get rambunctious. That’s cool. What’s not cool is a Ritalin-medicated brat racing around the restaurant and screaming his head off at ten
  P.M.
  The odds are good this kid’s going to get trampled or have something hot spilled on him. Sometimes grown-ups just want to be with other grown-ups. (We should also charge parents for the space their super-expensive urban assault baby carriages take up.)
  
• 6.
  If you must bring your child and use a high chair, do not make the kid sit on the trafficked side of the table so grandma can make goo goo faces. I know, I’m heartless, but I’d hate to clip your baby’s still-soft skull with a tray. Keep sweetums out of the line of fire. Media players on the table to keep your three-year-old occupied? Only if I get to slip in a
  Girls Gone Wild
  DVD.
  
• 7.
  Be polite. Say please and thank you. Be courteous to the hostess, bus people, coat-check girl, bartender, and waiter. Treat others as you want to be treated. (Yes, people need to be reminded of this.)
  
• 8.
  Never say, “Do you know who I am?” Why? Did
  you
  forget who you are?
  
• 9.
  Do not snap your fingers to get the waiter’s attention. Remember, we have shears that cut through bone in the kitchen.
  
• 10.
  Do not use your cell phone in the restaurant. Yes, you, the always-need-to-be-connected BlackBerry junkie! Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to talk on a cell phone (or to text message) while other people are eating? Unless you’re a heart-transplant surgeon on standby, turn it off or put it on vibrate. No one wants to hear your stupid
  Godfather
  ring-tones anyway. And please, don’t talk on your phone while the waiter’s telling you the specials or getting your order. The classy thing to do when you need to make a call is to go outside. And guys, when you sit down at the table, please avoid the whole throwing-your-cell-phone-on-top-of-the-table maneuver. It reeks of penile and social insecurity. Keep it in your pants, Master of the Universe.
  
• 11.
  Tell your teenage child to put the Game Boy away and sit up straight.
  
• 12.
  Don’t use your laptop while eating dinner. Lunch is acceptable because you might be working, but any other time it makes you look sort of creepy. Read a book (preferably this one) or read the paper.
  
• 13.
  Please make your server go through the specials only once. Most restaurant owners think operating a high-class place involves making waiters rattle off twenty specials from memory. It doesn’t, but please don’t make our lives harder by asking us to detail the specials before the other half of your party arrives. Then we have to go through it all over again. I already get laryngitis once a year as it is!
  
• 14.
  Don’t ask the server his or her name so you can shout it across the dining room whenever you need something. I once told an obstreperous patron my name was Sigismund. Now that made for some interesting dinner theater.
  
• 15.
  Order clearly. Say what you want. The waiter is not psychic. Clarify the order with the waiter who, if he’s smart, will repeat the order back to you.
  
• 16.
  When ordering wine, don’t sniff the cork! This marks you as a total amateur. Why tell some unscrupulous sommelier you’re his or hers for the taking? The only thing you need to do is
  feel
  the cork and make sure it’s intact. Is the bottom of the cork moistened with wine? Good. That means it was stored properly. You might want to make sure the name on the cork matches the name on the bottle. Unscrupulous owners have been known to put cheap wine in old wine bottles and recork them. Is there mold on the cork? That’s a bad sign. And don’t start spinning the wine in the glass like you’re trying to separate U-235 in a centrifuge machine. That’s so pretentious. What you should do is swirl the wine and see how it coats the side of the glass. The coating that sticks to the side of the glass and runs down in streaks is called “legs.” If a wine has legs, that means it contains a high level of alcohol and will taste like a full-bodied wine. When you sniff the wine, you want to check if the wine smells like vinegar, moldy cheese, or feet. If it does, then the wine’s bad and you send it back. Don’t sweat it; we usually get the money back from the distributor. Remember, the wine liturgy is only to check if the wine’s drinkable, not to see if it’s to your taste. You should know what you like ahead of time. You don’t like the wine even though it’s perfectly good? That’s your fault.
  
• 17.
  Don’t ask for the big glasses when ordering cheap wine, especially by the glass. This pretentious yuppie move drives me nuts. Some wines, usually high-quality ones, need to be served in large glasses that give the wine more surface area
  to interact with the air and open it up, revealing its true flavors. Status-conscious patrons, even though they’re drinking Chianti that could be served in a Dixie cup, want everyone around them to think they’re drinking something exclusive and so they ask for the big glasses. I’ve always remarked how much this maneuver tells you about these customers—large egos with nothing substantial to fill them.
  
• 18.
  If the restaurant serves wine and you bring your own bottle, you will be charged a corking fee. That fee is usually equal to the price of the cheapest bottle of wine the restaurant sells. If you bring your own bottle of wine but purchase a bottle of equal or greater value, some restaurants, but certainly not all, might let you slide on the corking fee. Do not bring in a bottle of wine the restaurant already sells. That’s rude. If you have any concerns about bringing your own bottle of wine to a restaurant, avoid trouble. Call the establishment ahead of time.
  
• 19.
  Know your limits where alcohol’s concerned.
  
• 20.
  Don’t order off the menu. Don’t walk into an Italian restaurant and think the chef’s going to make you sushi just because he has tuna. Restaurants are set up to make what’s on the menu as well as a predetermined list of specials. When you order what’s not on the menu, you’re forcing the chef into a situation where he’s cooking something he doesn’t make on a regular basis. In a restaurant kitchen, repetition is the key to consistency. You want your heart surgeon to have done ten thousand bypasses before he cracks open your chest, right? Same thing with a chef—if he makes the same entrée ten thousand times a month, the odds are good that the dish will be a home run every time.
  
• 21.
  Reasonable menu changes are for food allergies. Don’t lie and say you have an allergy so the chef will make something special just for you. You know who you are.
  
• 22.
  Spend money. You don’t have to break the bank. Splitting entrées is okay, but don’t ask for water, lemon, and sugar so
  you can make your own lemonade. What’s next, grapes so you can press your own wine? Get the fuck outta here.
  
• 23.
  Be well behaved. No hand jobs under the table or sex in the bathroom—unless I’m one of the participants.
  
• 24.
  The secret to being treated like a regular customer?
  Be
  a regular customer. Everybody likes to have a favorite restaurant where the waiter knows his favorite drink and the owner makes a fuss over him. We all want a special place where we’ll always get a good table or a last-minute reservation. The problem is, most patrons think they’re entitled to that level of fawning on their first visit to the restaurant. Wrong! If you want to be treated like a regular customer, you have to patronize an establishment at least once or twice a month, minimum. As my former corporate boss was fond of saying, “It’s all about relationships.”
  
• 25.
  Never aggressively touch the waiters or bus people. Don’t grab arms or pull on aprons.
  
• 26.
  Tell all your friends about the restaurant and drive in business. The owner loves that shit. It’s free advertising. He’ll
  almost
  treat you like a friend.
  
• 27.
  Don’t hit up the owner or waiter for donations. Trust me, the owner
  hates
  that. There are days when it seems every customer has his or her hand out for a donation—whether it’s fund-raisers for orphaned puppies, raffles for acid-reflux disease, telethons for restless-leg syndrome, golf charities, or Kiwanis’ silent auctions—no restaurant can give to every charity that comes knocking. Eventually contribution fatigue sets in. What’s really tacky is how customers have one meal in a restaurant and think they’re entitled to ask the owner for a $100 donation to help send their son’s glee club to Paris. Please. Lay off.
  
• 28.
  Cultivate a waiter. If you find a waiter you like, always ask to be seated in his or her section. Tell all your friends about your favorite waiter so they start asking for that server by
  name as well. You’ve just made that waiter look indispensable to the owner and increased his or her income as well. The server will be grateful and take very good care of you.
  
• 29.
  Don’t monopolize the waiter’s time. Sure, I like talking to you, but I’ve got other tables to attend to. Try not to linger. Be aware the waiter needs to turn the table to make money. If you want to hang out till closing, that’s okay, but increase the tip to make up for money the server would have made if he or she had had another seating at that table.
  
• 30.
  Ask for the check. It’s impolite for a server just to drop it on the table. (But we will when it’s busy.)
  
• 31.
  Yes, the squiggly sign-the-check pantomime thing is acceptable, even though it irks the hell out of me.
  
• 32.
  Pay the check within five minutes of receiving it. A good way to signal that the check is ready for payment is to have the cash or credit card peeking out of the check holder. For the love of God don’t put the bill in your lap, under a napkin, or, my favorite, lean on it with your elbows. That’s some passive-aggressive shit. It screams that you don’t want to part with your cash. Don’t look like a cheap bastard. Just give me the friggin’ check.
  
• 33.
  Don’t ask for separate checks at the end of the meal. That’s your problem. You should have told me earlier.
  
• 34.
  If you have no money or forgot your credit card, you will not be washing dishes to work off your bill. The insurance company would never allow us to assume the liability. If you’re a regular customer, we’ll let you pay us the next day. If we don’t know you? We call the cops and have you arrested for theft of service.
  
• 35.
  Tip at least 15 to 20 percent. If you don’t, any regular-customer status you attain will be negated. Always try to tip in cash. If you have a favorite waiter, tip at least 20 percent, or even 25 percent. Any higher, however, and the tip becomes overly lavish. Keep that for special occasions like
  Christmas. You don’t want to assault the waiter’s dignity by trying to purchase his affection. We’re not whores. Keep it businesslike and professional.
  
• 36.
  If you pay part of your bill with a gift certificate, make sure you tip on the whole check—not what’s left over after the certificate’s been redeemed.
  
• 37.
  Tip the coat-check girl. It’s a dollar a coat.
  
• 38.
  If you get takeout from a fancy restaurant, a 10 percent tip is considered appropriate.
  
• 39.
  Never, ever come in fifteen minutes before closing time. The cooks are tired and will cook your dinner right away so they can start breaking down the kitchen. While you’re chitchatting over salads, your entrées will be languishing under the heat lamp as the dishwasher’s spraying industrial-strength, carcinogenic cleaning solvents in their immediate vicinity. Eat at a diner instead.
  
• 40.
  If you can’t afford to leave a tip, you can’t afford to eat in the restaurant. Stay home.