Except for those who actually work in the food service industry, the general public is largely unaware of restaurants’ inner-workings, and after you read the following article you may concede that ignorance is bliss. Reader’s Digest has complied a list of 13 confessions of a waiter which are excerpts from a book called “Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter” by an author who simply goes by “The Waiter.” See some of our favorites, inside…
2. There are almost never any sick days in the restaurant business. A busboy with a kid to support isn’t going to stay home and miss out on $100 because he’s got strep throat. And these are the people handling your food.
3. When customers’ dissatisfaction devolves into personal attacks, adulterating food or drink is a convenient way for servers to exact covert vengeance. Waiters can and do spit in people’s food.
4. Never say “I’m friends with the owner.” Restaurant owners don’t have friends. This marks you as a clueless poseur the moment you walk in the door.
13. Never, ever come in 15 minutes before closing time. The cooks are tired and will cook your dinner right away. So while you’re chitchatting over salads, your entrées will be languishing under the heat lamp while the dishwasher is spraying industrial-strength, carcinogenic cleaning solvents in their immediate vicinity.
Check out Readers Digest’s article for the full list.
We can think of no better time to abide by the Golden Rule then when eating at a restaurant. On two occasions, I actually exited a restaurant before the food was served because I felt that I had displeased the staff and feared their retribution. After reading these confessions, I think my instincts were dead-on.
13 Things Your Waiter Won’t Tell You [Reader's Digest]
(Photo: Getty)
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Many of the things waiters do are crimes punishable by law (messing with your food, working sick, etc.). Just because they can get away with it, doesn’t mean is not a crime. I don’t know about you, but it looks to me that the service industry is populated by a bunch of would-be criminals with a sense of entitlement.
@ffmariners: I’ll tip the driver if I see him; unfortunately, most of these UPS drivers seem to be ninjas. If I’m lucky, they’ll actually knock on my door before abandoning the package on my doorstep. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy when I ordered a $250 monitor, and found it sitting on my doorstep for “Bob”-knows how long in full view of my neighbors in my apartment building in a horrible neighborhood.
So for the past 7 years I’ve worked at restaurants and bars and the one thing that gets me is that people don’t realize is that we don’t make a paycheck! So please tip! (and 15% is no longer the norm…good service should get 18-20%) And tell your friends to tip too
@sparklingpink: You don’t think “enhancing” the food is commonplace in restaurants at every level? Welcome to Earth. Look around, you might enjoy yourself.
@Javert: You work waitstaff don’t you?
Excuse my language but, fuck the tipping system and the horse it rode in on. The majority of people will make arguments such as yourself till they are blue in the face about how if the system needs changed then they should open up a resturant and pay them living wages. Guess what, it would go under. Why? Because the current system is a lopsided to people that don’t. The public is subsidizing the wages of the places they patron PERIOD.
If more people wouldn’t tip instead of it being a fringe activity then it would be less common for waitstaff to complain about the customers are more common to see things like wait staff unions, organizing, and push for laws and change in the ridiculous system that is probably the closest thing we currently have to state sanctioned slave labor. Do waitstaff really feel proud knowing that they can only survive based upon the whims and good charity of the people that happen to patronize the store? Can you think of any other job whatsoever that is based on the same principles? I sure can’t.
To be honest, I am hypocritical because I DO tip. I tip though because it is the only way I feel that I have a direct impact on someones day and can make them feel good. Not because I feel that I have to. But, as you can tell I am one of the people that will actually speak up on how tipping is horse shit in its’ current form. I have worked as a bus boy. There are some waitresses who should get a living wage + awesome tips. There are some waitresses that should be fired. Instead you see good waitresses get boned because some loser had a bad day and you see the ones who should get fired because they are ridiculously horrible get tips because people think they have to tip. The whole system is lopsided and will someday change because this system has a feedback loop that revolves around the fact that even if you are crappy and do a small amount of work you get money. Guess what happens? Thats right everyone starts doing the smallest amount of work and then the customers finally say enough is enough and the system collapses. You’re already seeing it.
@Cupajo: Happens all the time. I just ring up a lemonade when one of my tables does it.
@The Raging Server: True dat. I often take the blame even when the error had nothing to do with me. People appreciate accountability, and I’m the public face for the family-owned and operated fine dining restaurant that I work in.
@The Raging Server: No, you do NOT work for it. You want to do hard work? Become a UPS loader (of trailers, not delivery trucks, even though that is harder than waiting, too.). Become a landscaper. Become a number of any other jobs. You surely do work, but not in the way you intend it.
The nights you “don’t make money” are far outnumbered by the nights you do make money. Once again… all my friends as examples… complain about a night where they “only” make $80 for 6-8 hours. ONLY. HAH!
And research? As I said… I worked at a restaurant for 13 months. Just because it wasn’t tip based doesn’t mean I did not encounter the “pressures of the job.” And then all my friends and GF talk endlessly about waiting… so I know how a bunch of different restaurants operate.
And water + lemons = natural
I work at a major beverage bottler right now. Do you know what goes into lemonade? I love lemonade but will not drink it. So perhaps they are just being health conscious. Charge away. And how nice of you to care so much for your restaurants costs, when you are disposable to them.
And I understand the cooks role in the eating out process. HOWEVER, I am paying the waiter to be my liason between everyone else so I don’t have to. If something messes up, ultimately it is their fault as they are the last line of defense and working for me (thats what working for tips is, right?)
Waiters who feel they are owed 15-20% are a dime a dozen and unfortunately make the rest look bad
@The Raging Server: Who cares what you expect? Even if you supposedly worked for it? (Which is my decision, not yours!)
I can expect a fifty percent raise on my next annual review because I do the job of someone who gets paid fifty percent more than I do, but what do you think would happen if I marched into the boss’s office and told him so? He’d say the exact same thing I’m telling you. He’d say that it’s his decision how good my work was. He’d say that if my work was exceptional, he’d give me a bonus. (He did this year, and it was a decent one.) But his payroll decisions are not made based on what his employees expect. My pay is based on my work quality and productivity, and so should yours be.
I can understand and appreciate your efforts to educate people about the plight of the server and the way the system works. But your lofty attitude that we are too damn stupid to read your mind and divine your ever-increasing “expectations” is ludicrous.
I don’t like that articles like these sometimes contain violent threats. Not the spitting in our food – that is a valid warning. But number 6 – “6. Don’t snap your fingers to get our attention. Remember, we have shears that cut through bone in the kitchen.” That is just a ridiculous threat that should have been edited out. While I’m never rude enough to snap my fingers at a waiter, if I knew what restaurant that waiter worked in, I’d not go there.
Wow. Seriously, people, work in food service for a while. For the last 6 years, I’ve been in a manual labor job, working as a general maintenance worker for a hospital. I do demolition, tear down and rebuild boilers, install plumbing and move furniture and a plethora of other things and I can tell you this:
I preferred working in the food industry, but it was far more difficult. And here’s why (and I swear I wish this list wasn’t going to lost on page two of an old post)
1.Time limits:You are bound in food service industry to whatever time limit the customer silently desires. Too soon or too late, and you’re screwed. Working labor, if the job can’t be done in time, it won’t, and there’s nothing they can do about it but pay me overtime to get it done faster.
2.There is a chain of people designed to screw you up. Food runners, busboys, expeditors, hosts, bartenders, cooks. It’s your tip at risk, yet all these people are going to have an effect. The food runner that takes your food to the wrong table. The busboy that starts taking their dishes while they are still “working on them”. The expeditor who thinks that 20 seconds between apps and entree is cool at the beginning of the shift and 45 minutes between them is normal in the middle and won’t listen to a single request to wait or speed up. The host that seats you with two tables in two minutes. The bartender who is busy angling for their own tips and/or watching the bar TVs while their service tape runs 30 drinks deep. The cooks that get backed up and take shortcuts with your food, or send it out before it’s ready to shut the expeditor up. All of these people can ruin your table’s evening and who gets hurt the worst by it, the server. And let’s not forget the managers (some of them) who find it easier to blame the server than the mangle of ineptitude running in circles in the kitchen. Working manual labor, the chain of stupidity is usually much shorter, and when the job breaks down, it breaks down completely and everyone knows who dropped the ball.
3.Entitlement:Customers who come in thinking that you’re the genie in the bottle for them. They believe they can dictate the boundaries of your responsibilities and you, like a schmuck, do everything you can to prove them right because you need them happy and tipping. In the manual labor world, the bosses try to set limits, but ultimately it comes down to what you can do and in what timeframe. As long as you’re not a slacker, they know you will give them everything they can get, and if that’s not enough, they shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep.
4.Everyone is an authority. The warm pink middle of this steak does NOT mean it’s rare. It means it’s medium. If you wanted no pink in it at all, order it well done. Well done is not charred, no matter what happens on your BBQ grill at home. This rum and coke has too much coke because I can’t read the menu through the glass. This lemonade is too sweet. Everyone has an opinion, and since you need to appease these people, sadly, you’re bound to their insane desires. In the manual labor world, not only do the majority of your customers have no idea of what you are doing aside from “moving a sink across the room and installing a therapy whirlpool”. You have tools that they don’t recognize and it’s generally intimidating. They are many times more likely to accept the results they get as the best it could possibly be.
5.Downtime: Simply put, there is none. Maybe it’s only a 5 hour dinner shift. But you have opening prep, mid shift prep, early birds while you’re still prep, the rush, the closing, clean up…if you find 5 minutes to go smoke a cigarette, you’ve stolen it from something else you could be doing. And sharing prep is no better because Elazybeth DoLittleOrNothing has cut up four lemons for friday night because there were so many thrown away from the twenty you cut for thursday night. Working maintenance, I get scheduled (PAID!) breaks, I can slip out for a smoke without anyone particularly caring (within reason), and scheduled (PAID!) lunch. I work 8.5 hour days, and considering clean up, travel, breaks…really it’s about 6.5 hours of actual work.
6.Sick time means no tips. Even if they let you have it, you’re going to go broke from being sick. Between vacation and sick time, I have 38 paid days off, plus 6 holidays…all of which are paid, and if I work on a holiday, it’s time and a half + the paid day.
7.Insurance: If there is any, it’s going to eat whatever meager leavings there are in your paycheck, god forbid you have to insure your spouse or child. In the labor industry, I have life insurance, health insurance, dental and an eye plan.
8.Disposable employees: You could work for a place for three years and depending on management, especially new management, you could be canned without warning on the complain of a insane customer. You have no recourse, you are at the mercy of management, and can only hope that they are on your side. On the labor side, I’m a union member. I can’t be disposed of easily unless I screw up in an epic fashion, and even then I have several avenues of fighting for my job, and if I do win it back, all that time I was out? I get paid for it.
There are other reasons, but I work in the labor industry now because I have a family and my wife doesn’t work. I provide for them with a steady paycheck and I don’t have to buy cheaper diapers due after getting a 3% tip on a 12 top because the gentleman who’s turn it is to pay is hiding money from his wife because he wants to get a half hour in the champagne room of the strip club or he bet on Rampage Jackson knocking out Forrest Griffin in the first round.
But I preferred the food service industry because I was a bartender at the end. I started as a waiter, then split time doing day bar, then I was head bartender, then I was night manager for a while, and then back to bartending again when the hours changed and the night manager job wasn’t needed. I loved bartending because I knew all my regulars and managed a friendship with everyone one of them, at least as long as I was pouring their drinks. Servers often maintain the same relationship with their regulars, too. I didn’t leave willingly (new owners with a bartender from their old place wanted to give him the best shifts, and I didn’t volunteer to go back to 2 nights and 3 days on the bar), but it did ultimately work out for the best for me.
I also preferred the service industry because I was a manipulative bastard who made it a game of giving the people what I wanted by making them believe it was what they want. I exerted control over the customers in subtle ways about 80% of the time, and it was probably a serious character flaw on my part at the time.
And maybe this is the best indicator, but after 8.5 hours at work and an hour commuting, I still have energy to play with my daughter or do some work around the house. After 5 hours waiting tables or 8 behind the bar, all I had energy to do was take my shoes off before I passed out on the couch. Usually.
@ffmariners: You know how one becomes a UPS loader or a landscaper? They start at another job and fail miserably. You may have no respect for your “last line of defense” but being a server is not an unskilled job. Anywhere from 2 to 30 people are looking to you to juggle all their desires for their dining experience and every small mistake is met with anything from mild hostility to outright rudeness, not to mention loss of income. Waitstaff do not have high turnover because it’s a stepping stone other things, they have a high turnover because people wash out of it, constantly.
And it’s not all sunshine and roses on the pay issue. If you manage to string together a run of bad days (like a week of snow followed by random salmonella scare on the local news), you’re in trouble. That’s money gone. You might make it up later, but you might not, too.
@speedwell: No, you HOPE to get a 50% raise commiserate to raise your pay to the perceived level of the tasks you are completing. I’ve done jobs that were worth thousands of dollars for an outside contractor in my current job and I expected to get paid my hourly rate for the 2 days it took me to do it. I did my job well, and since my pay is in a rigid system, the expectations are clear.
If you expected to get a 50% increase to make your responsiblities, you’d quit when you didn’t get. You couldn’t work for someone who was overworking you because you don’t stand up for yourself and you take on extra work because it’s there to be done, even if you have no specific contractual obligation to it, right?
Now, this bonus you mentioned. Glad it was a decent one. Now, what if you turned in the same quality work but at your annual review they told you that it was the wrong color paper on your TPS reports and you used the wrong font, causing eye strain to your superior and instead of giving you a bonus, they are going to keep your next 3 paychecks as a way of punishing you for their arbitrary complaints that in the really real world have nothing to do with the quality (nor the above and beyond amount) of your work?
Well, Raging Server’s manager is only his boss in the sense that he gives him a very small paycheck and tells him he can come back to work again tomorrow. As a server, each and every table is your boss. They make the payroll decisions when they decide how much to tip you. You may indeed be penalized because they are having a bad day. You may be penalized because they were caught in flagrante delicto with then neighbor’s prize winning pug by their wife who tossed them out without their supper. You may be penalized because your table next to this one has four kids running amok and parents that told you to go do something anatomically impossible when you asked them to keep their children seated.
You can talk about your expectations with your boss all you like, and gatekeepers of the payroll, but it does not apply here. It’s a rigid system based on rules.
Servers are subject to many many “bosses” a day, every customer, every table. They may be cheap, insane, angry, or not like their food, potentially none of which is the server’s fault. The bottom line is that you can do everything right and still get the snub from payroll. It’s a loose system with no rules. Raging Server, and others are making suggestions about what the rules should be, and getting a lot of noise for it. People by and large do not know best in every situation they are in. In the server/customer relationship, the server is the professional but ultimately, the customer decides the value of the work. The tipping system is indeed bass ackwards, but it’s not going anywhere soon. But no one is going to start a revolution over it, the most we could hope for is that the readers here consider what’s said and maybe act better themselves.
Yesterday, I got a call from a neighbor who bought a new fridge with an automatic ice maker, I quoted her 30 bucks + parts to hook it up because it wasn’t in a handy spot for it. I went over, split the kitchen sink’s cold water feed, put in a “T” and ran 9 feet of flexible copper tubing, 6 of it behind cabinets and 3 of it under the molding. It took me about 10 minutes. If I had told her I’d do it and afterwards she could pay me what she wanted, I’d have left with a plate of cookies and a net loss of about 15 bucks for the parts. But that is how the servers get paid.
I live in a state whose laws require base pay for waiters to be no less than the minimum wage, so unless service has been extraordinary or (in rare circumstances) I’m in a high-end restaurant, I keep my tips to 15%; paying someone else’s salary is not my problem. (I work FOR said state, and am therefore not exactly rich.
When in the restaurant, though, I’m always polite and patient and don’t make a fuss, and I’ve had waiters tell me they liked me anyway (on the second or third time, so they know how I tip), so I tend not to worry much about people getting, um, creative with my food.
Basically: be fair, be aware and don’t be a jerk, and everyone ought to come out okay. Applies to everything, really.
@rockasocky:
Oh, right. And some guy that worked in Nick’s Restaurant.