Categories
Restaurant Life

Santa Never Waited Tables

Restaurant workers all over the world will be stuck serving you during the holidays. This time of the year is the scourge of the service industry—an endless loop, stuck on repeat, where we forfeit the ability to celebrate with our loved ones so you and your loved ones can have somewhere to eat. Sadly for us, as long as restaurants are open, someone has to cook and serve the food. As if this isn’t all bad enough, we have to listen to the same shitty Christmas music playing every night. In the restaurant business, we dread the holiday season and often lament amongst ourselves about “just trying to get through it.” But, year after year, we take it for the team, flashing you our best “service smile” while we dole out generous servings of holiday cheer. January 2nd is when we celebrate—the end of it all.

The holidays are not only the most frenetic time of the year in the hospitality industry but also the time when people get the most fussy. Special occasions bring out the worst in people, especially among dysfunctional families whose issues often get stirred up at the dinner table. Without fail, people’s hidden demons rise to the surface during the holidays and the restaurant becomes the amphitheater for the tragedy to unfold. Waiters have front row tickets to the show and often—against their will—play an unwanted role in the drama. Your mother has always hated your husband but wont let you know until her fourth dirty Ketel 1 martini when she decides to tell everyone at the table (and the rest of Ruby Tuesdays) that you should have married your ex-boyfriend.

Effacing ourselves so that others can celebrate is a noble act—though you wouldn’t know it from how most guests behave. You rarely notice any change in the way customers treat staff during the holidays—with the increased pressure of making the experience extra special diners often demand more and are less forgiving of service mistakes. It often creates the perfect storm: Customers with bloated expectations being served by people whose sacrifices are under-appreciated. We don’t have any hard data, but we would guess that complaints by restaurant patrons go up during the holiday season when you’d expect them to be a little more lenient. Any delusions that people are more compassionate toward those who serve them during the holidays are misguided.

UpsideDownTreeIt’s also a misconception that working on holidays is guaranteed to be lucrative. Contrary to common belief, people don’t always spend as freely eating and drinking this time of year so check averages tend to drop. Some restaurants are ghost towns on some holiday nights like Christmas Eve—notoriously the worst night to work—when people prefer to spend time at home with their families. But someone has to take those shifts. The week between Christmas and New Years can be a crapshoot, too. People are often traveling or need to recover from the financial damage done by holiday shopping so they reign in extravagant dining experiences. For those of us who work for tips, not only are we deprived of celebrating the holidays with our loved ones but we may often be poorly compensated for the inconvenience.

If you want to show the waitstaff appreciation when you dine out during the holidays—do something nice. Share a glass of your wine with the waiter. If you have someone who regularly takes care of you, bring them a token of your appreciation. A gift card from somewhere, preferably a liquor store. We also accept cash. Bring a six-pack of good beer or a bottle of whiskey for the kitchen. (Industry folk do this all the time as a way of showing their appreciation of each other.) Bringing the kitchen booze is a total gangster move. Alcohol numbs the pain.

Tip more than you normally would. Your servers will notice and it will help make their holidays that much more tolerable. It might even help restore their faith in mankind—restaurant work can make even the most cheerful people misanthropic. We need to buy gifts for our loved ones too and a bigger tip during the holiday season might result in our being under less financial strain—which is the greatest gift of all. Whatever you choose to do, it need not involve material things—simply acknowledging the sacrifice is enough. Say thank you to everyone on your way out—all the way down to the busboy or the bathroom attendant. And this time say it like you mean it.

Categories
Restaurant Life

Working For Tips and The Whore’s Mentality

Much has been written in recent weeks about the long-term future of tipping in America. The winds of change are swirling and the viability of gratuity as a way of rewarding restaurant staff is under scrutiny. We’ve weighed in on the argument and, though adapting a new business model may be inevitable, we believe that it wont be easy to reform an industry anchored in a culture of exchanging money for pleasure. One reason we support changing the current tip system is that it encourages servers to adopt a “whore’s mentality” toward satisfying the guest. The meal is the sex—our job is to make sure you enjoy it. Like an evening with a hired companion, the ending can be awkward and shameful when it felt like you shared intimacy but everyone knows it was only for the money.

Restaurant service can be described in simple—if not cynical—terms: You pay money to eat food in a comfortable atmosphere attended to by people who pretend to like you no matter how you behave. A restaurant functions like a whorehouse, albeit a far more soft-core version. You come to us to be serviced; we smile and put your needs first, you leave us money on the table when it’s over and we’ll probably never see each other again (or at least we won’t be the one serving you next time). Restaurants are like handsomely lit brothels that serve food. We turn tables, prostitutes turn tricks. Same, same.

waitressimgBut, unlike whoring, people think it’s easy to wait tables. In many ways, the intercourse is just as invasive—at least psychologically—and, as with prostitutes, there is an art to pretending to enjoy it. No amount of training can prepare you to deal with people’s eccentricities. Catering to the needs of insatiable guests requires a herculean amount of flexibility and patience. Why do you think so many waiters get “turned out” and leave their jobs within less than a year? It’s a transient business and the life-span of hospitality professionals is often fleeting. The waiters who stay in the game learn to compartmentalize the abuse and are somehow able to turn what most people perceive as an undesirable vocation—waiting tables is routinely at the top of any survey of worst jobs—into a very lucrative living. When you work in hospitality, you have to train yourself to tune out the noise. Otherwise, you will lose your mind. Some do.

We’re not saying that every good server is faking it. Many restaurant professionals genuinely get a thrill effacing themselves for the edification of others. They gravitate toward hospitality careers because they love making other people happy. In other words, they enjoy the sex. But a vast majority of waiters would rather be doing something else with their life, so, suffice it to say, many are just going through the motions. If service is really good, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. For an experienced server, compliance is the path of least resistance especially when your livelihood depends on it.

cherrypatchranchTalking back to a guest can have serious consequences, even when they deserve it. Waiters, just like prostitutes, don’t have many tools at their disposal to defend themselves against encroachment and some diners know how to take advantage of the imbalance of power. Many treat the server as though they are on display and find joy in poking and prodding them or by making corny jokes and expecting a reaction. It’s very difficult even for the most demure server to discourage unwanted attention from guests. If servers choose not to play along, it can be at the expense of their relationship with the table and the quality of their tip. Like certain johns, many diners feel they need to really know you. That ‘what’s your real name?’ stripper-dynamic can be exhausting for a server that is just trying earn an honest living. Isn’t that why we chose restaurant work over less savory employment opportunities in the first place?