Another of my “Things to do and not to do” series tonight, mainly because I’m tired and as such my brain just isn’t working correctly right now.  Here are some of the things you can do to make your servers happy when you go out to eat.

If you say you’re ready to order, be ready to order!  We want to get your food in as quick as possible so we can get to our other tables.  Getting behind doesn’t make us happy, it puts us in the weeds.

Keep your kids under control.  When kids are polite and well mannered, we are glad to serve your family.

Be polite when you’re asking questions.  Nothing pisses us off more than a guest that comes at us asking things like “Why da fuck my food ain’ heah yet?” and “You do know what you is doin right?” If you want us to check on your food, then ask us nicely.  “I’m sorry, but would you mind checking to see how much longer our meal is going to be?”  I don’t mind helping out at all when I’m asked nicely.

Be polite when you’re ordering your drink.  “Can I get a top shelf margarita, please?” goes a lot further than, “Brang me dat Patron’ mahgarita main.”

If your food is running a long time, don’t get pissed off.  More often than not, it’s the kitchen running long, not your server.  Huffing and puffing and making demands of bread and free salads when the restaurant is clearly busy as Hell is just going to piss us off.  We’ll gladly bring you a salad on the house most of the time, as long as you’re nice about asking us.  Most of us will even offer it to you.

Don’t be snotty to us.  We’re there to make sure you have an enjoyable experience while dining out, and when you’re happy, we’re happy.  Telling us how much better you could do our jobs pisses us off.

We don’t make the prices.  If you don’t like them, please don’t take it out on us.  I don’t much enjoy high prices myself, but I don’t bitch about them, and you shouldn’t either.   Taking it out on us just pisses us off, and makes us less inclined to be nice to you or your crotch spawn.

If we’re out of something and tell you about it, but someone near you gets what you wanted, that just means we only had enough of that product to fill the orders that were already in the kitchen when you came in.  That doesn’t mean we just don’t want to serve you what you want.  We are told that we’ve run out of something by our managers, please yell at them and not us.

Compliments are nice, and we all like them.  Compliments, however, do not pay our bills.  Therefore, if you plan on giving us compliments, please do so along with a tip.  If we’ve deserved your praise then we obviously did something right and deserve a bit of cash as well.

When it comes time for the tip, please actually look at your bill and tip a percentage, or at least more than 10%.  For those of you older diners who think that tipping 2 bucks on every single check is still the standard, please remember that it’s no longer 1970.  The cost of living has gone up and as such, so has the standard of tipping.  I’m all about serving older people, I enjoy hearing stories, I enjoy flattering the older ladies and older diners are a lot of times more inclined to talk to us.  The problem remains that older people (older men mainly) tend to tip a flat rate of 2-5 bucks a check, regardless of if the check is 20 bucks or a hundred.

If you’re going to talk to our manager on the way out and are complaining, please at least give us a heads up so we can figure out what went wrong.  If it’s something you didn’t like about our service, at least we know.  If you just didn’t like the food or prices or something that we have no control over, please don’t go bitching about how horrible your service was and make demands for our corporate/owner’s phone number.  We want to see you flayed when you do that.

Ok, so this post wasn’t exactly the normal “Ribeye quality” you’ve all come to love/hate, but I’m tired tonight, and I have a long day tomorrow.  I just wanted to at least give you something.  More to come.

Ribeye