Thursday, July 19, 2007
Restaurants / Food & Life 'You got served': Petty peeves
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 9:24 PM
I have never received so much e-mail in response to anything I have written as I have over the past couple of weeks. Both the "Turn the tables" story on customer wrongdoing and "You got served," the story about restaurant wrongdoing, generated a ton of reader feedback, both as comments on the website and as e-mails I received. Some highlights:
Harry wrote to me about his pet peeve concerning verb tenses:
I wanted to add one restaurant fault of a humorous nature — the service staff's massacre of verb tenses. Much like the old joke about the tourist in Boston who hopped in a cab and said "take me somewhere to get scrod", at which point the cabbie turned around and responded "mister, over the last twenty years I have been given that same request hundreds of different ways, but never in the future pluperfect" it seems that the special of the evening in most restaurants "will be" some gastronomic delight, at which point I am tempted to ask if it "will be in time for me to order it tonight".
He brings up an issue I purposely left out, because it varies from person to person — the tiny habits of waiters that drive diners crazy. My personal list is woefully long:
I hate “my name is X and I'll be taking care of you this evening.†Why? I think it's a tacky habit from chain restaurants, which has somehow seeped into fine dining. I hate aggressively funny servers. I hate when they ask how everything tastes – too personal, and forces me to answer, often in mid-conversation or while my mouth is full. I hate being interrupted every five minutes. The correct protocol should be to ask once if everything is to the diner’s satisfaction (something which can be answered with a nod) and then make sure to make eye contact often enough to be of service but stay out of the way.
Michele touches on some of these issues in her letter:
What would be nice for shy diners like me would be a follow-up to this article showing us how to deal with bad service when it's given. How do you deal with rude servers and not ruin your own dinner? The thought of addressing rudeness fills me with anxiety and effectively ruins my meal. Usually I don't return, but, that's a shame when the food is good and it's merely the service that is lacking. What do you say when they interrupt you every two minutes asking if you're ready for the dessert menu when you clearly have a full plate of food? Or, the attempt at humor that is really obnoxious and inappropriate? I'd love to know how you deal with these issues ...
Unfortunately I've been eating professionally for so long that I forget what I used to do in situations like this. These days, I just suck it up. But a regular diner should have some recourse. Anyone have any advice for Michele?
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