Thursday, February 25, 2010

5 Things to Never Say or Do to Your Server

When you first become a server or a hostess in a restaurant you are taught how to treat the customer. Never be rude, the customer is always right, smile, be friendly, and never cut them off, and so on. But no one really learns how to treat their server. So I’m here to give you some tips for the next time you go out to dinner. Over the next 5 posts I’m going to go over 5 very important things to never do or say to your server. Because when you think about it, the happier your server is with you, the better service they are going to give you.

5 Things to NEVER Do or Say to Your Server:

1. When clearing plates from a table after they have finished their entrees, I always ask the question, "how was everything?" or "how did you like your crab cakes?" obviously if your plate is practically licked clean I can tell that you liked it. So when your server asks how you liked everything do not say, "oh I hated it” do not think that you are being funny and original with your sarcastic remark. I honestly get this comment at least 5 times a night. As soon as I hear it I run back and tell the other servers and we all moan and complain about how much we can’t stand that line. I guess maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t hear it all the time.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Just The Surface

I guess ill start by saying just when you think people can’t get any weirder, they do. Until I started working in the restaurant business I never really noticed people's attitudes or their demeanors as much as I do now. and even though sometimes I literally can not believe how a customer is acting, I get excited because it's one more crazy story that I get to tell my friends and one more table to add to the list of crazy tables that come in. the restaurant I work at is very nice. Great food, great service, and an overall great experience when dining there. I would classify us as an upscale restaurant with great food with out the stuffy cold service and atmosphere that you usually expect from a fancy place. The restaurant is fairly small, it seats about 75 people. We are located in a small summer town in Southern New Jersey. During the summer time it is hard to get a reservation on a Saturday night. And every weekend it is packed in there. All of these aspects just listed have caused a problem in some way or another, but I guess if these problems weren’t caused than you wouldn’t be reading this blog. So this is my first post, my first post of craziness that happens in my place of work. I promise you this is all real...I don’t think someone could actually make this stuff up.

Example of Craziness #1:

It was a busy Saturday night. My section was full of people. Not one table was empty. A man and his wife come in. they requested to sit side by side one another but we didn't have enough tables to accommodate that. So we turned one of our smaller tables long ways so they could sit next to each other on the booth. So they sit down and are really happy with their seating arrangement. I guess the man was so happy and felt so comfortable that he decided to take off his shoes and put his bare feet up on the chair across from him. Now, his feet were facing the entire dining room. It’s not the most spacious of restaurants and people could easily see his feet. They were in the walk way! It was the grossest thing ever. Who does that?!

So this was obviously a problem and we couldn’t let this go on. I told my boss what was going on and he said we had to do something about it. But I really didn’t know how to say "excuse me sir, can you take your feet off the chair?" I've never had to do anything like that before. So after deciding what to do we had another employee go up to his table and tell him that we needed to use the chair that was left at the table. We thought that was a clever way to get rid of his nasty feet without actually asking him to do it. The customer proceeded to say "But I'm using it". So we just explained to him that we needed it for another table and he reluctantly let us have the chair, but continued to leave his shoes off. This is just a preview of the things that go on.

There is so much more I can’t wait to write about and I’m sure there is much more to happen. I work four days a week so there will be plenty of opportunities for wild and crazy things to happen.