It started off with a bang. At 4pm when the doors opened, we had a huge crowd waiting. Not typical for a Thursday. So us servers are asked to help seat people, and I make sure I seat my guests in my section. If I'm going to go through the trouble of seating them in an empty restaurant, they might as well go in my section, right? God I wish I hadn't.
The people I sat were my first table. I greeted them and got drinks. They seemed friendly and I thought they'd be pleasant to deal with. As soon as their drinks came out I got seated with 4 other tables all at the same time. Now that may not seem like much to some servers, but in our restaurant we have 3 table sections. Sucks, but our restaurant is huge on personalized guest interaction, so only 3 tables it is....normally. Now all of a sudden I have 5.
So, I made sure table 1 had some bread and full drinks, excused myself, and started going down the line with the next 4 tables getting drinks first. The whole time, I made sure to keep each table up to date on what was going on so they didn't feel neglected while I tried to juggle all of them at once. All the tables were next to each other, so they saw what was going on an were all understanding- except Table 1.
After getting drinks for all 5 tables, I swing over to table 1 to let them know I have to grab something for table 5 and then I'll be right back to take their dinner order. The mom pipes up:
"No. That's not right. You need to take our order NOW. We have been waiting for too long, and you're doing it all wrong. All of us *points at her family* are servers and we know how you're supposed to do it. you get us our drinks, then take our order immediately and THEN you move on to other tables. We are NOT waiting anymore."
Oh brother. Know-it-alls trying to tell me how to do my job. Now if they were such knowledgeable servers, they'd have enough sense to know every restaurant is different. Maybe in their restaurant it's customary to serve one table completely before moving on to the next when you're sat 5 times at once, but not at my restaurant lady. I am trained to get drinks FIRST for all tables, and then come back to the 1st table to take food orders. I was doing my job correctly. But of course they had been glaring at my back the entire time, so I apologized and took their order right then. As I was typing the order into the POS, I informed my manager of the situation, saying they might complain so to be prepared. She rolled her eyes at the situation, obviously agreeing with my reasoning, and said don't worry about it. I did my job correctly. Thank you!
I was obnoxiously sweet to them as I mentally cursed at them the rest of their meal. I hope I made them feel like ingrates. And then they left me $4 on a $30 check and all I could do was laugh. Was that supposed to tell me something other than you're the most ignorant fellow servers in the world? Geez.
Thankfully the rest of the tables were generous and understanding, and the night rocked.
I hate it when people pull that "we're servers" bullshit. If they were really servers, they wouldn't have that attitude! I would have approached it exactly the same way--people are more forgiving of waiting to place an order than waiting for drinks, generally.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I say! I tried to tell her I could understand she was hungry, but I am trained to do it my way. They would have none of it! At least my manager backed me up.
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