Waiters inspect glasses, tableware before customers arrive.
Quality-checking the details is among waiters' many (underappreciated)
roles.

We set out to examine customer service in the restaurant
business -- from the servers' perspective. It wasn't easy to find people willing
to talk to a reporter on the record, because saying anything negative about
customers could hurt their business. In the end, we were able to find three
people willing to talk -- though two are no longer in the business.
What we learned was eye-opening. We had not known -- or considered -- for
example, that waiters and waitresses are usually watching and evaluating the
behavior of their customers as carefully as their customers are evaluating them.
Keeping that in mind puts a whole new twist on the dining experience.
When you go out to dinner, leave the pretentious act at home. Don't snap your
fingers to get your server's attention, talk down to him or yell. Waiters really
hate that (wouldn't you?). And they have ways of getting back at you. Those
stories about waiters spitting in people's food ... well, they're not just
stories.
In July 2008, Steve Dublanica, a former waiter in suburban New York City, published "Waiter Rant," an insider's
look at the restaurant world that grew out of his blog of the same name (https://www.waiterrant.net/). The book was published
anonymously, though Dublanica has since been 'outed.' But he will not reveal the
names of the restaurants where he worked or any of the people who worked with
him. (Dublanica stopped waiting tables a couple of months before the book was
published.)

When Dublanica started working as a waiter it was supposed to
be temporary -- something to do between careers. He began blogging to deal with
his frustration, both with himself and the job.
In his experience, Dublanica says roughly 80 percent of diners are pleasant
and treat servers respectfully. It's the other 20 percent who are the problem.
"It's not so much what they do, it's their attitude," he says. "They look at
anyone in a service position as a loser. It drives waiters insane."
That 20 percent, he continues, thinks they can say and do anything. "I've had
people yell at me... say I sounded too gay [he's not]. That's when waiters spit
in your food." Though he concedes, "I didn't work with a lot of spitters," nor
was he one himself. Dublanica preferred much more "elegant revenge" -- like
telling customers their credit cards had been declined or seating them near the
restrooms.

Kirsten Amman has been waitressing part-time in Boston restaurants for 10 years, first to help put
herself through college, and later to supplement low-paying jobs in publishing.
Now she divides her time between public relations and waiting tables. "I really
enjoy the experience of taking care of people in my station," she says. But she
doesn't really enjoy customers who "have a sense of entitlement about their
experience."

For Kirsten Amman (here seen feigning impatience while pretending
to take a customer's order), just “rolling with it” is part of the
job.

Like Dublanica, Amman maintains a Weblog. Unlike him, Amman started her blog
(titled https://www.undercoverblonde.com/) to chronicle her
social experiment exploring whether blondes really do have more fun. Working in
a restaurant is the perfect environment to test her theories as Amman changes
her hair color from her natural light brown through various shades of blonde.
During these hair transitions, stories of her restaurant life make their way
into her posts. Amman has never felt the need to be anonymous or obscure the
names of her employers on her site, but, she says, "I try to be tactful; I try
not to just bitch."
Toro, the wildly popular tapas restaurant where Amman currently works in
Boston's hip South End, does not take reservations. It is usually crowded, with
considerable waits for tables. "People tend to get drunk because the waits are
so long," she says. "Guys tend to get really emboldened by alcohol... decide to
hit on the waitress. Being flirtatious is part of the job. But when every time
you go to the table you're met with sexual innuendo, it can get annoying." Amman
says it is also annoying to have to deal with that behavior all night then
receive a mere 13 percent tip (15-20 percent is customary). "But you have to
roll with the punches."
Though one of Amman's former managers calls her "one of the best servers I
have ever seen," she has been accused of being rude, and one customer recently
stopped on his way out of the restaurant to tell her she was the worst waitress
he had ever had (but he left a 20 percent tip). Amman says this caught her off
guard because there had been no obvious signs that the table was unhappy with
her service, though she describes that particular customer as "entitled" and
says they "might have felt weirdly rushed" by the restaurant's style -- small
plates that come out of the kitchen one after another, as quickly as they are
ready.
s a hostess and maître d' at some of New York's hottest restaurants, Abbe Diaz, author of "PX This," was
physically threatened and verbally abused. "Customers threatened to slap me,
called me all sorts of names, denigrated my gender, race [Asian] and age," she
says.

Some like it hot. A waiter grabs plates of food from the
kitchen.

Diaz, a freelance commercial artist and designer/dressmaker who labored in
the restaurant industry for about 20 years, worked for some of the city's top
chefs and most well-known restaurateurs. She frequently welcomed marquee-name
guests. During the years she worked as a hostess and maître d', she kept a diary
in which she vented all her frustration -- and named names.
She published the diary in 2004 as a book titled "PX This." (PX is
restaurant-speak for "personne extraordinaire," indicating a guest who should
receive special treatment.) She kept her book plans a secret from everyone while
they were in the works and left her last restaurant job a few months before it
was published. When the book came out, she posted a blog to help market it (https://www.pxthis.com/); now the blog also serves as a
forum for people who still work in the restaurant business.
Diaz admits that some of her most extreme experiences likely occurred because
the "over-hyped" restaurants where she worked come "with lots of anticipation
built in." Customers at these establishments tended to have very high
expectations and were inclined to "raise their voice and scream" if they did not
get what they wanted.

 
But common sense should dictate that there is no excuse for that kind of
behavior -- high expectations or not. And it doesn't really get anybody
anywhere. To Amman, it's simple: "Treat people waiting on you the way you want
to be treated. Be patient, be kind, be laid back. It is special to go out to
dinner. Act that way."
And if common courtesy isn't a powerful enough motivator, Dublanica reminds
us, "We're watching you like hawks." Nobody wants to worry about what extra
ingredients might be in their soup or whether their credit card is going to be
'rejected' at the end of their meal ...
Andrea Pyenson is a freelance writer and editor based in Boston.