#19, 20, and a couple of others. Servers just don’t have the discretion to offer these things. There are usually house rules. Bread gets served with X, not Y. And more and more, I see menus marked “no substitutions”. It’s not a server’s fault that the management won’t swap out broccoli for asparagus.
#23… Really? Why not matte it, frame it, and present the label with a pretty bow as well? I mean, since clearly time is no constraint.
#10 and #43… I love it when servers gently chime in with suggestions. Most restaurants have a few things they do really well. I want to hear about them from the folks who taste everything. Just leave me an “out” so that I don’t feel bad when I say no to the rum raisin bread pudding that sounds like death to me no matter how much you loved it.
I tend bar at a nicer bistro-restaurant in Napa. While on the whole, I think most of the items listed are reasonable and ‘common sense’, dealing with the public at large is incredibly challenging and sometimes things happen. I know from having many friends in the restaurant business, good staff is incredibly hard to find here in the Valley. If your last name isn’t Keller, you probably spend more time than most looking for qualified, dependable help. I know when I jumped behind the bar for the restaurant for the first time – it was the first time for me ever. I probably violated every rule in the book (except the wine ones – pretty much the reason I was brought on in the first place) – but I tried, I worked hard and when it is all said and done, think I do a decent job back there. Unless I’m at a white table cloth restaurant, I don’t expect white table cloth service – all I ask for is someone that is reasonably competent and brings my check on time.
Lists like the one above(which comes off as INCREDIBLY snotty and whiney to me before we get to unrealistic) ignore those realities and only serve to fluff up an already large sense of entitlement many people have rather than explaining the restaurant atmosphere so people will understand why they may need to wait that extra minute to see their waiter.
Well, as long as we’re belaboring things…
Seriously, it’s interesting to me how differently we can interpret these things. I’ve worked in restaurants and I’ve tended bar, and I don’t think I’m at all unsympathetic to the challenges of the business. It’s hard work - just like many other jobs. But when I read that list, as I originally stated, I saw a list of objectives, the spirit of which, if followed, could hardly help but enhance a diner’s experience. Of course not every point can be followed every time, and some of them wouldn’t even make sense in certain circumstances… but taken in their entirety I think they speak to the recognition that dining is more than food on a plate, and they set a standard that respects the entire dining experience.
Of course there are occasional asshole customers who make absurd, unrealistic demands. Those people need to be slapped upside the head and reminded that their servers are people too, and who presumably are doing the best they can. Likewise, however, servers and other restaurant staff can occasionally benefit from a reminder that they have the ability to enhance or detract from a customer’s experience.
Agreed! I just found the tone and subject of the article was not saying what you are here at all which is why it bothered me. The tone of each point especially came off as written by someone who is forgetting that the point of going out is to have fun and not nitpick those that cannot meet their levels of perfection on a minute to minute basis.
Cris, I’ll go back to my point about professionals. Like in any business, there are going to be people who don’t have a clue what they are doing, so it’s important to take this list with a context - as people have mentioned it’s not about Applebees. However when paying upward of $50 for a meal (which isn’t really unlikely as soon as you get out of the chain restaurants), I expect a bit more. If restaurant owners don’t want to pay their staff then yes they cannot complain that they don’t get the best waitstaff, that’s pretty obvious. On the other hand I routinely go to places where it’s not a problem for a waiter to handle 5 tables, usually many more than that, and not break a sweat. It’s called knowing what you’re doing.
So it all comes down on priorities, as usual
The rule nobody mentioned was #7. I can’t understand that one. What do you mean, “no flirting with the customer”?
I assume everyone is aware of this, but just to be sure, the guy writing this list is opening a restaurant. This is exactly what he’s going to do when he hires (and fires) people to work in it. Definitely some of the comments on the NYT website seemed to be missing this point, this is no academic exercise.
Personally, I think this is exactly what anyone who owns a fine-dining restaurant should be doing. Perfection should always be the goal, with the understanding that it may be unattainable (in which case you better have procedures in place for when things go wrong). The point is not to go out and have fun, it is to provide the highest level of service you can so that people will come back again and again. Have fun on your own time. Just one mistake can lose you a guest (there’s a reason the industry uses that term) for a lifetime. And you know what? That means that you’re going to have to deal with all of the shit people throw at you with a smile because that is your job. It sucks and it isn’t fun, but that’s the job. You can be completely right about a situation with a guest and still be in the wrong, because you just lost repeat business. This list is a great tool of weeding out people beforehand who aren’t going to be able to hack it, if the mere thought of all of these points makes you want to never work at this place, the odds are that you would not have been a good fit anyway.
How many posts on these sort of boards that deal with the restaurant industry are from someone complaining about the horrible service they received? That sort of atmosphere doesn’t just come from out of nowhere. Places with good service have it because it is emphasized, to the point of near absurdity. Places with bad service have it because it is tolerated, either through lack of support or attitude or poor employees or lack of proper foundation like a list of rules.
Thanks for pointing out the author’s intent. I think he is in for a rude awakening but its nice to see him try.
When I mentioned ‘going out and having a good time’ I was referring to patrons and not restaurant staff though most any work atmosphere functions better when people are enjoying themselves.
As for your last paragraph I think that is a give and take. Many people complain because they expect the world. We have all been to dinner with these people. While you might be enjoying conversation and your night out they are pointing out nit picks they can find with the service. Some people have larger room for imperfections than others. Some like to complain more than others as well.
17 drives my wife crazy, especially at nicer restaurants. I tend to agree, although I’m not as vehement.
Other things that I see often and bother me to some degree:
(1) When waiters ask how your food is when you’ve only taken one bite, or sometimes haven’t even started.
(2) When waiters offer freshly cracked pepper before you’ve tried your food. How am I supposed to know if my food needs pepper before I’ve tasted my dish.
(3) Waiters/somms think younger diners don’t know a thing about food and especially wine.
(4) Waiters who say something like “good job” when you’ve eaten everything. My wife hates it.
(5) Anything done to rush the diner (and of course there is a corollary that diners should not linger for an unreasonably long time)
(6) Waiters who have very little knowledge of the menu (only annoying at higher-end places)
(7) Over-pouring wine to pressure diners to buy more bottles. And over-pouring whites that aren’t adequately chilled.
All of this said, I really hope the next thing the Times publishes is a list of the 100 things diners should do when in restaurants. The way some people treat waiters and other staff is unconscionable.
And I guess that’s the issue I have with the list in the form that it’s presented. It’s put forth as 100 equally important rules rather than a list of objectives that are meant to add up to a high quality experience.
Phil - If a guest really decides to never come back over, say, one dirty knife… good riddance. At some point diners need to step back and get over themselves. Virtually none of the first 50 of these would cause me to be so offended that I’d never return. I don’t like several (see above for my peeves) but you know, if I love the food and atmosphere at a place and get good service in most ways I’ll forgive the occasional slip. That doesn’t mean I’ll put up with poor service and there are things that will cause me to never come back, but anyone who’s ‘perfection or I don’t come back!’ needs some perspective on life.
Apologies for misreading your have fun comment. As to this one, that’s the service industry in a nutshell. A lot of people really suck, they have unreasonable expectations, they are difficult and fussy, they are completely inconsiderate of both their fellow diners and their waitstaff. But if you can provide service that pleases most of those people, imagine how nice it is going to seem to everyone else.
Quick story from a frequent writer of ours who was an original founder of Roy’s, Randy Caparoso. They had a guy at their original restaurant who was elderly and ate out every night of the week (at different places). He was the nightmare guest, everything they did was wrong. But they took that as a challenge, they decided that if they could make him happy, down to exactly where he sits and how’s he’s served and how many ice cubes he had and take the abuse he gave them, they could handle anything. After a few years this nightmare customer ate at their restaurant every night of the week. And I imagine that the level of service went up for everyone else as well.
Back to the NYT guy, this is his list. Whether it works or not we’ll see, and some of the things on it are debatable (we already have people in here disagreeing about the clearing empty plates; I personally hate #31, being interrogated about why you did or didn’t eat your food is not pleasant), but the reason I think he’ll probably make it work is that he knows what he wants and has put real thought into it. Look at the intro, he specifically named several categories of people he knows are going to have a problem with the way he wants to run things and may not be good hires for him, including veteran servers, which for most people opening a restaurant would be a no-brainer hire. I’m sure he’ll still look for veterans, but they’ll have to be willing to do things his way.
I do agree that he’ll probably need to adjust things once he actually gets going, no one can ever predict the reality of an operation until it starts running. But as I see there are only a few things on here that could collapse in a busy environment (steaming labels, accidentally touching a customer or chair, substitutions (that one looks too vague to me, any vegetable?), never interrupting a conversation), most of the rest are just ground rules for guest interaction and food and drink service.
To Rick’s point, I’m of the school that you never say good riddance to a guest unless they have earned it with multiple infractions over time. Whatever industry you are in, never tell your customers to let the door hit them on the way out unless you are really losing money on trying to make them happy. Maybe your customers need perspective. It isn’t your job to give it to them (not to mention the fact that you aren’t going to be able to, we’re talking about adults that you have no real relationship with) and it’s counterproductive to your business to try to do (up to a point). Not to mention that if your establishment has a culture of antagonism with your customers (which breeds out of taking sides against them), and that perfection is unattainable, so we’ll just make do with what we can, your overall service is going to slip. It’s inevitable. Set high goals, understand that sometimes shit happens and you won’t be able to reach them, learn from what went wrong and do better next time.
I don’t really see this as a positive for a restaurant except in a strict making another buck sense. Waiting on someone hand and foot is not their job assuming they were an already busy and profitable place. This is training your customers that whatever they ask is fine and that you have no standards to present your patrons as a whole. This also takes extra time away from your servers to do other things for one special person taking away time from your other patrons. At some point people have to go where they are happy and like what you are presenting. Again, it is a give and take.
One thing is for certain to me though, any manager or restaurant owner that allows or even worse, forces their employees to take abuse for the sake of dollars in the door is not the sort of person I would like to see succeed.
What is it about forums that makes people put words in my mouth? Did i SAY anything about a culture of antagonism? My POINT was that someone who’s going to leave your establishment over a dirty knife is probably more work to retain than they’re worth.
Your example of the nightmare guest is a perfect example of confusing the tree for the forest. How many other guests got less attention than they’d otherwise get because one guy was being so demanding? Yes, one guest was happy - and the rest? Did the restaurant make more money over the time period from when he showed up until now by catering to his demands? Or less, because other people were being slighted as servers catered to the whiny, er, demanding guest? Did other guests get less attention, feel a bit slighted and eat there less? Did some of them simply stop coming there because servers were spending so much effort on the one guest? Your friend counts the nightmare guest as a win but doesn’t account for the potential downside of catering to him so much.
Certainly you can use a demanding person as a spur to improve, but if you’re already delivering a high level of service you may well be better off letting the one nightmare, unreasonable guest go. And if you’re NOT delivering a high level of service you shouldn’t need a guest to point it out - if your managers don’t notice substandard service and correct it they’re not doing their jobs. The issue isn’t being antagonistic or fawning… it’s delivering great service to everyone, not perfect service to a single whiny, unreasonable guest.
I always find the anti-buck making stances amusing, if you don’t make a buck, you don’t have any employees to terrorize, and then what’s the point?
The context of this story was that really good service only comes from a place that has a culture where service is imbedded in it. These are the sorts of places were people don’t need to be told to to help out the overwhelmed bus boy or expedite the waiting food when it isn’t their job, they just do it. The end quote of the story is “I think [making the difficult guest their most loyal guest] was really the seed for us in terms of our service, our culture…”
Let’s say you have a real rainmaker of a guest who is craving some Époisse, which you don’t have but you know the place down the street (which you have a previous relationship with) does. Would you make a quick dash down there and get a to-go order to bring back? There’s a reason that story is so specific, it’s a true one.
Now you might say that any places that forces their employees to act this way is a place you don’t like. I say you’ve got it all wrong. The word “force” does not describe that story nor does it describe the Roy’s story. These people acted this way not because of evil money grubbing bosses who held their jobs over their heads, but because they wanted to, because to them service is an attitude, to quote another successful restaurateur, “A way of life…a calling”, “a state of mind”. Or if you prefer the quote of a lowly employee, “Partly your mistress, partly your life partner, and partly your business partner, if you’re going to be a professional. You have to be ‘in love’ and you have to be ‘in lust’ with service.”
That’s how you get hotel GM’s busing tables, your every need seemingly anticipated before you even ask, any problems that inevitably occur handled promptly and correctly (and without prompting), and an overall enjoyable experience again and again. That’s how you get a staff that functions together as one unit and views any failure of their own as a failure to the team. And with due respect to those who disagree, I think that’s how you get people to come back. There’s a lot of good food out there, but people go out to eat for more than just the food, they go out for an experience. And it isn’t the restaurant’s place to judge what makes or breaks their experience, it’s to do the best they can (within reason) to make it happen. Dirty knife? Should be considered unacceptable. Will it happen? Almost assuredly. If it’s not considered absolutely unacceptable will it happen more often? I would say yes. If it’s not considered absolutely unacceptable (again, by the employees themselves, not their evil overlords) will it be handled poorly when it does happen? I would say the odds are greater. Could you still lose one of these really difficult people despite doing everything right in your opinion? Of course, but when you start deciding that you’re OK with losing people when you know you haven’t done everything right, that’s when I see trouble.
I also want to be clear that in order to create this atmosphere I also believe you need to pay not just adequately but well, be supportive and positive in the face of the inevitable errors and give your staff to tools to allow them to succeed, which means correct staffing levels, training (possibly including wine) and giving them an investment in the place by soliciting and using their suggestions.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like something you would want to. I can tell you that it isn’t something I would want to do, which is why I wouldn’t be a good server, or manager, or hands-on owner. I don’t enjoy this sort of stuff and see it as a burden, not a challenge. But, bringing this back to the original topic, that’s exactly why the NYT guy (or any restaurant) should want to stay away from me.
This is what you said that I took as antagonistic, you are saying that as a person who owns a restaurant there is a point where the diners, you customers, need to get over themselves. If a dirty knife is a “so sorry, but these things happen” moment for your staff, how is the angry guest going to be treated? Are they going to want to come back? And as I wrote in my previous post, how many more dirty knives are you going to get? My point is that I believe this creates an atmosphere where the guests are the enemy: they make unreasonable demands, they treat you poorly, they are capricious, and they are unfair. Even if this only applies to “some” of the guests, I believe this attitude seeps into how all the guests are treated. You obviously disagree.
I actually think you are the one missing the forest for the trees. Making that one guest happy was not the point of the Roy’s story (which was, by the way, about the original restaurant that spawned the entire chain, so yes, I’d say they created a successful place). The culture and attitude that the act of making that guest happy created was. Everyone seems to think that delivering great (great, not just good or satisfactory) service is easy and that just trying will get it done. Sure you’ll have the occasional nightmare guests, but once they flush through your system all will be well. I think you cannot be more wrong, and the dissatisfaction you see about service all over the country is the proof.
To be clear, you do have to “fire” some customers, no matter what business you are in, if they are completely impossible to satisfy, if you lose money on them, or if they are taking advantage of you. But that has to be an act of last resort, not your first instinct in moments of difficulty.
Phil,
word of advice: don’t waste your time on this – your clear, and well-reasoned, logic is falling on deaf ears. … on another note, i agree with your entire post.
I’m not sure, but I’m going to have to strongly disagree with your argument that it’s acceptable for the wait staff to chop up disagreeable customers with a fire axe. Oh, you didn’t make that argument? OK, but that’s the logical extension of the argument I seem to recall you made somewhere else…
I agree with many of the items in the list, but I don’t think anyone prepares a 100-item list of do’s and don’t and then labels it a “modest list.” I also think that the prophylactic attack on those who might disagree (“veteran waiters, moonlighting actresses, libertarians and baristas”) really shows the author’s hand. This isn’t a modest or reasonable list, and I haven’t even seen the other 50 items.
At the expense of stating the obvious, some of the issues mentioned are MUCH more important than the others. But let’s just start with #1–make sure everyone gets a warm greeting when they walk in. Sure, that’s desirable, but in many restaurants you have ONE PERSON at the front. Many times that person has to answer the phone, greet guests, check reservations, and then take them to their table. If you want to hire an extra person at the front just to make sure that everyone gets a warm hello the second they walk in, then make sure you budget for that…
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