Ask Manuel – Ass Hat Waiters…
Last week a couple of you asked if it was "okay to get well and truly shit faced whilst out for dinner?". When I say a couple of you I really mean The Cousin and a spam-bot called Amy. But it is a pertinent question to which I would sadly have to answer, no. It's more than okay to end up a little drunk in the restaurant but not the paralytic, falling down, "where's my face?", no self awareness kind of drunk that is favoured by teenagers and the angry. No, not on my shift you don't.
I hope that clears things up dear cousin. And to be honest I don't think Esperanto's Kebab House counts as a restaurant.
Now on to a real question from . (Real name I assume heh)
"Ok I have another question for you, at a recent jaunt out to a rather well known Belfast home of the posh dining I ordered something I wasn't that keen on.
Now it arrived and I tried it and pushed it around, ate my salad, gave a bit of it to himself who didn't much like it either, but put it this way there was a fair amount languishing on my plate. Now I didn't send it back because there wasn’t anything wrong with it bar the fact it was a bit fatty and I wasn’t keen on it but the waiter in this particular venue was rather frightening. He sort of appears from no where and looked very annoyed at the whole thing and that I was there taking up his time (here was it you ?)
So when he arrived and looked as if I’d personally gone round to his home with an incontinent pensioner and defecated in every room well I wanted to disappear. Shrill tones of ‘was there anything wrong with it?’ and of course I lept straight away on the charm offensive. ‘oh no it was lovely honestly, just too much mmm too much just beautiful mmm’ now between you and me their portion sizes are tiny so clearly it wasn’t that. Anyway he took it with an eyebrow raise and left.
So my question, how do you deal with this, can you say 'oh I just didn't like it?' I mean I didn’t send it back, I paid for it, I tipped! We were lovely no bother at all and yet he was pretty fierce. Would anything have defrosted him?
Thoughts?"
Thoughts? I had thoughts once, mainly about being thin and having a full head of lovely flickable hair but a predilection for the work of the Cadbury family and premature baldness put and end to those thoughts. But I suppose you were asking my thoughts on your dining predicament. To be honest I took a bit of a redner as I read this as it does sound awfully like me, seriously. I can be a total ass hat from time to time. And by time to time I mean Sunday to Saturday. Heh.
You have two problems here. Number one you didn't like your food and that's not a good thing. The main point of going out for something to eat is to eh um er get something to eat. So a guest should never ever leave hungry, if they do we have failed. Unless of course that guest has the appetite of a large barn animal. When the waiter asked you if everything was okay you should really have ponied up and told him that your dining dreams were not coming true. Now even if it was a case of you having ordered the wrong thing they should have made some effort to get you something else.
But you probably didn't mention your disappointment due to the bake of the ass hat waiter. Oh ass hat waiters, why do you let us all down with your snarling facial expressions and eyebrow raising antics?
The problem is that your waiter has forgotten the three rules of waiting tables. These are the three guiding principles under which all waiters serve,
- A robot Waiter may not injure or be snarly to a human being restaurant guest or, through inaction, allow a human being restaurant guest to come to harm or leave hungry.
- A robot Waiter must obey any orders given to it by human beings restaurant guests, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot Waiter must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.*
*(Eh arse to that, I would happily trample on women and children and men and puppies to get out of the building if it was on fire)
These rules may appear much like the three laws of being a robot, but they're different, very very different. Ahem, cough cough. Listen your waiter has gone off script, he's forgotten his core values and is essentially useless to you. He's a very Broken Arrow.
But all hope is not lost, you can get him back on side you just have to be firm and clear with what you want. Essentially you have to become, The Waiter Whisperer. Which is like becoming the famous 1970/80's dog trainer. You need to channel the spirit of the magnificent Miss Woodhouse. Barbara once said that there are no bad dogs, just inexperienced owners. The same is true in the restaurant world. There are no bad waiters, just inexperienced guests who don't quite know how to get the waiter to move quicker, top up their wine, bring bread or roll over and play dead. Babs insisted that owners got the dog they deserved and it's the same with waiters. You act like a simpering mess and your waiter will take advantage.
Now, Barbara was a fan of the tough love when it came to training dogs but I really don't advocate you take your shoe to the waiter and start beating him round the nose. Nor do I suggest you set the hose on him every time he raises his eyebrow inappropriately as neither action will get you a free dessert. But you must be firm with your miscreant waiter, call him to heel, speak to him in a clear voice and explain exactly what you want him to do. And if there are more shenanigans out of him, rub his nose in it or get the manager. The manager will take him for walkies. Arf.
Ass Hat waiters, pfft. They ruin it for the rest of us. Now Dawnie, do me a favour and email me and let me know where this happened. I need to rule myself out....
Next!
Lol, I shall bring a slipper and a firm tone with me in future
heh….and forty quid….my advice ain’t free….oh damn it…money first then post….damn it
Hah.
Mr. M watched her as a kid and when we were training the terror twins he talked about “walkies.”
My rule with getting a bad dish is to assure the waiter that the problem is with the kitchen, not with her or him.
Medbh, the waiter can be your very best friend or very worst enemy…harsh but true…
Is the forth directive classified and only revealed when you’re sacked?
yes…but if you push me enough i’ll tell you now…
So, a waiter LIKES a little domination from time to time? Like i need more free dessert, though….
daisy, oh no…eh….no….not this waiter…
I have one for you…how do I wangle substitutions without recieving both the wrath of the kitchen and the waiter? I’m not a picky eater but I have a troubling aversion to olives, I just can’t handle them, I don’t know why. I love olive oil, though, so it’s not like I can just pretend to be allergic to it either…
I know how substitution requests are received by chefs, but frankly I’m not expecting to ever be able to negate that, as a chef’s primary energy source is rage (their backup being offcuts of focaccia and huge jugs of water) but every time I say “but can I have it without olives please?” I see my new waiter friend’s eyes fill with frustration, judgement and sometimes disappointment. I get enough abuse at dinner parties thrown by middle class people for my affliction, I really don’t want to have to experience that with every waiter I ever cross paths with too, as I feel we have an unspoken bond, which is frayed to it’s very limits each time I imagine thoughts like “what’s wrong with olives, you picky bastard” bouncing around the lovely shiny heads of the servingfolk I encounter in the wild.
n.b. I have tried to like olives, I really have, every so often I buy a jar and try and sit and eat them until I enjoy them or at least tolerate them, but even one makes me want to upchuck.
it’s on the list…answer next week….maybe heh
I’m punting the restaurant starts with D and ends with eane’s.
Clearly he dropped out of charm school a year early.
I couldn’t possibly comment but there isn’t a waiter out there who hasn’t raised an eyebrow in sarcasm….good times
Lol ah the restaurant mystery, dare i reveal it? will I get a barrage of annoyed waiters at my door armed with pens ready to hurt me?
Dawniepants, do an anagram.
email me first…..
A Jets Hum Toss….as I suspected…arf
An anagram for you of mystery restaurant, the rather fitting
Hate Jotters Muses
Matts Sue Josh? heh
Got ya’. Eaten there twice, didn’t enjoy it. Bit sterile too.
food good….service is less so
Sterile? STERILE? There are labs in major drug companies with more personality. lol
aye, all the atmosphere of space…
true story: the MITM and i were in paris and decided to try a resto he’d read about. my french is passable only when i read (to myself, not outloud) and high school level when i speak slowly. long story short, i ordered the wrong thing, kidneys or some other internal organ and it was vile! i tried to eat it, in fact, it was so horrible i was crying. the poor waiter and came over and was actually wringing his hands out of concern. i tried to explain how it was completely my fault and not the chef, i’d made a mistake trying to order something new, etc…he whisked it away and said i was wonderful for trying and that i should order something that i really liked instead. they were so lovely and wouldn’t let us pay for my mistake, so we tipped like americans do when massively embarrassed and send friends there for ages! xoxoxox
Today I pointed to and asked for guacamole but apparently, according to the serving staff, it was a green salsa.
How was I supposed to know?
They’re the same colour!
Can’t you label your condiments for us?
I hate anagrams, cant think which restaruant fits those letters. Not knowings kill a nosey shite like me
Aha! I thought it was there actually!
i’ve eaten there a few times… staff were always lovely… practically tripping over themselves to top up the booze (and if im not drinking – “can i offer you a soft drink instead madam”)…
Mars, I loved the food there, just sublime…but I felt the service was cold and very functionary….
I have always found the service in Sphinx exemplary.
hmmmmm… i suppose they were quite impersonal now i come to think about it… i’ve had more personal service at burger king…… lovely people…..
four star on LR… it rocks the kasbah… pizza with a smile and a cheeky wink…. always goes down a treat
Only took 7 hours but finally worked out the anagram.
7 hours? for reals? crikey!
Lol cripes 7 hours!
Waiter this Gazpacho soup is cold! Go warm it up!
Fuck me, you’ve been to renowned restaurant Mouth Ass Jets? Tasty!