'What Can I Get You Folks?' - When Should Your Server Say No?

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Aug 20th 2009 @ 4:00PM

Restaurant menus abound with unhealthy choices. Photo: smoorenburg, flickr

Hanna Raskin's first waitressing job was at a small Greek diner in Michigan. In the 15 years since, she's worked at a chop suey joint in Mississippi, an exclusive Arizonan country club, a vegetarian eatery and an Irish pub. She currently picks up odd shifts at a seafood eatery in the North Carolina mountains, where she cracks crab legs for helpless tourists. This is the ninth in a series of posts.

Server discretion, like sobriety checks and seat belts, helps prevent deadly car crashes.

Backed by laws that decree certain ruin for restaurants that serve drinks to overly intoxicated patrons, most servers don't hesitate to cut off customers who've had enough. But they're understandably reluctant to police other equally dangerous behaviors observed at the table, raising the question of whether servers ever have an ethical obligation to intercede.

Restaurants are in the business of providing their guests with food and drink, which makes the prospect of withholding either seem counterintuitive at best. But when the requested item would harm the diner, does the "just doing my job" argument falter?

As an example, I once served a woman who was so obese that we had to scrounge up an armless chair for her. She ordered a salad, which seemed like a worthy stab at healthy eating habits. But she then asked me to add bacon. And blue cheese crumbles. And three sides of ranch dressing. Serving her the fat-laden dish felt about as thoughtful as shooting heroin into the arm of a junkie too weak to do it himself.

I've also watched visibly pregnant restaurant-goers knock back countless cocktails. While some researchers believe a single glass of wine won't damage a fetus, numerous studies suggest binge drinking poses a real threat. Still, until the mother-to-be shows signs of being unable to drive, she's unlikely to encounter any resistance to her orders.

To be sure, issues of morality are largely academic in the food-service industry, where servers probably won't risk their livelihoods to lecture their guests. Americans guard their right-to-privacy as closely as their wallets, and few are likely to leave a tip after being told their server doesn't approve of their choices.

Complicating matters, many of the diciest diner decisions aren't apparent to servers. I'm sure I've served drinks to alcoholics who'd vowed to stay on the wagon, and seafood to allergy sufferers hoping they'd licked their condition.

It's impossible for servers to correctly gauge every situation. But should that stop them from trying to protect their guests when possible? Should concern for customer safety ever trump a commitment to customer service?

Should servers be bound by an ethical code?
Yes.	74 (18.2%)
No.	266 (65.5%)
Maybe. (Tell us more in the comments!)	66 (16.3%)

Filed Under: Chefs & Restaurants, Restaurants
Tags: alcohol, food service, FoodService, hanna raskin, HannaRaskin, pregnancy, waitress, weight, what can i get you folks, WhatCanIGetYouFolks

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Reader comments (Page 2 of 2)

9-23-2009 @3:30PM C.Moore said... The only ethical obligation servers have is to perform the job they have been hired to perform and to respect the free choices of the individuals seated at their tables. It is not the servers' place to take responsibility for the dining choices of their patrons.
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