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| Photo: hunter.gatherer, Flickr |
Granted, restaurants aren't always designed to make it easy for guests to grab their servers' attention: Eateries tend to be noisy, dark places in which it's sometimes impossible to communicate with the person seated directly across from you, let alone the staffer who's scurrying forward and back with tall stacks of plates.
Customers often resort to the most primitive methods of expression: They snap their fingers. They wave their arms like football referees. They pantomime signing a check, often adding such enthusiastic flourishes to their imagined John Hancocks that they nearly strike someone at a neighboring table.
Other than cab drivers and baseball pitchers, I can't think of too many other workers who are expected to respond to hand gestures. While I've often felt like raising my hand for service when the supermarket cashier heading my line is taking too long or wiggling my fingers at hotel clerks who are on the phone when I arrive to check in, those non-verbal signals would culturally be considered out-of-bounds.
As a server who's been the target of countless finger snaps, I suspect some guests take a strange feudal pleasure in engaging in such behavior, even though they could achieve the same results with a knowing glance and a nod.
What do you think? Should gesturing be the lingua franca of the restaurant biz? Should servers take offense when their customers snap their fingers at them?
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