"waitressing" news and stories

A blogger over at the Huffington Post recently found a novel way to discourage restaurant goers from making tableside "lemonade": She argues the penny-pinching practice is as filthy as it is uncouth.

It's a point that bears repeating, if only because heaping scorn on the sugar-and-lemon set has done little to dissuade them. It's an argument that also has the distinct advantage of being true.

I'm not sure exactly when lemon wedges became as obligatory as plates and napkins, but I've never worked in a restaurant that didn't garnish their glasses with them. Server sidework invariably involves slicing a few dozen lemons into half-pinwheels, a process that's almost always messy.

I recently took an order for a bowl of she-crab soup. What made the request notable was our restaurant hasn't sold she-crab soup for more than three years.

Like many customers in the Internet era, my guest had over-researched her visit. She'd pulled up a website to find an outdated menu and plotted her meal according to its points. Not surprisingly, she was devastated to discover her dream dinner was unattainable. In a town crowded with savvy tourists who've been planning their getaways for months, it's a scenario that occurs almost nightly.

Waitressing is hard work, and servers are always grateful when their guests acknowledge as much. What's less appreciated is when customers try to make our jobs easier by stacking their own plates.

"Oh, let me help you," well-meaning customers say as they balance an emptied soup bowl atop an unscraped salad plate – using the very same phrase children typically employ in the kitchen before they dump a sack of flour on the floor. For servers who innately understand the art and physics of plate stacking, it's terribly frustrating to be handed a wobbly tower of dishes and silver that has to either be set down and reassembled or carried gingerly to the dish room before the server can return to the table to do in two trips what might have been accomplished in one. Servers will always thanks you profusely for your help – and wish to themselves that you'd just let them do their job.

Remember the Omnibot? When Radio Shack first introduced the short-lived 1980s sensation, it promised buyers could "astound and impress their party guests" by relying on the personal robot to deliver their drinks.

Now Applebee's is borrowing the Omnibot's shtick, employing a newfangled electronic system that's designed to downplay the human element of service. In restaurants across central Florida, servers are now outfitted with watches that vibrate whenever their guests press tabletop buttons.

Applebee's diner Virginia Wesson this week told the Orlando Sentinel she loves her button, since she often has trouble getting her server's attention.

"This way, they have no choice," Wesson said. "They make sure you can't be ignored."

Most every plate I clear looks pretty much the same: There's a typically a stain of sauce where the protein sat, a few unwanted onions shoved to the side and a spoonful or two of uneaten vegetables.

But over the course of an average evening, I'll usually encounter at least a half-dozen diners who have a very different sense of what it means to be done. These eaters -- and I'm using the term loosely here -- push back from the table after taking a few dainty bites. While every restaurant-goer is entitled to enjoy a meal in his or her own way, the under-attacked plate puts the server in a rather awkward spot.

Hard as it is for vocal diners to imagine, there are plenty of customers who are shy about saying their steak's overcooked or potato was served cold. Their untouched plates are very tactful cries for help, which is why I never whisk a still-full plate away without asking whether everything was OK.

The problem is, sometimes everything is OK, except that the diner has an eating disorder. Or was just dumped by the guy sitting across from her. Or sensed a case of swine flu coming on. Not only are guests understandably reluctant to talk about such things, they often seem to resent my posing the question.