"what can i get you folks" news and stories

Restaurant servers read academic studies of customer behavior with the enthusiasm of graduate students (which, of course, they often are.) That's because we're always eager to adopt a new technique that's guaranteed to produce bigger tips, whether it's putting a flower in our hair or using our guests' names.

But a new study out of three universities in the U.S. and Canada is unlikely to provoke much response from even the most scientifically-minded servers. According to the research, restaurant goers who are monitoring their waistlines will order more food from fat waitresses. The study suggests the best way to up a check total – and accompanying tip – is to put on weight.

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.

More than two decades ago, the nation's collective moral conscience was momentarily seized by minister Robert Fulghum's credo All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, a warm and fuzzy list of rules for living that led off with the presumably uncontroversial dictum "share everything."

I didn't need to read Fulghum's official biography to know he'd never worked as a restaurant server (although it was interesting to discover he'd been a ditch digger and a singing cowboy.)

Servers generally hate sharing. Not with each other, of course – it's common to find a restaurant's last slice of pie in the server station with seven forks surrounding it. The trouble comes when customers exhibit the same behavior, insisting on splitting entrees instead of ordering their own.

The problem's largely a financial one: The decision to order one plate instead of two costs me about $5, a pretty significant sum that could have been used to buy my lunch the next day. Many restaurant owners, who are equally interested in getting guests to eat full portions, have instituted plate sharing fees to discourage such menu mischief.

When I was applying for my first waitress job, my total lack of experience qualified me to work at two types of places: Coney Islands, the Greek diner/chili parlor mash-ups that are ubiquitous in southeast Michigan, and family dining chains clustered around highway exits. I opted for the former, mostly so I wouldn't have to sing.

I haven't visited a Lone Star Steakhouse since the mid-1990s, but the restaurant's original shtick included a server-led birthday boot scoot that involved way more coordination and tune-carrying than I could possibly muster. Even if I'd been blessed with Ethel Merman's pipes, I'm not sure I'd have been any more gung-ho about breaking out in birthday song: The whole routine seemed designed to shame the staff and mortify the celebrant.

Although every shred of evidence underscores the contrary, there are still diners who insist the word "tips" is an acronym for "to insure prompt service." Such revisionist etymology got me wondering: Are there gratuity-dodgers who believe "tips" stands for "to introduce people to salvation"?

Because, really, what else would compel a restaurant goer to tuck a gospel tract into a check presenter? Folks who haven't worked in the service industry are always startled to learn how frequently servers' hard work earns them a pamphlet about heaven and hell instead of a cash tip. The practice is so widespread that tract publishers have even devised literature that looks like a dollar bill, allowing diners to fool and cheat their waitresses in one fell swoop.

To be clear, I have no problem with my customers unobtrusively spreading the gospel. I wish more diners would include printed material with their tips; I'd love to amass a collection of poems and news clippings my customers considered noteworthy. But the critical phrase here is "with their tips." What's infuriating about the gospel-tract habit is that the tracts are rarely accompanied by money.