There are two kinds of people who come into a restaurant: those that tip well and everyone else. Everyone else includes doctors, lawyers, day traders, optometrists, pilots, anyone with a house in the Hamptons, the Germans, Irish, English, Scots, Asians, White Trash, Jews, Rachel Ray, people who don’t tip on wine, women who split checks, and Canadians. And by "Canadians", I, of course, refer to black people.
I hope I haven't left anyone out. If I've slighted a demographic by not including them, my apologies.
As for referring to black people as "Canadians", it's a time-honored front of the house bit of lingo, used so as not to appear overtly racist in front of any guests within earshot. No one seems to care if Canadians are insulted.
The back of the house has its lingo, as well.
“FNG”, for example, is the term used for the newest member of the staff. It stands for "fucking new guy", as in, "That FNG fucked up the stock. I don’t know if he can even boil water properly." The newest member of the staff remains the FNG until someone else is hired.
(In many houses there is a dirty little trick that is often played on the FNG. A dried "cake" of espresso grounds is taken and topped with a dollop of whip cream and various other sundries -maybe even a candle, the evil bastards - so as to be made an appetizing morsel, then presented with much fanfare from the staff, welcoming the FNG as a member of The Team. "We've made you this mini-chocolate espresso cake to welcome you aboard!" someone will exclaim, just in case he smells it first, and then the poor sucker takes a bite and realizes too late: he has No Friends in this godforsaken kitchen. Friends are earned.)
But I digress. Two things you need to know about waiters:
1. They know that stereotypes exist for a reason, and
2. They hate you.
The reason stereotypes exist is because they’re true. Otherwise, they’d never exist in the first place. I’m not talking about stereotypes like black people love fried chicken, I’m talking about stereotypes like Asian men don’t drive very well, or, that people who live in trailers are incestuous. Okay, maybe those are all the same thing. But these stereotypes all came from somewhere, didn’t they? (Don’t get me wrong, I love fried chicken as much as any man on the planet, I can’t drive and smoke at the same time anymore, and my sister is kind of hot, so I can relate.)
Waiters hate you because they realize that their entire financial existence is predicated on making you think you are the most important table in the room. This is an art form, the real deal, and it gets virtually no credence in the United States. I’ve always heard it is somewhat more revered in Europe, but it would not surprise me that if there, too, it has faded from glory.
There are so many ways to screw up somebody’s night out in a restaurant. Of these, the waiter has control over, let’s say, 50% of them, yet will usually be blamed by a guest for any and all. The waiter has to run interference between the kitchen and the guest, the bar and the guest, the bussers and the guest, the food runners and the guest, the host stand and the guest, and, most importantly, the house rules and the guest. In a busy restaurant, the waiter does this for anywhere from four to ten tables, at a time, 2-3 times a night. This is a nearly herculean task, and a screw-up is like dominoes stacked on end, with one thing impacting the next right down the line. All it takes is one asshole, anywhere in the room, to bring the whole thing crashing down.
In the mind of a waiter, a guest is guilty until proven not-an-asshole.
Why would any sane person want this job, then? The truth is, they wouldn’t. It takes a particular breed of lunatic to work any position in a restaurant, and a waiter is no exception. Granted, they make the most money and work the shortest hours of anyone in the house - which is why cooks have a deep and abiding hatred of the waitstaff - but the mental strain a waiter incurs on a daily basis is why most waiters have some sort of flirtation with, or outright addiction to, alcohol and chainsmoking.
It starts out innocently enough. Waiting tables is a great way to make good money. In a decent restaurant, a good waiter can work 25-30 hours a week and make the same amount of money or more, in cash every day, as someone with a 9 to 5, and have the benefit of a flexible schedule. It's the perfect job for artists, writers, musicians, students, and other misanthropic dreamers. No one starts out wanting to make it a career. That is a slow and almost imperceptible process that takes years. Then one day they wake up and realize they’re totally addicted to the daily infusion of cash, the light hourly schedule, the pure adrenaline rush of the damn job - and completely ill-suited for any other kind of work.
This is when the true hatred begins.
Most of that hatred is directed outward towards the guests, but what the waiter really hates is himself for being too weak to walk away from a job that most people consider one step removed from servant.
It’s nobody’s fault, really.
plus TWO SIMPLE RULES FOR DINING OUT LIKE AN ADULT
Rule #1: If you want to go out to a nice restaurant, be prepared to spend some money. This includes leaving a tip. If you don’t want to spend any money, go somewhere inexpensive. Or stay home.
Does that seem like rocket science? I once waited on a man who, upon perusing the wine list, proceeded to order the cheapest thing on the list. Ordinarily this would not be such a bad thing but in this case the cheapest thing on the wine list was the corkage fee.
“I’ll have a bottle of the ‘Cor-khage’,” he said, with a French inflection to his pronunciation.
I looked at him for a second, wondering if he was serious. He simply smiled at his dinner date as if he did this sort of thing all the time. Then it hit me: this man is a moron.
I didn’t really know what to do for a moment. So I did what I thought best in this situation and excused myself from the table, ostensibly to check to see if we were out of that particular wine. In reality, I headed into the kitchen to share this nugget with the boys on the line. After I dried the tears from my eyes, I returned to the table and informed the gentleman that we were, indeed, out of stock on that item and perhaps he’d like to try the next most inexpensive bottle.
Which brings me to
Rule #2: If you don’t know what something is, and you’re not prepared to ask questions, and you’re not the adventurous type, then for god’s sake DON’T ORDER THAT ITEM.
This happens constantly. And I’m not referring to a legitimate complaint about too much salt, or somebody dropped a hair in the pasta. I’m talking about sending back the glass of sauvignon blanc because it’s “too dry”, which, if you had bothered to inquire about, you would have been informed that sauvignon blanc is traditionally the driest white wine on the face of the planet.
I once had a woman send back her risotto because there was too much rice in it. I'm not making that up.
