5 Things You Wish Your Customers Did Better

If I could print this out and insert it into every menu in every restaurant in this country, I would so totally do that. But I can’t, so it’s up to us to share this until the whole world sees it.

Understand a seating rotation and chart. We don’t want them to sit anywhere they damn well please. If half of the restaurant is empty, it’s probably because there is no server to work in that section. It’s not an open invitation for a customer to seat themselves and pretend they are in their own private dining room. And when they choose their own table, it could mean that the server in that section was was just given a 10-top and will not have time to get to them any time soon. The next thing you know this customer is complaining about how long they have been sitting there without any attention. If they took the table that was suggested, the server would have been ready to serve immediately.

Order their food. When your customer doesn’t know what they want to eat, it’s fine. But when they insist that you stand there, order pad in hand, as they read aloud every menu item, we don’t have time for that. If they aren’t ready, we need to be released from their grip so we can use our time more wisely. Besides, we know they’re just gonna order the damn hamburger anyway.

Use their manners. Correct way to ask for a beverage: “May I please get a Diet Coke with no ice?” Wrong way to order a beverage: “Bring me a Diet Coke and don’t put so much ice in it this time.”

Stack their plates. Thanks for trying, but if they are going to put plates of food on top of other plates of food making it necessary to now scrape the bottom and the top of the plate, I’d just assume they leave the plates where they are and let me do it. Also, when done with the silverware, it’d be great if they could put it anywhere other than directly into the leftover sauce on the plate. I don’t want to drag my fingers through cold marinara to retrieve a fork.

Tip. As always, the tip should be based on service. It should not be based on the temperature of the dining room, the noise levels of the booth next to them, the supposed dryness of the roasted chicken, how much money the customers has in the bank or how long it took to get a table. If we did our job in an efficient manner and did everything we could to make the dining experience as smooth and as enjoyable as possible, we would like to be tipped 20% of the bill, including the liquor and to-go items, please. Those count as sales and that is what the government bases our taxes on, so yeah. Tip better.

Discussion

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