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  • From: grady <grady AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: RTP-area local music and culture <ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Note to waitpersons
  • Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:06:43 -0500

Hello, waitpeople. Thank you very much for carrying hot plates & enduring abuse from the kitchen *and* the customers, and answering dumb questions, and pretending screwups were your fault even when they weren't.

There is just one thing I'd like to ask of you:

Stop asking me "do you need any change?" Just stop it. It is demeaning to both of us.

It makes you sound either greedy, or lazy, or both, and it implies that I'm going to undertip you unless you put me on the spot with your question. (by the way, I'm not; 20% has been my minimum for many years now, and you've really got to work your ass off to be a jerk for me to even drop you to 15%)

I understand that waitpeople are too often overworked & burdened with too many tables & too much to remember. However, that's the whole of the job. That's what being a waitperson is all about. You wouldn't walk up to the table & say "do you need water? because I'm really busy right now."

Certainly if you're one of those poor bastards stuck waiting tables at a joint like Elmo's, where the average check is like $15 and you're covering like 20 tables, then it's understandable that you wouldn't want to waste a single trip, and it might be forgivable for you to ask about the change.

But three times in the past 6 weeks, at three different "nice" restaurants (as in 3.5-4 stars in all the local dining guides), with two-person totals ranging between $55 and $115, I've been asked "Do you need change?" It totally blows the whole illusion of effortless-dining-experience that you & your fellow restaurant employees have spent the entire evening trying to maintain.

When you tie on the apron & pick up that pad & pencil, you're pledging yourself to help other people. You're committing to help the customers locate & order & receive the food that's going to make them the happiest. You're probably also committing to help the chef or owner get rid of that terrible surplus of fennel that's clogging up the fridge, but we don't need to talk about that, because it's your job to pretend you're not doing that.

One thing you're *not* doing is pledging to help yourself. For the duration of your shift, helping yourself should be way at the bottom of the list.

And yet the question "do you need any change?" can only be construed as you attempting to help yourself. It is in no way helpful to me. If I need change, then I need change. If I don't need change, then I'm free to get up & leave the restaurant as soon as I've put the money on the tray, and it doesn't really matter to me what you do with any change that might be left. Asking me whether I need change does not help you help me in any way.

Last night a waiter asked me that & I said "please don't ask me that, it's terribly rude" and he stammered a bit & said something about it being really busy, as if somehow he were too busy to perform this last relatively minor chore & he'd prefer that we just get the fuck up out of our seats & get out the door and quit hassling him & his colleagues with our continued presence.

I don't know where this bizarre "need change?" meme came from; I don't really remember hearing it until 3-4 years ago. Perhaps it has gotten worse in this age of utter credit-card dominance; I nearly always pay with cash & perhaps it's such a novelty that even higher-end waitstaff haven't been trained on how to behave.

So here's the lowdown: take the money to the register. Cash out. Bring back change that contains at least 3 ones; this means that if the change ends in a 5, 6, or 7, you bring 5, 6, or 7 ones, not a five and a couple of ones. Put the change on the table. Take this opportunity to thank the customers once more for coming (studies have shown, by the way that a single final thank you has a higher impact on tip, than general good service throughout the meal).

Thank you,

Ross




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