Missed manners

FAMOUS GORE VIDAL observation: If you want to see the face of a murderer, look in any mirror. And if you want to see the cause of so much bad restaurant service? Same procedure. There is no them, Bill Clinton told us, there's only us – and we can be pretty awful. Is it any wonder that people who toil in the restaurant business, from chefs to servers and beyond, are joining their fellow service-industry workers in telling us what they really think of us?

We, of course, are the dining public, the people who fill restaurants, who pay to be brought food and cleaned up after and just generally coddled. Because, in American culture, the customer is always right and the quest for individual satisfaction is a sacred entitlement, it's not really surprising that restaurant patrons are often high-handed, rigid, and insensitive in their dealings with restaurant servers, whom they tend to regard – and treat – as social inferiors.

I do not offer here an apologia for genuinely bad service: for servers who are spontaneously surly or unhelpful or blithely foolish; for front-of-house managers who stoke the embers of customer discontent instead of dousing them and leaving for a calmer time the question of what went wrong and why; for bad food or screwed-up orders. All of these misfortunes do occur as part of our enduring failure to achieve the human construct known as perfection, and if misfortune happens to you, it is right to speak up, especially if actual bad behavior is involved. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, said Edmund Burke, is for good men to do nothing.

But ... diners nowadays seem to be reluctant, or perhaps unable, to recognize that eating out successfully is a cooperative endeavor. Servers are not point-and-click devices; nor is the restaurant transaction, despite its fairly authoritarian language – "service," "servers," "waiters," the outmoded "busboys," "orders" – some echo of medieval feudalism. The reality is that service staff are human beings with feelings, frailties, chaotic love lives, eviction notices, towed cars, and all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that regular people, even restaurant patrons, have to deal with. Servers vote, they drive, they eat in restaurants – where, not surprisingly, they tend to be generous tippers.

It helps, in other words, to try to get along with your servers, to try to help them do their jobs. This is not, or not just, a moral proposition; if you help your server perform better, your own experience will be better. "Enlightened self-interest" is the phrase one often hears to describe the sort of situation in which every party benefits. The relationship between the diner and the server should not be adversarial, because then everyone loses: the server is likely to get a bad tip or no tip, while the diner comes away with a bad memory and, most likely, a resolve not to go back.

What I am saying is: tread lightly. Remember that the little graces are inordinately important; civility and empathy lubricate human transactions and are never more crucial than when those transactions involve people who do not know one another. If you are rude or perfunctory to or absurdly demanding of your service staff, you are accomplishing nothing more than escalating the tension. You are inviting them to retaliate. And they will. Do you really want to know how they made your sauce?

Paul Reidinger

A server's wish list

1. Respect First things first: your server is a human being. Modern science has yet to perfect a human server clone or any type of waiter android. Until it does, you should offer your server the same respect as anyone else who is trying to make a living and pay bills.

2. It's 15 percent!!!! For those of you who somehow don't know, and more important, for those who pretend not to – standard gratuity in the United States starts at 15 percent!! After taxes and tipping out, a server probably makes half of this amount.

3. Attention, please High on the list of server complaints is being ignored by a table. This essentially stops them from doing their job and is simply rude. Most waiters try not to interrupt a story or drop in on the punch line of your joke. However, when things are busy, a server may only have a certain window of time to get to you, and it helps everyone involved if you can be attentive.

4. Communicate Whether you are in a hurry or would like to start slow with a cocktail, it is best to say so immediately. Whatever pace you would like to dine at is usually fine, but it's better when your server does not have to guess.

5. Timing is everything Showing up before a restaurant is open or 20 minutes after the host has finished seating is a hassle for the entire staff. If they make an exception for you, regard it as a favor.

6. Enjoy yourself Many diners seem upset long before anything has even had a chance to go wrong. Why not leave whatever drama or crisis you are experiencing outside and use the restaurant as a sanctuary?

C.R.