This is why your server hates you

Friday night my last table just before cuts went up was a four top – an old white dude, his wife, their daughter, and the daughter’s teenage son who wanted nothing but water and biscuits (hooray, please let me refill this glass for you seven times while I run back and forth fetching you free bread and jellies. No, really. Nothing would make me happier). After being informed that junior would not be paying for a meal, I proceeded to take orders for the rest of the table, starting with junior’s mama.

She ordered breakfast, and when I asked her how she would like her eggs cooked, she thought about it for a minute and finally settled on scrambled. I smiled and turned my attention to her mother in the next seat, but before giving me her order, the older woman told her daughter, in a very snotty tone, “Do you want cheese on them? Because if you don’t want cheese on them, you have to tell them, or they’ll just put cheese on your eggs!”

Her daughter looked up at me, non verbally checking the accuracy of her mother’s outburst. I simply shook my head and said, “No.”

Right then and there my tip went down by ten percent.

“Well, they always put cheese on your father’s eggs and he doesn’t want it,” the older woman said to her daughter, as if exposing a global conspiracy between restaurants and the dairy industry.

“We will definitely not put cheese in the eggs,” I said, then, “What can I get for you today?”

She ordered, without looking up from her menu, obviously steaming about oeufs avec cheese, and when she was finished, she pushed her menu toward me, letting it hover in the air in front of her husband’s face. I very slowly finished writing down her order before taking it from her.

When the husband finally ordered his breakfast, I figured out why the old dude is always getting cheese in his scrambled eggs. “I’d like the pancake breakfast with bacon,” he mumbled, “and I’d like the eggs scrambled without cheese.”

So there it is, I thought, the reason dude is always getting what he thinks he didn’t ask for. If my old dude’s wife hadn’t raised such a stink about it, I probably would have served him and charged him for the dreaded cheese in his eggs, just as psychic bitch predicted.

Why? Because guests don’t know how to fucking order and because they don’t speak up. At full capacity, our restaurant seats over 200 people. Add to that the crowd of non-seated, waiting for a table people. And add to that ten to fifteen servers, two hostesses, maybe a couple of busboys, five grill cooks, two managers, two backup cooks, one prep cook, and whoever manages to show up in dish – all engaged in conversation. Add to that the clank of dishes being set on tables, thrown into bus tubs, and dropped on the floor. Add to that the phone ringing and cash registers slamming shut. And add to that three children running and giggling through the restaurant and one screaming baby. Always one screaming baby.

And I, the server, am standing at the end of your table, focusing intently on your every word as you stare into your menu and whisper your order to me as if we’re in hiding and raising your voice too much would let the serial killer outside the door know we’re in here. Even when I ask guests to speak up, using the pretense that I’m just deaf, most only raise their volume a fraction of a decibel.

So when you say to me, in your tiny voice, “Bring me a Coke with no lemon,” all I catch is “Coke” and “lemon.” And because a Coke is not served with lemon, has not ever been served with lemon, and is not listed on the printed menu you are holding in front of your mouth as you try to communicate with me as including a lemon, it can be assumed that the only reason you would mention a lemon is because you want a fucking lemon. Difficult concept to grasp, I know.