I work in the food service industry, not by choice but by chance. Many moons ago I applied for a part-time job working as a dishwasher in a restaurant. This job was supposed to be very temporary, but it soon became my "career." After a few months in the "dish pit" (which now has to be referred to as the "dish area" due to the despairing connotation of the word "pit") I was approached by the chef with the proposition of becoming a line cook. Respectfully declining the offer, I soon found myself working 60 hours a week. After half a decade of experience and knowledge, cooking has now become my only employable skill. So if you eat at a restaurant, you are stuck with me, and I am stuck with you.
In the food service industry, a restaurant is comprised of two separate yet equally important groups: the servers (who have the audacity to complain about having a separate minimum wage [which is about $1.35 less than the actual minimum wage everyone in the kitchen makes] while making about $50/hour during their 4-hour shift in tax free cash) who carry a couple plates, and the cooks who fucking hate you. These are their stories.
Don't Tip Your Server
Do you know what your server is doing when he or she is not busy interrupting your meal when you don't need anything or being nowhere in sight when you do? Complaining about you. The only reason they are civil and accommodating to your completely outrageous and intelligible requests and queries is because they think you will just give them extra money for a job they are already paid to do. If you don't tip, or don't tip the magical industry standard of 15%, your server will inform everyone with ears of the scum that you are.
Just to let you know, if you bring your kids to a restaurant and only tip $0.25 the server will use that quarter to call child services in an attempt to have your children put into protective custody so they are safe from you monsters.
So let's say that a server has one table an hour, and the table's bill comes to $10. If that person leaves an 11% tip, the server still makes more money an hour than me.
Back of House
Don't hold your breath.A restaurant is made up of the front of house (servers) and the back of house (cooks), but we must not forget the most important component that is often left out, the asshole of house (you)! While servers usually have REAL jobs and just work in a restaurant part-time, the kitchen staff are indentured servants who live in the hellishly hot death gauntlet where the food is taken out of packages, microwaved, and sloppily dumped onto typically dirty plates. Your job seems to be so lucrative and demanding that you cannot find the time to prepare a meal for yourself and exercise some basic instinct of survival that you eat in expensive restaurants that deliver sub-par food at exorbitant prices every single hour of every fucking day, and to make matters worse you are allergic to every fucking ingredient that has been used in cooking since it was invented in 1940 by Ronald McDonald.
Nowadays 5 out of every 4 people have a gluten allergy. Every time I see the word "celiac" printed in red I take a moment and wonder how the human race has made it this far. Can we have a vote to bring back natural selection? Have an anaphylactic allergy to something? Please fucking die, we don't need any more weakness in the gene pool, we already have the French.
Custies
Yeah, you, asshole… the one making a scene while other people swallow the pill.Restaurants thrive or fail depending on their customer base. Actually we don't have custumers any more, we have guests. But you aren't really guests. If you arrive at a dinner party as the host's guest, does he then present you with a bill for the evening's festivities at its conclusion? We provide you with goods and services in exchange for monetary consideration; you are fucking customers, or "custies" as I call you.
As a custie you have all the power. Don't like something? Be a bitch and complain about it. You will be surprised how rewarding it is to be belligerent and temperamental. Here are a few examples of how being ignorant and rude will achieve positive results.
Case 1: It's a Friday night at 6pm. The restaurant you wish to attend does not take reservations on weekends.
You arrive to find a full dining room with an expected wait time of 45 minutes. You choose to wait, complaining the entire time. Feeling empathy for third world children because you now know the pain and discomfort of starvation (even though you consumed roughly their entire monthly caloric intake less than five hours ago), you are finally shown to your table.
You place your order and wait. Why are things taking so long? It's not like the restaurant is completely full and there is still a waiting list. When your food takes longer than the usual, promptly request an audience with the manager and berate them for ruining your life. You should receive the meal for free and probably also be given gift certificates to entice you to "return for another visit where we will do our best to give you a positive experience and make up for the travesty presented to you this evening."
Case 2: You are feeling like a man tonight and men eat steak. The problem is those idiots cooked your steak to medium-rare.
Sure you said "medium-rare" when you were asked how you would like your steak cooked, but they should have known that you meant "medium-well," even though you don't know what either of those steak colors look like. Eat 3/4 of the steak before complaining and sending it back saying, "This is not medium-rare." Actually, it is. We have collectively agreed that medium-rare doneness is 135º F. So thermally, scientifically, and visually, your steak was technically cooked to perfection based on your order specifications. You may get a free appetizer or dessert, but at the cost of everyone knowing you are clinically retarded.
Positive guest feedback is extremely important to the public perception of the restaurant and will affect future sales as well as illustrating areas of improvement that may have gone unnoticed to the management. Please take the time to inform us of your dining experience whether it's positive or negative. I recently viewed a comment submission where the guest said that "eating in your restaurant was the worst experience of my life, and I lived through the Holocaust." I had to laugh like hell.
So if you are going to spend an evening dining with us, please be grateful for the fact that someone is putting time and effort into preparing a meal for you to enjoy. If something is wrong, try being an adult and realize that mistakes happen. Sure you can throw a temper tantrum and receive positive attention, but that kind of behavior should not be rewarded in society. So until I can save enough money to go back to school and gain new employable skills, I will be back in the kitchen, making fun of you. Come visit us again sometime soon.