"National Stiff Your Waiter Day" Declared for December 1, 2009

The New York Times ran a piece by Bruce Buschel titled “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do”



Never one for originality, The Charlotte Observer then weighed in with What Should DINERS Never Do? A hastily put together blog post by food writer Helen Schwab, on her self titled blog.

Helen claims that her post is “The obvious needed accompaniment to the New York Times' story on "100 Things Servers Should Never Do"

It is unfortunate that her post only counters 5 items that diners should never do but on the bright side she does point readers to Waiter Rant. (So save yourself the disappointment and skip Helen's blog)

Then she suggests that they she and her readers could do better.

Well She and They Didn’t, as Helen’s number 1 Never Do was, “Never complain about anything more subtle than a wrong order unless and until you have waited on tables for a minimum 30 days yourself”.

Her post dies shortly there after, where she requests that readers to submit their own “Never Do” items.

My experience with Helen is that she refuses to post anything that she doesn’t agree with so the comments are pretty much one sided.

However, the comments do point out something that has become H1N1 in its spread across the country, wait staff are so unknowledgeable about their craft that it is comical.

The truth is management has failed to train their wait staff even the most basic of service etiquette.

Basics like; women should be served first, not telling guests they need to keep their forks, interrupting, taking a seat or squatting down to take an order, serve form the left, remove from the right seems to be a lost art.

I’ve taken to answering the annoying “Are you still working on that?” wait staff question with, “No, I’m just trying to figure out if I should call the health department or my lawyer.”

I’m tired of hearing “no problem” for every request, perhaps I should ask if they mind that I'm not going to pay my bill? “No Problem?”

After reading all the rants that Helen Schwab has posted on her blog I can only suggest one thing.

A “National Stiff Your Wait Staff Day”, a day where the customers take back their role as the customer, and remind service staff that tipping is optional.

We can make it up to them on "National Waiters Day" on May 21st.