“Could you pack this food up for me? I do not know how to do this because I am a man”

Take this title/quote out of context (as I often enjoy doing) and you have a situation that probably would have ended with me censuring the spokesperson. Insert it back into a restaurant scenario in which I am the waitress interacting with a guest speaking in a foreign accent, and the intensity of the statement gets knocked down a level or two. The guy who said this quote is most likely from a conservative culture and doesn't even realize it. Cultural sensitivity seems to be the theme of this year for me— beginning I think when I first landed in Dakar, brought to light by the “ebonics”-comment, heightened in my studies of medical cultural competencies back at Grinnell, and practiced from table to table at Pf Changs.

Why am I bringing this up? Because I have been aware for a while that I am a quieter, more recluse individual than what I usually am and I think that this is the reason why. It is my theory that in the same way that a student studies in quiet environment, I am gathering my thoughts and impressions on life’s lessons in solitude.

Heaviness aside, here are some of my random observations brought to light by my time spent waitressing this summer:
- we are indeed in a time of economic turmoil. Tips are not only significantly lower, but people seem to have higher expectations for service now that the value of their meal is higher.
- The revolving door works counterclockwise. When you walk through a revolving door the wrong way, it makes this screeching-sucking noise. Also, you'll find that you're exerting far more effort than youre used to and otherwise necessary to make the revolving door move. Believe it or not, people manage to somehow go in the wrong direction in revolving doors. I usually can hear them make this mistake all the way from the other end of the restaurant.
- You (the server) are the guest’s time management. You control how quickly or slowly food comes out based on your experience and your ability to time things. You also control whether their (the guest’s) experience is time well spent or one that felt like an eternity. Ideally, it is in the server and restaurant’s best interest to get the guest in and out in the shortest time possible. However, it is also the preference of the guest not to feel rushed, and thus to the advantage of the server not to rush the guest. The perfect marriage between these two standards can be achieved by first introducing the guest to all the most popular dishes on the menu and then giving them all the time they need to look it over; usually including the phrase “take all the time you need” gives the guest a more relaxed atmosphere. After the costumer orders their food, the ball is 95% in the waiter’s court. It is the waiter who controls how quickly the appetizers come out, the delay between appetizers are off the table and entrees are on, and the time in which desserts are introduced and when the check is dropped. (There are, of course, always those few “campers” (the 5% you can’t control) who throw off this formula by eating excessively slower than the average costumer; they are also outliers who can be spotted early in the meal and thus do not apply in this case). It is crucial that the server follows the placement of the check at the end of the meal with the phrase “no rush” (or something along those lines) so that the costumer can take this time to converse with the rest of his or her party, enjoy food coma, and more importantly, to reflect on the quality of service received throughout the meal.
- Individual differences aside, a person who has worked their way up in the restaurant industry will exhibit greater patience and emotional stability than those who enter into a restaurant management position coming from an academic background with a managerial degree who tend to have a shorter fuse. My very crude theory explaining the different path outcomes: all the time and experience you dedicate to the restaurant industry either teaches you greater patience or it jades you over time.
- Like most work-environments where people are laboring besides one another hour after hour, employee-employee relationships ALWAYS arise. This is true for breakups as well. Who knew the restaurant industry could be even more stressful than it already is?
- A woman at my table the other day told me she had a wheat allergy and then proceeded to order brown rice with her food. I told her that the brown rice we have at our restaurant is a type of wheat rice, and that if she has an allergy I would strongly suggest she order the white rice. She looked at me as if I was an idiot, laughed, and then in the most offensive tone possible, said "you're wrong. brown rice is just an unpolished white rice". From what I've gathered via the internet and in my training as a server, the latter part of her statement is usually true-- however, not in all cases. (Whether or not there are variations of rice that contain wheat, that does not excuse how she treated me, especially considering the fact that I was trying to keep her from experiencing an allergic reaction). This example is just one more for the records that the notion of an absolute truth is often complemented by unnecessary arrogance.
- 90% of costumers just want to know what everyone else is eating when it comes to food recommendations. The other 10% probably asked for recommendations just out of habit and didn't even listen to your response. Whenever a costumer asks me for what I like, I automatically respond with "well, the most popular dishes are...". This way, if they don't like their meal, they have it in their head that they're deviating from the norm. If I had recommended something I like and they ended up not enjoying it, then they would have been more likely to attribute their wasted money to me. Whenever people are given the opportunity to place blame, they will. If the situation, however, suggests that theyre the one to blame (or that theyre the one with bad taste), they'll concentrate on something else; like, introspecting into why theyre not liking what everyone else does.