So I wasn't gonna' do this quite yet, but I got an email asking how to act when you're out eating. Okay. That may seem like an easy question--how to become a good customer--but as in so many cases in life, the best way to define something is by describing it in the negative. Basically, not what it is...but what it is not.

So what makes a bad customer? I could give a clinical definition--listing a bunch of features that point in the general direction--but luckily a case study has presented itself in the pages of the New York Times.

I usually don't read restaurant reviews because, like most waiters, I've read the reviews of restaurants I've worked in and wondered where the writer was eating when they wrote about my restaurant. Plus I have a sneaking suspicion that most restaurant reviewers are really failed novelists who can barely make it as journalists.

But I do check out Wednesday's Dining Out section to spot new places and I ran across a real winner by Amanda Hesser. Let's delve a little further.

In her review, she mentions two things that are bad about the service at this restaurant. First, she asks about a dish and the waiter responds that it is awesome.

But it really peeves her when the waiter stops by her table with a half bottle of champagne he forgot to give to another table. He doesn't want to take it back to the bar so he pours it for her table instead.

Now how in the hell can you get bitchy over a FREE half bottle of champagne? Hey Amanda, that bottle of pills the doctor prescribed you for your behavioral problems. It's not an amulet you wear around your neck. You're supposed to TAKE those pills.

I don't really know what was going on in the minds of the wait staff, but I can only imagine. Here's my creative invention of their dialogue

*******

[Two waiters, Bill and Anna, over by the micros computer. Bill's putting in an order.]

Bill: Do you see that Upper West Side/Park Slope lookin' chick over at table 26?

Anna: She looks more like Hoboken to me...Yea, what about her? Did table 14 get their desserts yet?

Bill: Yea, they came out five minutes ago. She asked me about one of the entrees and I told her it was awesome. So she just sat there frozen, like she didn't speak English.

Anna: Well, be nice to her. The manager said she's some food critic. New York Times or the Post. Maybe she wants you to describe the food for her so she'll know what to write. Could you please hurry up and put that order in? You're taking forever. My section's full and I need the fucking computer!

Bill: Hold the fuck on! So table 23 orders a half bottle of champagne. Apparently, it was way the fuck down in the walk-in--why I don't know--so by the time the bar got it to me, the table didn't want it. So I drop it off at Miss Food Critic's table, free of charge. And she gave me this eye fuckin' roll.

Anna: What do you expect? She's a food critic! It's not like she's got any real talent. Are we going out to Chumley's tonight? Table 12's about to give me a goddam coronary. That fat bitch with the bad hair sent her steak back. TWICE!

Bill: Nope. I've got rehearsal tomorrow. Here's your computer.

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12:06:48 AM     comment []