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These are no longer secrets, there are probably hundreds of articles written about this.
These are no longer secrets, there are probably hundreds of articles written about this.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1545446-100x100.png\")
If only the linked article wasn't to one of those annoying sites that puts each item on a separate page to generate page views.
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sorry, meant to reply to you but posted further down instead.
print version, all on one page
http://www.rd.com/content/printContent.do?contentId=169685&KeepThis=true&
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\"In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.\"
A common excuse from waiters. If tips are pooled, I'm tipping for the overall experience. If you want your tips to be good, make sure your coworkers earn it right along with you.
People who choose collective reward also choose collective punishment.
It's not like the customer chose how the tips would be split. The restaurant did. This is the downside of that approach.
I work in a bar, so I'm already sensitive to tipping when I go out. Friends and I went out one night to a nice place, which we knew through grapevine had pooled tips (not part of making any decision, it was just part ogf what we heard)...long story short, while our waiter was fantastic, the bartender was horrible....absolutely horrible....glass with some previous users lipstick, wrong beer, warm beer (3 separate purchases)....Our waiter absolutely busted his ass trying to get everything corrected, on top of doing a great job with his standard duties. So, come check time, I left 2% on my cc slip, and handshake-passed a napkin on to waiter with the 20%. Pooling just seems to encourage lazy types to be even lazier....When I eventually open my own tavern, that is one idea that will be filed under \"NEVER\"
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#2 is going to get someone in trouble, and is douchery of the 10th degree. Why wouldn't you answer truthfully and give the person a chance to order something else?
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As a vegan, if I'm in a \"traditional\" restaurant I try so research in advance. If I'm in question of the ingredients of a broth I ask \"what type of broth do you use... chicken?\" Things like that, if they say \"I don't know\" then I say \"okay I'll have the fries\" or water or something like that. If they say \"let me go get the chef\" or \"I'm vegetarian, and it has veggie broth\" I respond accordingly.
I have found at some restaurants (not most) that letting them know what you're looking for opens them up to just tell you what they think you want to hear.
#2 is going to get someone in trouble, and is douchery of the 10th degree. Why wouldn't you answer truthfully and give the person a chance to order something else?
Answer: maybe because they don't give a shit about you and when you come into a regular restaurant that doesn't have a vegetarian part on their menu it just makes you look like the douche bag. these people make just over the poverty line and you want them to be perfect. what a silly thing to expect.
vegetarians need to realize that if they don't go to a vegetarian restaurant then there is no way of knowing if what you order is going to have some type of meat (broth). to think that a restaurant that serves 99% of their food to cater to you is silly, and let me tell you why. most waiters are not thinking about a \"career\" in the food service industry. they don't care about you and whether or not you get your vegetable broth or beef broth, they only care about finishing their shift and going home. also, the waitstaff probably doesn't know, maybe if you go to a high end restaurant where they train their waitstaff properly, but most restaurants have such a high turnover most don't even fully train staff before they make it to the floor.
>>#2 is going to get someone in trouble, and is douchery of the 10th degree. Why wouldn't you answer truthfully and give the person a chance to order something else? >>
>Answer: maybe because they don't give a shit about you and when you come into a regular restaurant that doesn't have a vegetarian part on their menu it just makes you look like the douche bag. these people make just over the poverty line and you want them to be perfect. what a silly thing to expect.>
Seriously? He is not requiring them to be \"perfect\", he simply wants an honest answer to his question. And a low wage job does not automatically turn someone into a liar.
a lot of times there isn't a vegetarian restaurant. or you're with family or whatever. it's no different than someone with an allergy asking about a specific ingredient. take a deep breath.
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Numero 2 did get someone in trouble. McD's. Fries. Lawsuit.
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You must think that all servers have no self respect or work ethic.... regardless of how shitty a job may or may not be - be the best you can at it... lugging around all of the negativity takes it's toll on a person, mentally.
I'm a vegetarian, I don't give my server a hard time... I look through the menu and go with what I can eat and order without being to complicated.. sometimes I'm at a place because they have awesome desert or something else I like in particular - or maybe I'm with someone because they like the particular restaurant that may not cater to vegetarians... I gotta say - that is really difficult to find these days. Most places I go to, even chain places, have vegetarian sections of the menu.
What about people who don't eat meat for religious purposes... and before you go off all Anti-Hindu... because you sound like the type of person who would... there are also Christian religions that forbid the eating of meat during the time of lent on days like Friday for example. Are you so insensitive to justify that?
Basically you're saying, servers and restaurants shouldn't cater to vegetarians when the reverse could be said that they should solely cater to what YOU like to eat....
To quote YOU, jackass...
\" to think that a restaurant that serves 99% of their food to cater to you is silly\"
99% of the food at restaurants generally cater to YOU already.... so are you bitching about less of a menu being something that YOU like to eat?
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There are also those who get physically ill and can't digest meat. I had a friend who'd ingested just a little bit of some, and had to run for the bathroom.
When you are sensitive to something most people can handle, it's tough on everyone.
Ditto this one. I was intensely curious in junior high when I went to visit a friend and her mom was making soy bacon for breakfast. It looked... odd. Turned out my friend had trouble digesting certain animal proteins or something and was nearly vegan. It wasn't her fault and if a cruel waiter lied to her he could make her very sick. Wouldn't kill her, but anything that makes you say \"I'll be a vegan for life\" must be pretty bad.
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When my Muslim friend asks the waiter to ask the chef to rewash all dishes and utensils to ensure that none of his food has touched pork, yes, he is being a huge douchbag. Your crazy dietary needs are your problem. The restaurant sells the food it sells, don't like it, go somewhere else.
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That's a good way to get a piece of ham wiped over everything that is being sent out to you.
I've done this and similar things when asked when I was a chef - never thought it was being douchy and invariably the people tipped well.
I was working in an open kitchen and used to have a couple come in every week and make special kosher requests. We always humored them, and they would normally tip the wiatress well and send $10 to the kitchen.
As for the list above - any decent restaurant will fire the wait staff for any of those things.
Religious restrictions on serving dishes don't simply cover it with \"...unless it was washed.\" Generally speaking, kosher food prep requires a different set of dishes. Not just to prevent something from having touched something else *ever*, but to prevent certain items from even touching during the meal.
That said, however, the majority of mainstream rabbi seem to agree that if you requested it and it isn't done, you're not religiously \"liable.\" (Which is a strike on the board for religious hypocrisy, of course, but I digress.)
Muslims, however, are \"at-fault\" regardless of whether or not they know what's going on. I seem to recall eating pork making them permanently \"unclean,\" but I'm not much for studying islamic eating habits.
... BUT.THAT.DOESN'T.MEAN.YOU.LIE.
Asking a simple question deserves an honest answer... I order vegetarian items already on the menu... how the hell does that mean I should eat somewhere else....
It doesn't, simple requests should be accommodated, answers should be truthful. However the customer should never be upset if the restaurant can't accommodate whatever is being asked for.
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I went to a \"vegetarian\" restaurant a couple of times (even though I'm not vegetarian) and let's just say, I'm going to stick to the more main stream restaurants in the future. If you're a vegetarian, going out to eat must really be painful. But hey, it's your choice.
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Name the place and what kind of cuisine. That has a lot to do with it. I am not completely vegetarian, and I've had my share of good and bad. Generally Asian and Mediterranean vegetarian places are going to be a good bet. Others, perhaps not.
It depends on where you go. One of the two best meals I've ever had was at Millenium, a vegan restaurant in San Francisco. (The other was at Morimoto in Philadelpia. I asked nicely if I could have shoyu-- soy sauce-- without fish sauce mixed in, and the waitress was very nice about it. I tipped well.)
There are all kinds of crappy places that don't really try very hard, though, that's for sure.
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I can certainly the difference between regular and decaf coffee, because I know what my brain is like on coffee. Also, someone at a Spanish restaurant once tried to give me a chicken broth-based soup, and I noticed before eating it because it's more fatty and oily looking, and smells like chicken. If you notice these shenanigans, don't go to these restaurants, because it's staffed by lazy people who don't give a shit.
At times when I am at a restaurant and things are looking dubious, like it's the waiter's second day or whatever, I will tell them I'm allergic to certain meat products, because as we see in the comments section here, some people are just raging douchenozzles when interacting with a vegetarian or vegan, like I'm trying to be holier-than-thou or some shit, and I'd rather have them think I'm dealing with something I cannot \"change\".
Which is why no waiter ever believes people who say they are allergic.
I can't count the number of times some dillhole with a Coke in front of them would order decaf coffee, and tell me they were allergic to caffeine, or be eating the bruschetta with a big smile and tell me to make sure there was no basil their meal because they were allergic.
In my time (6 years) of restaurant employment, the only one of these I saw on a regular basis was the coffee. except most places they just serve whatever is handy, not specifically decaf.
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That's ridiculous, but honestly, a lot of servers are asking for it. I've been told way too many times to just wipe mustard/mayo off of something (I ordered it without, if you screwed up that's your deal) that I just say I'm allergic. And before anyone asks, I don't get anything I'd have to make changes to unless I can see behind the food counter.
Dickwads that lie about having veggie broth can go rot; it doesn't hurt you to be honest, and chicken broth tastes like pure ass if you've been off meat for a while.
I had a lot of customers at the restaurant where I worked claim they were allergic to onions. Which was fine, except we were a Tex-Mex restaurant. We had onions everywhere, and since they prepped everything hours in advance, it's not like we were set up to make something completely from scratch. If we did stop to make new rice or salsa, we'd spend 30 minutes on one table before the food came out and end up in the weeds on everyone else's.
And THEY CAME BACK. Ug. Don't eat where we can't accommodate you, nobody will be happy!
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when you come into a regular restaurant that doesn't have a vegetarian part on their menu it just makes you look like the douche bag
If you get butthurt just because someone asks you a question then that's your problem.
I definitely see the realism of what you're saying -- people are just jerks sometimes, and we have to accept that there will always be some underemployed loser out there looking to screw with people.
But if you're saying that because vegetarians shouldn't be eating out it somehow makes it ACCEPTABLE to lie to a diner about the contents of their food -- sorry, no. Treating customers like \"douchebags\" and lying to them about something like this is something only a jackass would do -- and if a waiter does it, whether it's a college kid or a trained professional, he's a jackass. While I don't expect a waiter to be perfect, I am paying them -- and I'm not paying them to intentionally be a jackass. (If I wanted someone to act like a jackass, I could get that for free.)
Besides, lying is just dumb. It takes no time at all to tell the truth, and it avoids the situation where someone realizes that the broth is made from animal products, gets the manager involved, makes a stink, etc. It's no hassle to tell the truth, and a great big hassle to lie.
Of all things, mom's allergic to many things that contain vitamin-C. That includes 'fresh' tomatoes. Chunky spaghetti sauce might or might not set her off. Smooth stuff cooked in a crockpot for 8 hours wouldn't. Obviously, whatever she's allergic to is denatured by cooking. On the other hand, so much as the 'juice' from a cut tomatoe, if it gets into her food, is enough.
I'm not allergic, but due to growing up in the house, I don't like raw tomatoes either. It was very nice the last time we were in a restaurant together that.they went through the bother of making a fresh salad for us. Apparently they keep a little bit of help around for special requests because they get a lot of them.
How is asking if it's made with beef or vegetable stock demanding that you cater to their needs? It's a question to detirmine whether they want to order that or something else. Plus it's not just vegetarians, if I'm trying to keep Kosher I need to know because if it's beef broth I can't eat dairy.
It's a simple question that's important to ask because many places (especially Asian restaurants) consider soup vegetarian and may even label it as such provided that there is no actual chunks of meat in it, they don't consider the broth to be an animal product.
Would you tell the people with anaphalactic food allergies that they shouldn't bother to ask if there are peanuts or shell-fish or egg in foods because most people won't die if they eat the breaded chicken? It's no more difficult a question. Unfortunately, restaurants don't feel the need to list ingredients on the menu, sometimes they even omit an ingredient that is a significant portion of the dish, so people have to ask the waitstaff.
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You show a lot of respect for other people. I guess you'd think it was cool to slip pork into the food of someone whose religion forbids it too, huh?
Yeah, it's great. They're all like 'wow, this food tastes fricken awesome', and under my breath I'm like 'bacon is god, hehehe'.
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You're fucking stupid if you think that people can't tell if they're being fed pork. I've caught several restaurants who've lied to me. I'm not a dick about it, but I am honest, and I send the food back.
Not all people have my tastebuds, but you never know WHO is gonna be able to tell.
As for me, I'm being vegetarian for a year, but even before that, I don't eat pork or fish. I have to know what sort of things are cooked in certain oils or juices. I've worked with a few Japanese restaurants to create non-fish-based alternatives to their basic stocks. There are work-arounds, and lying because you're lazy or because you like violating people's beliefs is a dick move.
It takes no extra time or effort to say \"no\" or -- if true -- \"I'm not sure.\" It infuriates me that people in service jobs need to be explicitly told not to be dicks.
I don't expect perfection. I do expect basic decency.
you are expecting too much from the restaurant industry
There is no way you work in a restaurant and if you do or did, you couldn't possibly still have a job unless you are lying through your teeth... if you're venting your frustrations here, then you're still going against what you believe every day at your job... but again, I highly doubt that you're in the food service industry or any SERVICE industry for that matter.
Agreed. Many times if a vegetarian goes to a normal restaurant, it is because they're going with family or friends and have no choice. Asking if something contains meat is not asking for perfection, it about deciding what to order.
And BTW, it is VERY OBVIOUS if a meat broth is used when you haven't eaten meat in a long time.
So, if the waiter lies about it, I'm going to notice instantly and either not eat it or severally limit his/ her tip. So, it seems like lying is both not right and not the best thing to do in the case of tips.
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yep, a friend of mine was raised without ever having eaten meat. mexican rice used to be on the 'vegetarian menu' at taco bell back when they had one. she ordered it and was sick for a couple of days. turned out it had dehydrated chicken powder in the seasonings. i know this because i worked there and was the person who checked the fine print on the ingredient list for her.
her body had never been exposed to a meat protein before and didn't know what to do with it.
Yep, just the smell alone is enough to tell if it's not vegetarian. This comes from a vegetarian where type of incident has indeed happened. Also, if you're at a sushi place and ask for vegetarian, often times that mean no meat, but they'll still serve fish or fish-based (miso soup, e.g.) thinking that vegetarian means now non-swimming meat
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It actually takes quite a bit of effort to say 'no' or 'I'm not sure'. If the waiter says 'I'm not sure' then the patron will ask them to go check and the waiter has to go in the back and check with one of the chefs. If the waiter says 'no' then they'll either get a lecture about why they should use vegetable stock or a series of other questions about which dishes contain meat, or both.
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Lecture? Really?
But answering questions about the dishes is, well, part of their job. Sorry they have to do it.
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This is true some of the time, and I got yelled at once for telling a customer the chili had meat and wasn't veg. We did have a really good tomato stock vegetable soup on the menu and I told her that, but that wasn't good enough. That customer ripped me for not having vegetarian chili. That is what she wanted. I just told her I'm sorry, that's what they send us (the restaurant had a central kitchen and sent out food to each branch). But it doesn't excuse lying. I never told anyone that something was veg when it wasn't. And they were good about letting us know when a soup had a chicken base (like the broccoli).
If you do what this customer did, you are every bit as much a dick as the waiter who lies.
Lying is lying. You can't justify it.
Waiters shouldn't be jerks but I agree with this. Most waiters aren't \"professional waiters.\" They're college kids or young adults waiting to get to the end of their shift. To expect some high level of professionalism out of them is to invite disappointment.
Not that they should lie about what's in the food, but it's really on the person eating it to figure out whether or not they want to risk possibly contaminating their body with chicken broth.
and honestly that's why 99% of restaurants don't get my business. i can't be sure they aren't lying to me about the potential allergens in my food. i've been given the wrong information about onions in the food so many times i stopped counting. it's not my job to educate the servers of the world about how to do their jobs so i just don't go to restaurants much.
Why? Do you expect the same when you go out? that you're not eating food \"contaminated\" with e. coli or salmonella..? thought so... there are REASONABLE expectations.... the broth in question isn't that fricken difficult....
It's rude and offensive -- what if someone keeps kosher or has religious/ethical reasons for asking? This is why I only dine at locally owned restaurants where I know the people who own them.
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Not just that, some people are actually allergic to certain proteins. True, rare, but they do exist.
If you keep kosher, or halal... YOU GO TO A KOSHER OR HALAL CERTIFIED RESTAURANT.
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I bet you'd like them to wear blue hats while they're at it, huh?
Don't be ridiculous. If you keep kosher, you can eat anywhere you want, as long as you stick to vegetarian items. Not everyone who keeps kosher is a black hat, and the fact that you would make such a statement shows you know absolutely nothing about Judaism.
Not strictly true. If you're keeping kosher, you'd be concerned about 'cross contamination' from non-kosher foods, or milk & meat being prepared together. If you consider that to be too black hat, there are restrictions under kashrut on vegetables: no cooking/prep on Saturday, and farms should observe rest years.
Avoiding meat dishes at non-kosher resturaunts is a good strategy by a lot of people who are trying to maintain diets informed by the spirit of kosher laws, but I don't think there are any Jewish authorities - no matter how Reform - who'd suggest it as a way to actually keep kosher.
I'm Reform myself, I respect a lot of the reasons behind kashrut (cleanliness, reduction of cruelty to animals, environmental preservation), and I do what I can - but I wouldn't kid myself that just avoiding meat is enough to keep kosher. I don't think it requires some of the ridiculous restrictions the black hats have come up with, but I don't think there's any escaping the fact that keeping kosher is an intricate and often arcane set of rules & restrictions not really suited to modern tastes or lifestyles - and not easily compromised.
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Not true at all, actually. For a restaurant to be halachically kosher (that is, kosher according to traditional Jewish law, which is what's most likely to matter to someone keeping kosher strictly enough that they care about what they're eating at a restaurant), it has to be under the supervision of a rabbi, cannot use the same utensils to cook meat and dairy items, cannot use utensils that have come in contact with pork or shellfish to prepare items and must use utensils that have been kashered (which excludes some types of crockery and other implements entirely, since due to the materials used to make them, they can't be kashered). There's also the question of whether any wine is used in the preparation of the food; that must be kosher (and mevushal), as well (along with any cheese or bread), and the odds are way against that in any mainstream restaurant.
I'm not shomer kashrut at all, and I'll give props to anyone who wants to observe any portion of the laws of kashrut, since doing any of it takes effort (sometimes a lot of effort, depending on where you live), but simply eating vegetarian out is not keeping kosher in accordance with actual Jewish law. I'm not trying to sound harsh or anything, but it's just not. While the earlier poster's point wasn't very delicately stated, he's ultimately right; if you want to be sure that you're eating food that's kosher, you need to eat at a kosher restaurant that's appropriately supervised. The vegetarian option at your local Ruby Tuesday's or whatever doesn't qualify. This isn't to say that the vast majority of people don't cut corners with regard to their kashrut observance (or ignore it all together), but that doesn't mean that that's what halacha requires.
Oh yeah, because EVERY town has one of those, right?
If your town doesn't, then you learn to buy your food from a kosher/halal store and cook at home. A small town restaurant isn't going to offer a special item on the menu for the 1 family of Jews/Muslims in town. If there are a lot of families, items will be offered. Supply and demand.
i live in a city with a population of around 400,000 people. major metro area. no kosher restaurants. one halal deli. no kosher butcher, sometimes you can get halal meats from the halal deli. halal and kosher are of course not exactly the same but i have friends who keep kosher and some of them find it an acceptable substitute
You're still being an asshole this far in? I am impressed with your work ethic as far as blogs go.
buy your food from a kosher/halal store
Again, you think every town has this? There might be an \"ethnic\" aisle at the store but that's about it.
cook at home
Or, get this, you can just ask when you eat out with friends. Because asking a question doesn't cause the world to end. It doesn't hurt anyone to be asked a question. And there are restaurants with options even if they don't explicitly mark everything as kosher/halal/vegetarian/gluten-free/etc.
Yeah! Never ask how a dish is prepared -- it's none of your damn business! You think you're the customer or something?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-570438-100x100.png\")
I make my own restaurants at home.
Is also b.s. Hello, chicken stock tastes like CHICKEN. Unless there's a lot of other strong flavors covering it up, you can tell.
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Exactly. I've had a waiter actually pull this before when I was visiting another city and wasn't familiar with their food.
After tasting the chicken broth in the soup, I stood up and caused a huge scene and my party was completely fine with getting up and leaving the restaurant. I spoke to the manager and she kept apologizing profusely for my having been lied to as she acknowledged that indeed the soup did have \"some\" chicken stock in it.
If I go to your establishment and I ask a question about your product, if you lie to me I will hit back at you with a force you never anticipated. Not all vegetarians are pushover weaklings.
Not pushover weaklings. But as a fellow vegetarian, I know not to order soup unless it has \"vegetarian\" in the name, since the secret ingredient of every soup ever is either chicken stock or pork belly.
be careful even then. there's a restaurant near me that has finally added an asterisk to their menu. it goes next to the 'vegetarian' items that have been cooked with salt pork. since they remove the pork before serving someone apparently thinks that still qualifies it as vegetarian
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\"Not all vegetarians are pushover weaklings.\"
No...but they do seem to be extremely irritable and prone to epic overreactions.
>>if you lie to me I will hit back at you with a force you never anticipated.
Will you do the chokey-thing on him or just cut off his hand with your lightsaber, Darth?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-176865-100x100.png\")
The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to a pissed-off vegetarian.
telepathic garrote technique, every time.
I don't really get it either. If the person already sat down and ordered a drink, he'll just order something on the meal that is vegetarian friendly. Why lie?
print version, all on one page
http://www.rd.com/content/printContent.do?contentId=169685&KeepThis=true&
in case of truncation: http://tinyurl.com/37ynyey
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Thanks. I immediate closed the window when I clicked to the original article and saw it was a \"click-through\".
*immediately*
Sigh.
misspelling is fine when you're so awesome you carry sugar in your pockets
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4. Even at the best breakfast buffet in the world, 99 times out of 100, the big pan of scrambled eggs is made from a powder.
Stop the presses!
What's it made from that one other time - a carton of liquid mix?
Strange, I wonder where those hundreds of eggs I cracked and scrambled for the Sunday brunch went? Week after week, I cracked eggs. Into a 5 gallon bucket. Got so that I could crack 4 at a time.
Powdered eggs in high end restaurants? From experience, I don't believe it for a second.
It's been a very long time but when I was on KP in basic training, the scrambled eggs came from big 2 gallon bags of premixed eggs. I've always assumed the liquid mix was the cheapest available if the military was using it.
When I was on KP (Basic at Ft. Dix - the hell hole of the Army), believe me, I cracked more eggs than I could count. 80 dozen as I recall one day...
I was in the military for a short while, too. One morning we had scrambled eggs and bacon. At lunch, we had pork fried rice—which used the leftover eggs and bacon from breakfast.
Blech.
I worked in the dorm kitchen my freshman year of college. 1 gallon egg mix + a few minutes in a steamer = scrambled eggs.
Throw grated cheese in halfway through the cooking process cheese eggs. Ham, onions, and peppers for a western omelet.
It really didn't taste bad. And the thought of cracking and beating all those eggs manually...
Not even a funny attempt at trolling
sorry this was directed towards rpm773, not you kb01!
Not even towards him, geez I fail today. I'm just gonna stop now, haha.
after 8 pm you should only get decaf. If you need caffenie to keep going after 8 pm, go to sleep, your tired. I don't care if theres something big and fun to do, your body would like to sleep, let it.
And before you say it, if your working past 8 pm, I bet you are not depending on the coffee with your meal to keep you going. Either get enegry drinks, or get your own coffee. If your livilihood or life depends on you staying awake after 8 pm, this is not something to outsource to restuarant. This is criticial and it falls on you to make sure you have your stimulants potent and ready to go.
You don't know what you're talking about. Habitual coffee drinks have no problems sleeping.
Caffeine tolerance develops very quickly, especially among heavy coffee and energy drink consumers. Complete tolerance to sleep disruption effects of caffeine develops after consuming 400 mg of caffeine 3 times a day for 7 days. Complete tolerance to subjective effects of caffeine was observed to develop after consuming 300 mg 3 times per day for 18 days, and possibly even earlier.
\"after 8 pm you should only get decaf. If you need caffenie to keep going after 8 pm, go to sleep, your tired.\"
And if I work third shift, and that 9pm meal is my \"breakfast\" ... I should just go to sleep, and never mind showing up at work, is that it?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-356381-100x100.png\")
I got a potent stimulant for you right here...
LOL. Post of the day.
Thank God you're here to tell me what I should do. Can you post your phone number; I have so many questions on how to lead my clueless life.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-291961-100x100.png\")
Nice response :-) +1 for you!
+1 I'll take that number to!
Thanks... can you come over and help me pick what movies to watch, or books to read? GFY.
I've been known to raise hell over this at the local Ram's Horn. They don't try that sh*t anymore.
If I order regular coffee I should get regular coffee. If I am paying for the coffee then it is MY coffee.
Maybe somebody works second or third shift? Hard to believe, I know.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1530273-100x100.png\")
Bite me.
\"If your livilihood or life depends on you staying awake after 8 pm, this is not something to outsource to restuarant.\"
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that when I ordered a regular coffee it was their job, you know...their livelihood, to bring me regular coffee. I wasn't aware that my \"outsourcing\" my food and beverage needs was an imposition on them, especially when I'm paying an agreed upon price for an agreed upon set of goods and services. Silly me.
No shit, my thoughts exactly. It's stupid lists like this that keep me eating at home 99 out of 100 nights. I'm sick of waiters making lists saying how they screw us over and complaining about what huge pains in the ass we are, then whining when we tip less than 20%.
Fuck them and their noise. I'll just eat at home rather than risk not getting what I paid for (or getting more than I bargained for) merely because the waiter is having a shitty day. Guess what? That's not my fault. So I'll just stay at home and not contribute to your bottom line due to your overwhelmingly shitty attitude. Have a super day, servers!
So you're saying that a restaurant that offers caffeinated coffee shouldn't ethically be held to actually serve caffeinated coffee after a certain hour, but still pretend to?
Your assertion leaves no room for the inevitable unforeseen circumstances (you know, the ones of which life is made up) that might require caffeine after 8 PM.
The bottom line is that if you claim to serve caffeinated coffee, serve it. You must allow customers to make their own decisions about what they should or shouldn't do.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-391720-100x100.png\")
How have I survived all these years without you following me around and telling me what to drink and what not to drink?
I often order coffee at the end of a meal - especially if I'm in a group and we want to continue talking -and I don't like decaf. Not everyone who drinks coffee does so for a caffeine kick.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-111512-100x100.png\")
That is dumb.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1545728-100x100.png\")
Let the controversy over tipping start in 3..2....
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1530836-100x100.png\")
Let the trolling over tipping start in 3, 2, 1... oh wait, you already tried.
Yeah, that really read like a troll to me, what with the obvious inflammatory...stating the obvious?
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1541453-100x100.png\")
RE: #2, real vegetarians can tell. We haven't eaten meat in a while, but we know that it doesn't taste like vegetables.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1530099-100x100.png\")
Sorry, very hard to believe. I dated a girl in college who was a vegetarian, she was fooled plenty of times. Didn't freak out about it, but definitely didn't know she was eating anything with meat in it.
What a load of bunk - I'm sure no one can taste \"meat\" if it is in processed foods. Please.
Some things, I can't tell, but broth is pretty obvious; I can even find chicken broth in tomato soup, it's just very distinctive. If I can't tell, I don't care, but there's really no reason to be a jerk OMG-CARNIVORZ! trying to trick people into eating meat. Unless someone is your kid, what they choose to eat should be their business, and restaurants should make the effort to help you make that choice (ie, don't freaking lie).
Then why do \"real vegetarians\" constantly eat things that \"look like\" or \"taste like\" meat? Veggie burgers, veggie bacon - I went to a dinner party once where the hosts served \"pulled pork,\" only to discover later that it was made out something called \"Seitan\" which looks like meat, tastes like meat, but is made out of wheat. Admittedly, it was quite good, but left me wondering, if you're going to go through the trouble of being a vegan / vegetarian, why would you want to eat something that so closely resembled meat?
Normally, I'd agree with you. Although I'm not a vegetarian, I love eating tofu; it's so good to soak up flavors with. But when I see tofu-dogs or tofu-chicken patties, it makes me want to throw up. I'd think being a vegetarian should include a commitment to natural foods, and dressing something up to be what it's not seems inconsistent. BUT seitan kind of looks like meat anyway, no matter what, so that wouldn't have upset me.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1224812-100x100.png\")
Thats simple. I mean, really really obvious. Meat is delicious. Most vegetarians aren't vegetarians because they hate the taste of meat. They have ethical problems with eating animals. If they make wheat taste like delicious animals, why not eat it? It hurts nothing(except the poor wheat) and its delicious.
because they want the flavor without harming the animals? i don't know... i love meat.
but i've dated three separate vegetarians... one was venomously opposed to eating meat, 'cause she loved animals. she would eats imitation meat like saitan. she now eats meat again. she was vegetarian for about 5 years.
the vegetarian i'm currently dating just doesn't like it. she hasn't eaten meant in about 15 years, sense she was around 8.
i find it really interesting that the ones that \"just don't like it\" are, in my experience (and i have lots of vegetarian friends, too) usually the strongest, while the ones that do it for moral reasons fall off the wagon or have meat \"once in a while.\"
I think biological imperative will always trump moral decision. I don't eat meat for moral reasons, but if you cook something for me I'll eat it to be nice (I'm from the south). I'm more of a vote with my wallet vegetarian.
I like meat, and it is just another one of my morals that will slip given the right chance. I am not diametrically opposed to eating meat, I just don't really like the industrial way it's done so often.
In the end, I realize that my wallet vote isn't that expensive. A hard week will occasionally result in a steak, or too much beer, or buying myself some crap I don't really need and can't justify. I figure I try and that's good enough.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-326654-100x100.png\")
I'm as carnivorous as they come, but people are usually vegetarian for one of a few reasons:
1) Moral reasons - this typically means they object to eating meat out of principle. A lot of people who are strict vegetarians object to the treatment of food animals and don't want to support those practices. That doesn't mean they dislike the taste of meat, however.
2) Cultural reasons - I have one friend who eats no meat or meat products at all because he grew up without meat in Africa, so his body and mind basically can't take it. He accidentally was fed chicken broth one time and got physically sick.
3) Diet reasons - to avoid cholesterol and other potential negative effects of eating meat, some people just don't eat it.
There are other reasons too, of course. But in this example, both 1 and 3 might be open to eating \"meat-like\" products but don't want to eat real meat.
Most vegetarians don't stop eating meat because they don't like the taste or texture. They don't eat meat because of ethical or health reasons. Also, a lot of those fake meat products like seitan are a really good way to get low-fat protein in a delicious form.
Because they like meat, but don't want to eat it for health or moral reasons.
I'm sure there are a few vegetarians out there who don't eat meat because they genuinely don't like meat -- but for the most part, it's a decision not to enjoy something that they otherwise would enjoy. So if they can get something that looks and tastes like meat, but without the health or moral implications, then they're happy.
Of course, how well it replaces the real thing is debatable -- I've tried a few meat \"replacements,\" and I'm definitely sticking with the real deal.
I've had this discussion with people before.
My main theory is that fake meat looks like real meat for social reasons. For example, if a vegetarian goes out to lunch with non-vegetarians and all of them *really* want hamburgers, then the vegetarian can still order a \"hamburger\". The vegeburger resembles a hamburger, and thus people can bond over similar food, the vegetarian won't stand out too much, the vegetarian will still participate in a similar meal, etc, etc.
Also, it's really convenient to substitute fake meat that resembles real meat into recipes. For example, there is fake \"ground beef\" that looks like the real thing and is really convenient in substituting in a taco for example. Another example that rules is vegetarian turducken: http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article11180901.aspx
Maybe they like them?
You'd think so. But a friend of mine is a vegetarian and has been for years, and only recently did she realize (when I told her) that her favorite yellow rice was made using dehydrated chicken.
Her comment was \"no wonder it tasted so good.\"
Rice is one of the few dishes that I have trouble detecting the presence of meat products in. Well, except for Thai dishes with fish oil; that taste stands out like nothing else.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-98911-100x100.png\")
Is 3 really that embarassing? I would just think they had made a large purchase or something that got the card flagged. It's happened to me before and it is not a big deal.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1532690-100x100.png\")
I think the type of person you would want to do it to would definitely care. You probably do it to someone who is a pushy, rude, egotistical, jerk. These kind of people VERY MUCH care about being big shots. This hurts their little tiny brains.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1532333-100x100.png\")
Or that their stupid card-reader doesn't work very well. I use my card a lot and there are some machines that it just won't go through. I'd hand it back to her and say, \"Can you just type it in?\"
1. In most restaurants, after 8 p.m. or so, all the coffee is decaf because no one wants to clean two different coffeepots. I'll bring out a tray with 12 coffees on it and give some to the customers who ordered regular, others to the ones who ordered decaf. But they're all decaf.
Pro-Tip: Decaf still has caffeine... no worries there.
2. If you're a vegetarian and you ask if we use vegetable stock, I'm going to say yes, even if we don't. You'll never know the difference.
Being a vegetarian, I've had to deal with this on a regular basis... and some people actually do know the difference, if you aren't a regular meat eater and you consume beef stock, you can become violently ill - especially so if you generally have trouble digesting meat in the first place.
3. I've never seen anybody do anything to your food, but I have seen servers mess with your credit card. If a server doesn't like you, he might try to embarrass you in front of your business associate or date by bringing your credit card back and saying, \"Do you have another card? This one didn't go through.\"
I haven't seen this one happen... but anyone who can make head or tails of their daily finances can call shenanigans on this one.... cooincidentally, do you work for Shenanigans?
4. Even at the best breakfast buffet in the world, 99 times out of 100, the big pan of scrambled eggs is made from a powder.
This is true of buffets, but generally, most breakfast places don't do this... I used to work for the Waffle House and I know they didn't. But the cook was a crackhead who used to come up to our regulars with their eggs and say, \"I put a little extra love in it for ya.\" It was horribly creepy, but he didn't do anything gross.
5. Don't order fish on Sunday or Monday. The fish deliveries are usually twice a week, so Tuesday through Friday are great days. Or ask the restaurant when they get theirs.
Fact: But it also depends on the restaurant... some smaller restaurants... (and by small I mean, non chain) in bigger cities, may have someone buy fresh sea food every day... some places advertise this fact... look for it.
hello Dwight Schrute.
/slap
I did nothing wrong here!
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-267279-100x100.png\")
It sounds like this guy works at a lot of skiivy restaurants.
Note, each item is from someone different, and even mentions years of service and where in many cases. That said, Many of these were true for me over 17 years and different restaurants. Nothing really awful in this list, just regular crap that comes from working a mostly disposable job.
My 8 years cooking on 3 continents seems to have been a vastly different experience than yours. Most places I worked would fire the waitress for lying and were always accommodating to diet requests. This goes for points 1-3.
As for 4 - true in buffets, but never seen it elsewhere including working in a cafe that did 100+ egg dishes every morning (no buffet). There was actually a person who started cracking eggs at some crazy hour of the morning.
As for 5 - this really really depends on the restaurant and the location and if you have a seafood place you like it is a good idea to find out when they get deliveries. In Anchorage we had fish delivered almost every day Mon-Fri and could have weekend delivery but the cost was higher. In New Mexico - twice a week or go to the grocery store in an emergency.
ARGH. This list ticked me off the first time I saw it, and I'm none too pleased to see it resurface.
1) Most restaurants? I know my experience is hardly universal, but I worked in two places where the regular coffee was always regular, and the decaf always decaf. In fast food, after a certain time, we'd just only make regular and decaf-drinkers were out of luck.
2) Yes, they can know the difference. And for some people, it can be a health problem. I'm not a vegetarian but I'd be pissed as hell if I found out a restaurant was doing this.
3) This seems more of a cautionary tale of 'don't piss off your server,' which is just a good rule of thumb all around. They shouldn't mess with you no matter what, but why piss off anyone? Bad karma.
4) Duh.
5) 'Don't order fish'...jeeze. I expect my food to be healthy and well-prepared. If I want it to be fresh-that-day, I'll go somewhere where it's guaranteed or make it myself. Otherwise I figure it's frozen.
Yeah. I have worked at a few places in my lifetime. None of them stuck with only decaf after a certain time period. What is more likely is that if you order coffee right before close you will get something that has lived a good life but is ready to go on to greener pastures.
I have seen people lie about when the coffee was made. Especially managers who did not want to brew a whole pot of coffee to give a guy a single cup of it. I know the cost on that pot is probably less than what they charge the guy for the coffee but these people did not care.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-81728-100x100.png\")
In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.
Tough titty - the waiter is the front man for the operation. If he drops the ball, that's too bad - it's like how the president of a company gets the blame when he pollutes a million acres of ocean or something, even tho he didn't have much do with it.
Agreed. If the tips are pooled, then you're tipping for the entire experience, and the kitchen staff can chew out my shitty waiter if they have a problem with it.
Agreed: I think it may be a good thing because then they police themselves. If the cooks are slow and get the order wrong, if the waitress is rude or inattentive, will get sorted because everyone has some responsibility and wants to maximize tips.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-390588-100x100.png\")
I recommend everyone read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain. And then never eat out again. Seriously, it's a great book.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-614388-100x100.png\")
I recommend you read Medium Raw, also by Anthony Bourdain, where he states that a lot of the things in Kitchen Confidential are no longer relevant (including, specifically, the Fish on Mondays thing). Also it's a good book.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1524014-100x100.png\")
I recommend you read or watch pretty much anything by Anthony Bourdain. He is a wonderfully entertaining writer and travel journalist.
i definitely employed #1 when i was a server. this is what convinced me of the power of the mind. not only did no one ever notice that it was decaf, but some would comment that they could feel the kick from the caffeine.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1303826-100x100.png\")
I thought it took an hour and a half before caffeine would start to affect people. Maybe they are feeling a kick from something they drank earlier?
Or maybe they are just bold faced liars. My money is on the liars.
Uhm, there's caffeine in decaf, you know.
and they probably added some sugar, too.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1354861-100x100.png\")
My friend worked for a high-end seafood restaurant where the lobster bisque was from Campbell's. Now when ordering soup I always wonder if it's made there or just reheated from a giant can.
Campbells makes Lobster Bisque? I need to investigate this. I love crab soup, but I've never found a place where you can buy it that isn't a restaurant charging $5 per cup.
It's the Campbell's Stockpot brand. I'm not sure how you are supposed to buy it unless you are a restaurant - I've never seen it in grocery stores.
So, what you're saying is that my servers are all douchebags?
This hasn't been my experience. Maybe it's because I bartended my way through college and have sympathy for those in that industry, so I treat them well. But these types of articles irritate me. Pretending someone's card was declined is a jerky thing to do.
I once had a friend (who works as a server) tell me she doesn't give good service to blacks because they don't tip. Well, I'm black, and I tip very well, possibly because I have worked for tips. Anyway, I asked her if it's possible she doesn't get tips from blacks because she gives them such crappy service. Nah, she'd rather just hang on to her stereotype.
Blacks? Really? Teenagers. They usually tip horribly, but there are some who tip generously. Asians (as in people actually visiting from Asia) sometimes tip poorly or not at all because in many parts of Asia tipping is not customary. The elderly can also be a bit stingy. I've never noticed that blacks tip poorly.
But if you are giving someone subpar service is it really fair to call them a bad tipper? Isn't it relative to the quality of the service?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the fact is that most black people tip horribly. You can call that statement racist, but I was a server for years (a long time ago), and while there were some exceptions here and there, the vast majority left ~10%. But so did old people and foreigners. In fact, it's so wildly known and accepted the blacks leave horrible tips, that servers coined the term 'Canadians' to reference blacks. This way they could talk bad about them behind their backs without it sounding too bad. ie: \"those damn canadians screwed me again\" or (to hostess) \"why did you just give me two tables of canadians?!?!\". I was kind of surprised that the movie Waiting (or the sequel, I forget which) made reference to this.
In any case, yes, black people suck at giving tips. OH, and for all the people who replied about how it's not their fault, it's just that people give them shitty service so they give them shitty tips (self fulfilling prophecy like), when I was a server, just to disprove this to the rare co-worker who would disagree, I made sure I gave absolutely perfect service. I mean way over the top. Would still get screwed consistently.
Black guys are a bit better. Especially ones that are more middle class. But fat black women.....shoot me. The worst ever. Needy, whiny and cheap as hell.
I don't know how it is with restaurants, but I used to work for a carpet-cleaning company back in the college days, and even though I got a decent salary ($12 per room), the tips made up a fair portion of my salary. I never expected or asked for them, but they were always a nice addition. The people who tipped the highest? Lower-middle class Blacks and Hispanics. On a \"two-room special\" job ($48) they would, on average, tip me $15-20. Sometimes, their tip would be higher than my per-room payment. The lowest tippers? Upper-middle class whites. If I got $2 from them, I felt lucky, regardless of the size of the job.
Ick.
I can't stand it when servers use self-fulfilling prophesies when they see my family and me show up. We have two small children, and we _always_ tip well when our oldest (who is 2) drops things, etc. We try to clean up the mess ourselves, and we leave 25-30% in tip, if not more, for the staff, too.
I have had a server who saw us and clearly assumed that we'd be cheapskates because, you know, we're parents. So she gave us terrible service, and so she got a low tip.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-344098-100x100.png\")
I find that for the most part, those who at some point worked in the service industry understand the importance of tipping and tend to pay it forward.
Unfortunately it is a very strong stereotype in the restaurant world. Every waiter I've ever worked with (10 Years) seems to believe it. Not saying it's true, just saying.
Yes, its a cycle- Wait staff treat them poorly because they don't think they will tip, and they don't tip because they're being treated poorly.
That said, there are bad tippers of all races, but it often easier to spot the pattern with black people if you live in a predominately white area. My (white) blue collar uncle tips $2, no matter how big or how small the bill. He paid for dinner for 4 at a mid-range restaurant and the bill was $60. The service was good, but he left his $2 (which is 4% btw). I pretended like I forgot something and dropped another $10.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-141352-100x100.png\")
Actually it is true, for the most part.
There are always exceptions, of course.
But until you've served for a living, don't tell me it's a self fulfilling prophesy.
What's true is POOR people tend not to tip. If you see anyone in a tank-top with Tweetie Bird on it, no bra, and five screaming kids running around, you're probably not getting tipped. You for sure aren't if the kids share one entree and one drink between them, and then eat the bottomless bread basket the rest of the night.
However, there are exceptions to that. People who are middle class tip just fine.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-994135-100x100.png\")
Regarding #2, nobody will know the difference until someone has a horrible allergic reaction and their throat closes up. I have a hard time believing that a decent restaurant would lie about this. The idea of it upsets me as a vegetarian, but there are some people who literally can't eat certain things, as opposed to me who chooses not to.
As for the others, I thought they were all decently well known. (Hahaha, the \"best breakfast buffet.\" There's an oxymoron.)
I'm one of those who can tell the difference. Meat and I just don't go well together, and accidental ingestion generally ends with plenty of vomiting. So yeah, I can tell, and if a server has intentionally lied to me I'll be more than happy to show my appreciation for their lack of honesty by not bothering to go to the restroom when I feel regurgitation coming on.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-57429-100x100.png\")
That's why I make my own waiters at home.
But then you have to wait for a long time for balance and stamina to develop . . .
I laughed.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1542312-100x100.png\")
LOL
\"I've never seen anybody do anything to your food\"....then you ar elying or are not looking hard enough
I worked at a crappy diner and at a crappy fast-food restaurant (it closed due to lack of business despite being across from a mall and a busy Wal-Mart, if that's any indication of things). I've never seen anything done to food, ever.
Working in a restaurant already sucks. There's not much you can do to the people making the food that'll make it any worse. And unless you're working at a restaurant on a TV show or something, the people in the back don't really care about someone being mean to the people in the front.
I worked at four stores over 15 years and never saw anything done to food. The only stuff was incidental, like a well done steak, dropped as it came of the grill, was not started over, merely rinsed clean.
From working in a movie theater, it was the chains policy to have 8 yellow bags on popcorn(40 gallon yellow plastic bags) filled every night so that the morning crew wouldn't have to pop all morning to fuel the morning flicks. Even dumped it into the popper base. Because of the plastic bagging, the morning popcorn didn't have the same taste. You would even get people that would ask for it fresh from the popper and not the prebagged stuff. It was all the same.
So based on how busy the theater usually is usually the first showing of the day is not a good popcorn show. Sometimes even the second isn't good either but it is based on how busy it was.
I know this is still the case because I took my son to Toy Story 3 a while back and forgot about this until we ate our popcorn. I knew it wasn't fresh.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1533003-100x100.png\")
The nachos and hot dogs also get put in the back and recycled the next morning. Luckily, the 1st shows are full of kiddies who don't complain much when they get stale food.
I read the list at the site, and this one struck me:
\"In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.\"
So what's the point of tipping? Tipping is to reward good service, not to pay all of the employees of the restaurant. Pooled tips seem like just a way a restaurant gets out of paying their people what they should be getting paid.
I feel like pooled tips should be illegal. The reason food service people get paid so little is because they are expected to make the rest up from tips. If the tips \"they\" get are actually going to everyone, what is making them go above and beyond? If they can just phone it in and still get tips from the hard work of the other waiters, why bother working hard?
Also, if we have a bad experience with a waiter, how are WE stiffing the bartender/busboy/waterboy? It's more like the bad waiter is stiffing the rest of the people by not doing the bare minimum to get a decent tip, meaning everyone else doesn't get their share. Why blame us? Blame your lazy co-worker.
What the article is describing is tip shares, not tip pooling. Every restaraunt i have ever worked in has tip shares. that is simply a small portion of your tips going to the busboys, bartenders, and hosts. Most places now make waiters pay out a portion of their sales, not their reported tips, because ALL waiters lie when reporting tip income.
Tip pooling is when all the waiters for the establishment poll their tips for the evening and split them up at the end of the night.
As a waiter (if i ever go back to waiting tables), I accept and understand tip share, but i will never work in a place with a tip poll. there is always at least 1 person on every shift who knows he can skate by and still get paid from his coworker's tips.
Isn't tip pooling illegal in a lot of places?
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1525970-100x100.png\")
I think you're misunderstanding one part. They can't \"phone it in\" and still benefit from the good work of the other watiers.
Most waiters will give a percentage of their own tip to the bartenders and busboys, but not to the other actual waiters. Thus, if waiter A is a better server than waiter B, A will still get more tips in the end (assuming patrons pay based on service, which doesn't always happen). Of course, your point is noteworthy that a bad waiter can blame poor service on the rest of the staff, but sometimes, that does happen too.
I've heard numerous stories of people who work at restaurants where all the tips are shared among everyone. That means (in a hypothetical restaurant with 2 waiters, 2 cooks, and a bartender) waiter A works his butt off, pulls in 200 bucks in tips, waiter B is lazy and makes 20 bucks in tips, bartender makes 50 bucks in tips, and at the end of the day the 270 bucks worth of tip are split 5 ways, each person getting an equal share. That is the kind of system I was thinking of when I made my post.
\"Pooled tips seem like just a way a restaurant gets out of paying their people what they should be getting paid.\"
That's the point of all tips, in America, anyway. Waiters in other countries used to look at me me like I was insane when I left 20% on top of the bill. Once, in Prague, the guy actually yelled at me, thinking I was insulting him. Difference being, in Europe (and I'm sure in other places as well) restaurant owners aren't working on the same profit margins as they are here, and can afford to pay their servers and other staff a realistic wage.
It's either that, or American restaurant owners are complete dicks, and we facilitate their dick-ness by continuing to subsidize their employees salary.
,,, your experience in Prague is why it's always important, when travelling to/in other countries, to learn what the LOCAL pattern for leaving tips is.
The normal in Czech Republic is to round it up (I live in Prague) - If say your meal is 140kc - most Czechs will round it to 150, if the bill is 130 to 140 and so on. I've never heard of a waiter getting angry at overtipping, and I generally tip much more than the Czechs. I think there was some other misunderstanding for you - and Czechs are not a customer service type of people.
Yeah, I caught on to the \"rounding\" thing pretty quickly. I was tipping 20% over the bill, which I thought was normal. Maybe the guy had other issues. That one little experience hasn't altered my perception of them though - Prague is still one of my favorite cities and I'd love to go back.
Being screamed at in Czech at one in the morning on your very first day abroad is quite the trial by fire...
\"So what's the point of tipping?\"
To artificially keep costs lower, like airlines publishing one rate then tacking on fee after fee.
As someone who's husband works in the kitchen of a restaurant - HE also gets paid very crappily for all the work he does. PLUS, the waiters/waitresses treat the staff back there like crap and constantly blame them for all the mistakes that they themselves made, etc. HE deserves to get something a little extra for the abuse he takes from the servers!
We always had tricks for dealing with dick wait staff - tell him to hot plate them once and they will get the point.
Hot plate - set plate under salamander for a few minutes then put the food on when you see the waiter coming to pick up the order and laugh when the waiter screams.
Yes we were bloodthirsty, and I feel no shame for it.
This is part of the reason shared tips are so ridiculous. We are expected to tip taking into account all the people who made our meal possible, but the fact is that when the time comes to actually leave the tip, all we think about is how the waiter performed. I can't believe restaurants can get away with that kind of crap.
I believe that if a restaurant wants to institute a tipping system, then the only people who should be making a sub-par wage (with the rest coming from tips) should be the people who actually regularly interact with the customers. The cooks, cleaners, busboys, and hosts should all get a living wage, and the waiters and waitresses and bartenders making the lower wage, and the tips go straight to them. If something like this happened, I can imagine improved service across the board, since the waiters won't be able to rely on other people doing their job to make their money.
I'm sorry your husband gets crap from the waiters. I raise my glass to a world without people who don't interact with customers relying on tips to make a living wage.
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If we must use a tipping system that is outdated and not in use in most of the free world, fine, I'm okay with pooled tips. Why? Because it puts pressure on underperforming wait staff/cooks/etc, because they'll drag everyone down with them. If someone comes on shift who consistently drags everyone's wage down several points, they're either going to get whipped quickly into shape, or nobody will want to work the same shift with them.
I personally want to abolish the tip system entirely and pay service employees an actual living wage. >.> But I'm crazy like that.
Are you prepared to have the price of everything you order increase by oh, say, 200%? As the system is currently structured, waiters are paid only when there are customers. If a waiter was to be paid by the hour...think about it. I average 750 a week. I work around 32 hours in a week. And yes-the restaurant I work for claims 100% of my tips, for me. So haters, I am paying my taxes.
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If you raise prices by 200%, then that is equivalent to having every customer leaves a 200% tip. Considering that there are people who survive on a waiter's salary in an industry where almost no one leaves a tip nearly that high, I'd have to guess that you're exaggerating. Raise the prices by 20% (the equivalent of a decent tip, right?) and give the surplus to the staff. Or use that idea mentioned earlier here: tack on an automatic gratuity, but let customers demand it back in cases of bad service.
Yes. I lived in Finland, where people simply don't tip. If the waiter goes above and beyond, you might leave a euro, but that's it and it's pretty rare. Going out to eat is more expensive, but it's also more pleasant. The waiters are all professionals, and they're treated that way by the customers.
Of course, they're also paid a livable wage and are able to make a career out of it, so that's part of it as well.
I managed it in Japan on a fixed income as a student, I think I can handle it here.
Agreed. I think we should get rid of the service employee min. wage exception. Prices will go up, but then you don't feel like you're depriving someone of a living if you don't tip well. If the service was good, you tip another 5%-10%, if it was bad, you tip nothing. They get a living wage (at least according to the government), but no more if they don't do a good job.
I guess this is just the European approach.
Hear hear. My wife and I visited her family in Taiwan, and the restaurant staff there actually get paid a living wage, and tipping is seen as something you do for someone who went above and beyond for you, and you tip if you want to, and no one looks twice if you don't tip. Tipping is actually....voluntary! *gasp*
I like it. The only downside is you never get to vote with your wallet, only your feet. If your service is bad, you currently have the option of pay up to 15% for your food. In that system, you pay full price regardless of how good the food or service was.
As it stands I'm more inclined to return to a restaurant if the service was bad once, in the hopes it was a fluke. But in the no-tip system, I'd probably not return for fear of having to pay a premium for bad service.
That's the thing. It's NOT an option to pay 15% for your food. You are EXPECTED to tip, and not tipping is seen as you \"stiffing\" the waitstaff, busboys, bartender, cooks, etc...
So if it's expected, and we still get bad service in a tip-based system, I again ask, what's the point of tipping? Punishing the cook who made the good food for the fact it was served to you by a surly waiter?
In Taiwan at least (don't know about other countries), the restaurant service was infinitely better than at any American restaurant, even at the Bennigans-equivalent places there. They have a sweet setup there. Instead of splitting up the floor into sections, with each section server by a different waiter, they split the floor up into sections with each section watched over by a person whose ONLY job is to watch the floor and come ask what you need. They seat you, give you your menu, take drink orders, then retreat to their podium. When you are ready to order, you raise your hand, they are over within 20 seconds. The only time they come over without you calling them is to refill your drink glasses, and this they do silently and quickly. When the place is busy, they have multiple people per section. Food is brought out by other people, whose job it is to bring people their food and clean up after them.
I would love to see that kind of system come to the USA. The price of the service is included with the price of the meal, and the service is better all around.
That system is called front- and back-waiter. One stays in the \"front\" (of the house) and one stays (mostly) in the \"back\" (of the house).
Exactly! It never even occurred to me as an option until I lived in Japan. We tried leaving a tip and they chased us down at the door to give it back, thinking we'd forgotten our money! It completely floored me.
I love how some clownshoe waiter thinks that working at some crappy restaurant and knows how THAT restaurant works means the entire restaurant industry has the exact same workflow and \"secrets\".
If you care, know your restaurant. If you do not, ignorance is bliss.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1020806-100x100.png\")
If you never even want to THINK about having to worry about this kind of waiter-abuse... be a regular at your favorite place, and treat the waitstaff like humans. Even if you don't tip decently, a good-mannered regular is a joy to wait on.
And I don't care if you tip well- if you treat us like crap, you will be avoided like the plague and the waitstaff will draw straws to see who gets to be your whipping boy.
PS- if you like the food, and your favorite place uses powdered eggs and dolled-up bottle dressing- what does it matter!? Good eats is good eats.
I could not agree more. I waited tables for a bit, and I remember being able to tell if someone was going to be a pain or not within 15 seconds of interaction.
Even places where I am not a regular (we do not eat out nearly as much as we once did, pre-children), being warm towards the staff always seems to work most of the time. Smile, engage and actually acknowledge the staff is a human being and not just a peasant to serve you. Saying thank-you seems to go a long way.
Then again, most places I go seem to hire quality staff. Maybe they would do that even if I was a jerk. I avoid full-service chain restaurants because the food is usually terrible, and the staff seems to be on par with the food.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1530517-100x100.png\")
You posted something from the same RD article about 4 months ago.
I knew I'd seen these before...
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1524231-100x100.png\")
I worked at a restaurant, and I've seen people mess with your food. I don't know who they interviewed that says it never happens.
One of the servers in the article states that tips should be given based on the pre-coupon amount. In other words, if you bring a coupon for a free appetizer, you should tip on the amount the bill should have come to with the appetizer included. I'm usually not stingy with tips and round up to 20%, unless service is unusually poor, but this doesn't sit well with me.
What are the thoughts of the other readers, particularly anyone who has worked in the service industry? Tips pre-coupon, tips pre or post tax?
Funny you should ask. We had a big discussion about this at work. We went to Ruby Tuesdays and they had one of those \"Buy one meal, get one free.\" I tipped on the amount of my check. Two guys that used to be waiters stated I should have tipped on what the bill would be without a discount. I stated: \"So if Applebees is doing \"2 for $20\", you look up the normal price of the entrees/dessert, and tip on that amount instead of what your check is?\"
I believe tipping etiquette is to tip pre-coupon/discount. Since the server is still bringing the food, you're still getting 'extra service' from them. I saw a few articles from a Google search about this but I've just heard this from family members that have been servers.
Tips should always be based on the full, pre-coupon value. It's the same amount of work for the staff, regardless of what price you paid for it.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-556398-100x100.png\")
Ah yes, but it's the same work for them whether you order a $20 meal of a $5 one... I still feel tipping should be based on the number of items brought to the table, not the value of the items.
I always tip pre-tax. A server should never expect anything more than that.
Wow, the actual list at RD is even worse! This actually got me to sign up for an account here just so I could comment on this idiotic (RD) article.
To wit:
What Drives Us Crazy
The single greatest way to get your waiter to hate you? Ask for hot tea. For some reason, an industry that’s managed to streamline everything else hasn’t been able to streamline that. You've got to get a pot, boil the water, get the lemons, get the honey, bring a cup and spoon. It’s a lot of work for little reward.
—Christopher Fehlinger, maître d’ at a popular New York City restaurant
I haven't worked in a restaurant since 1984 and I know this is complete BS. The coffee makers have a spigot on the side that dispenses hot water (as they do in most office coffee rooms, too). Pour into the little teapot and bring it to the table with an empty cup and a teabag. (Also, someone tell this guy that water for tea is boiled in a kettle, not a pot, which he would probably know if any restaurants used tea kettles, which I doubt any of them do).
Then there's this, which is just obvious:
What You Don't Want to Know
At a lot of restaurants, the special is whatever they need to sell before it goes bad. Especially watch out for the soup of the day. If it contains fish or if it’s some kind of \"gumbo,\" it's probably the stuff they're trying to get rid of.
—Kathy Kniss, who waited tables for ten years in Los Angeles
No kidding? They put it on special when they have a lot of it? Gee, I never would have guessed that! The key here is \"BEFORE it goes bad\". So who cares if they have a lot of it, as long as it hasn't gone bad yet?
I don't know who wrote these, but they are ridiculously not true. I've worked in 4 restaurants and we never did or saw any of this. Eggs come pre-scrambled in bags or cartons and they are sometimes mixed with pancake batter at the factory level to be sold cheaper.
I worked in a diner for 4 years and we never stuck people with decaf. Restaurants usually have multiple drink stations... Late at night, they close all but 1 down. The 1 that stays open keeps a pot of each until the last guest leaves. Why take 2 trips at different times to clean out 2 coffee pots? The coffee may be old though... That does happen!
Never seen the credit card thing. Sorry. People don't usually tip as well on a backup funding source.
Fish thing is somewhat true, but anywhere you order fish for under $20 a plate, this won't apply... The fish comes in frozen anyway.
The vegetable stock is another ridiculous one. Servers aren't malicious on that kind of thing, they're just stupid. Most servers I've worked with had very little food or ingredient knowledge. I've seen them lie, but not to spite someone... Just because they're busy.
What should have been on that list? Olive oil in cheaper restaurants is usually a blend of 20% olive oil and 80% soybean oil that comes in giant jugs.
Real butter does not exist in cheaper restaurants either. They use a liquid margarine in the kitchen.
Do these article writers just find the trashiest dumbass jerks from lowest bottom-of-the-barrel establishments that they can find to write their articles about? Talk about sensationalistic journalism! I've worked in the industry before and neither in my own experience, nor from any of my colleagues had I ever heard first-hand of a restaurant that wouldn't fire the server on the spot for any of these kinds of actions, whether the customer found out or not.
I'm sure that there are plenty of places where these kinds of gross violations go on, but I think these are far out-numbered by the places of good repute. Sure, when you hire young inexperienced workers into high stress customer-facing jobs you'll get lots of bad eggs, but they don't last long...or your company doesn't last long.
Some additional comments from the article:
We put sugar in our kids' meals so kids will like them more. Seriously. We even put extra sugar in the dough for the kids' pizzas.
—Waitress at a well-known pizza chain
I'm just gonna go with places like Chuck E. Cheese or something, lots of pizza chains have the dough \"formed\" in a factory and delivered to the restaurant...
At a lot of restaurants, the special is whatever they need to sell before it goes bad. Especially watch out for the soup of the day. If it contains fish or if it’s some kind of \"gumbo,\" it's probably the stuff they're trying to get rid of.
—Kathy Kniss, who waited tables for ten years in Los Angeles
This is pretty true of a lot of restaurants trying to push \"left overs.\" It may not be just the soup though.
Now that I’ve worked in a restaurant, I never ask for lemon in a drink. Everybody touches them. Nobody washes them. We just peel the stickers off, cut them up, and throw them in your iced tea.
—Charity Ohlund, Kansas City waitress
I've heard this, but generally that the lemons are cut around unsantized places and contain a lot of bacteria....
If you ask me how many calories are in a particular dish, I'm not allowed to tell you even if I know. I'm supposed to say, \"All that information is available online.\"
—Waitress at a well-known pizza chain
Which is true, but if a company is willingly telling servers not to divulge this information, something is seriously, seriously wrong.
(Some places have it on the menu though.)
Skim milk is almost never skim milk. Very few restaurants outside Starbucks carry whole milk, 2 percent milk, skim milk, and half-and-half; it's just not practical.
—Chris
True of most places, it was true when I worked at the waffle house.
Some places buy salad dressings in one-gallon jars, then add a few ingredients, like a blue cheese crumble or fresh herbs, and call it homemade on the menu.
—Former waiter Jake Blanton, who spent ten years in restaurants in Virginia, North Carolina, and California
I never assume dressing is home-made... oil and vinegar ftw.
The single greatest way to get your waiter to hate you? Ask for hot tea. For some reason, an industry that’s managed to streamline everything else hasn’t been able to streamline that. You've got to get a pot, boil the water, get the lemons, get the honey, bring a cup and spoon. It’s a lot of work for little reward.
—Christopher Fehlinger, maître d’ at a popular New York City restaurant
This is funny... never knew that - when people ordered tea at Waffle House, we just used the hot water spicket that comes on the side of MOST industrial coffee makers... sounds like this guy is getting hosed at his job.
In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.
—Christopher Fehlinger
I don't work in the food service industry anymore... but I gotta say, the department I work for - if one of us looks bad, we all look bad... as much was said when I got promoted to this position. You either win as a team or you fail as a team, you get no sympathy from me... keep your co-workers in check, sir.
People think that just because your food took a long time, it's the server's fault. Nine times out of ten, it's the kitchen. Or it's the fact that you ordered a well-done burger.
—Judi Santana
I never bitch about the wait time of food, especially if a place is busy and definitely if the waitress comes by to check up on us, apologize, refill drinks or offer something quick - like bread and butter. If someone is really causing a stink about the wait time, they are just impatient jerks... you can tell if you're being dicked around. I've had the wait staff come out and let me know that the kitchen screwed up on my dish and they were remaking it - hey they admitted it, I'm cool...
When you’re with the woman who's not your wife, you’re a lot nicer to us, probably because you know that we know it’s not your wife.
—Caroline Radaj, waitress at a members-only club outside Milwaukee
How the hell is this relevant.... ?
It’s much easier to be recognized as a regular on Mondays, Tuesdays, or Wednesdays. Once you’re recognized as a regular, good things start to happen. You’ll find your wineglass gets filled without being put on your bill, or the chef might bring you a sample.
—Christopher Fehlinger
Depends on the restaurant... you can be a \"regular\" anywhere and get a hook up. Unless you're a regular pain in the ass. One of the regulars at waffle house was a really bitter, angry, middle aged guy - who demanded FRESH coffee.... anyone who spent any time serving coffee can tell you - a pot of coffee isn't really a pot of coffee until the entire brew is done.... he would have me remove the pot WHILE it was perculating and pour him a cup... after a month of this, I refused - I didn't care if he was a regular, it basically screwed the whole pot. Needless to say, there was backstory drama of the owner of that particular store owing him money and it blew up into a full blown argument one morning, I didn't see him for a while after that.... good times.
Avoid Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day like the black plague. It’s crazy busy, so they’re not going to be able to pay as much attention to quality. Plus, they bring out a special menu where everything is overpriced.
—Steve Dublanica
True true true... doesn't matter where you go... every eatery is crowded.
If the restaurant is busy and your child is shy, please order for him. Kids can sit there forever trying to decide, or they whisper and you can’t hear them. Meanwhile, the people at the next table are yelling at you to come over.
—Derek Dudley, a waiter at a casual pizza restaurant in Phoenix
I feel sorry for this guy having that experience regularly. I guess I got lucky - always had a parent just go down the list of what was needed.
The best tippers tend to be middle-class or people who have worked for everything they have, not the really wealthy or the kid who inherited the trust fund. Which is not to say that we mind if you use coupons. But when you do, tip on the amount the bill would have been without them.
—Judi Santana
This is a horrible generalization... the worst tippers are the average american joe...
The coupon thing is just something I do in general...
Also... I live in Vegas... mediocre service is 10%, standard service is 15%, above and beyond or just a smiling face - circling around 20% every time... but typically out here, if you're staying at a hotel and you eat at one of the \"house\" restaurants... if you tip less than 15% word gets around - if you're one of these people, fine, I don't care - but advice... don't bill anything to your room.
First dates, especially blind Internet dates, are great for tips. You know he’ll probably order a bottle of wine and leave a 20 to 25 percent tip because he's showing off.
—Jeremy Burton, waiter at a grill in southwest Michigan
VERY.TRUE. And girls, if he doesn't... make that first date the LAST DATE.
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We had a horrible time trying to take my mother out for mother's day one year. First we tried a mexican restaurant we frequent - closed for the holiday. Then we tried Denny's and they were open, but they gave the cook the day off for mother's day, so they said they couldn't serve us anything that had to be cooked (In a restaurant? No backup cook? Why even stay open?) except for pancakes because they came premade and they just had to warn them up. We ended up trying 3 or 4 different places before we found one that was open and would actually servce us food. Weird.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-729254-100x100.png\")
Re: #2, I always ask the opposite of what I really want. If I want a vegetarian meal, I'll say something like, \"This is made with beef stock, right?\"
It's true that some servers just say what they think you want to hear. The dishonest servers will go ahead and say \"yes\" since that's what it sounds like I want. Honest servers will disagree with me and say \"no\". Not sure why, but I'm more likely to believe someone who disagrees with me.
4. b. Even if they are not powdered they aren't cracking eggs back there. Restaurant suppliers sell bags of pre-cracked eggs.
Except Waffle House. I've seen them cracking eggs on that griddle every time I've been in there.
FTA:
What We Want You to Know
In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.
Um, no. The server's bad service is stiffing the bartender, the water boy, the hostess, the runners, and the other waiters. That's possibly the BEST way to ensure good service -- pressure from ones peers to shape up or ship out. This should be a standard practice, including publishing how much of the tip pool came from each server's tips. Wall of shame!
Well, the server's bad service is the cause, but they're not the ones leaving the tips.
Most places i have worker the tip share (not pool there is a difference), for busboys and bartenders are based on a percentage of server sales, not server tips.
\"2. If you're a vegetarian and you ask if we use vegetable stock, I'm going to say yes, even if we don't. You'll never know the difference.\"
As a vegetarian who often has to ask this question, just let me say that I don't get mad if someone tells me that a dish I wanted contains chicken stock (maybe disappointed if I really wanted it), I actually appreciate them being honest with me and I just order something else. My restrictions limit my choices and I accept that. Same goes with asking if a non-meat item is cooked in the same oil with chicken or any other meat. Most waiters have been honest with me about this, even if they had to check with the kitchen because they didn't know the answer themselves. How do I know this? Because the vast majority of the time, they say yes. If they wanted to be lazy or mess with me, they'd say no.
The waiter who posted this is of the same vein as the Subway dude from a few months back who said he'd deliberately screw up people's sandwiches just to mess with them – bitter guy who hates his job and those annoying customers who keep showing up and wanting him to actually help them. He takes every opportunity to “stick it to the man/customer/whoever” & is self-centered enough to assume that everyone else is just as bitter as he is. Also he probably thinks he’s messing with vegetarians by doing this, but are you really messing with someone if they don’t know you tricked them? Is this one of those things you give yourself a high five over?
People are vegetarians (or have other dietary restrictions) for a variety of reasons – allergies or ethical/religious reasons being the most common. It’s unethical and even dangerous to knowingly lie to someone about what’s in their food. Try being lazy/douchey and telling someone with a peanut allergy that there isn't peanut oil in their food and see how that one turns out.
Yeah, the places where I asked if they used meat-based stock or had meat in dishes and they lied, I figured it out a little later when I became quite ill. Unless I think it was a sincere mistake (one place that makes both meaty and vegetarian versions of some dishes served me the wrong one and apologized and gave me a free meal next time I was there), I won't return to a restaurant that does that.
Unfortunately I usually don't find this out until after I've tipped and gone home, so I can't make the point at the time.
Number 4 is simply NOT true, which is making me doubt the rest. Food Service eggs are virtually always made from liquid eggs that come pre-scrambled in a big carton and/or pouch. They ARE NOT made from powder.
(And Waffle House makes them from real whole eggs right there in front of you...)
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1202616-100x100.png\")
A friend who is a waiter at one of the nicer Italian restaurants in my city told me their house lasagna is really a family pan of Stouffer's frozen lasagna, cut into four impressive servings.
This is not true . I have worked in restaraunts for 15 years and any of the ones i worked in never did this. if any waiter did anything remotely close to this they would be fired instantly.
I meant all of the things on the list. if any of the restaraunts did any of these you should not go there. any quality restaraunt would not do this.
\"2. If you're a vegetarian and you ask if we use vegetable stock, I'm going to say yes, even if we don't. You'll never know the difference.\"
HAHA! Yes, we do know the difference, if you don't eat meat for 10 years, any meat kinda digests like a gallon of motor oil.
Trust me, we know, we just think you're an idiot and we don't come back. BTW, stop doing this, if not for us vegetarians, then for yourself. You're legally liable for damages caused by serving meat to vegetarians. McDonald's lost a $10 million lawsuit for doing this.
Few things: 1) Decaf? You assholes. If I ask for coffee after 8pm, the last thing I want is decaf. 2) Eggs come in powder form? I thought fresh eggs were already dirt cheap and easy to work with. 3) You guys can't cook a well done burger in a reasonable time? Where I'm from anything other than a well done burger is illegal, and I still get all my restaurant burgers within 10 minutes. Something's wrong with your shitty restaurant if a well done burger is holding you up.
Decaf? You assholes. If I ask for coffee after 8pm, the last thing I want is decaf.
How is lying about how much caffeine is in the coffee worse than lying about the ingredients in the food?
This sounds like a list of things the author compiled by asking the waitstaff at a bunch of different places, \"Tell me the worst thing that's going on at your place that nobody knows about.\" Most of them may be true at some places, but they don't generalize well. The egg thing, for example. It doesn't take that long to crack and scramble several hundred eggs, and most places that care how the eggs taste will do it. Fish orders? Depends on the restaurant. A place that doesn't serve much fish might only get deliveries a couple of times a week, but the place I worked when I was in college got deliveries every day except Sunday.
Ok, I've ready this one before. Are you sure it hasn't been posted before?
1 is totally true. 2 is true if your waiter is a dick. 3 borders on criminal, I've never known anybody to try to pull this stunt. 4 and 5 aren't secrets.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-298926-100x100.png\")
I swear I saw this before on here or am I having deja vu?
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1528838-100x100.png\")
There are good restaurant owners, there are the complete slimeballs and everything in between. Some restaurants claim to not use MSG but have a barrel of it in the kitchen. I know one place that served non-diet sodas to people requesting diet saying they wouldn't know the difference (I pointed out he could be liable for killing a diabetic). If you want vegetarian food, go to a vegetarian restaurant or risk having it cooked in bacon grease or something. Same goes for kosher, halal, or any other food preference.
If you stiff the waitress cuz she's a bitch and you happen to leave your prescription glasses behind, expect them to end up in the dumpster after you go back and ask for them.
#1 is a lie. Worked at a restaurant. All real people know how to clean a coffee pot in a restaurant, it's called a rinse, poor, ice and swirl (Scrapes the rings away) then you just do boiling water (The boiling water sits in it. Some add detergent, it all really depends. Some also send it through the washer, again, depends). Never is it too much work to clean another pot, it's not freaken done by hand and even the lazy way (See the way most restaurants clean coffee pots) takes all of 1 minute at best. If this person can't spare one minute at the end of the shift while doing nothing anyway, he's a crappy server. Probably the type that doesn't clean their tables at all and acts like no tip should be shared with the bus boy they force to clean their tables
I've been a waiter for about 10 years before I finally freed myself, and I can honestly say I've never seen any of this happen.
If anything, we had regular coffee, because it was ordered more, you might only get 1 order a decaf at night. Plus, 8pm isn't late for servers, so we'd drink coffee too (plus we've been most likely working for 8-10 hours straight). Coffee takes two minutes to brew, and most decaf drinkers are happy to wait in my experience, I think a lot of them assume the decaf is old otherwise.
As for stock, I can see lying if the server didn't know, but I've never seen a server knowingly lie, there is nothing to gain from it.
We got fist 3-4 times a week, it was Red Lobster though, so that number might be higher than non-seafood restaurants.
I lied about a credit card going through once, but that was when a girl forgot her card, had to call her friend to drop it off, which took about 30 minutes. When I ran it, I said it declined, and said about 5 seconds later as a joke as \"payback\" for making me wait.
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I'm a vegetarian and I don't even bother trusting anything to be not-meat that is usually meat, like the broth. The one thing I do concern myself with is co-frying, I don't eat food that's been fried in the same grease as meat and when I ask if they fry everything together, every wait person I've had has always said yes, I've never had anyone say no. I just never eat anything fried unless I do it myself.
Also, I love those breakfast scrambled eggs. I know they're from a powder, but I like that bizarre taste.
I've been a server for 8 years and absolutely all 5 of these are UNTRUE in my case.
I'm honest about ingredients, I don't see a problem brewing any coffee for anyone, I don't have the TIME to get embarrassing with credit cards, and our meat delivery comes twice a week, yes, but this isn't market fresh, it's a chain.
Also, I worked at a breakfast place for a long time, and scrambled eggs weren't powdered, but we did use a liquid egg mix, which is essentially eggs already beaten with some flour. We'd scramble actual eggs on request though.
I know the ins and outs of restaurants and there are plenty of little games people play, but I'm tired of reading that servers are money grubbing manipulative liars from the get-go.
\"In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.\"
No. The server who caused the bad experience is stiffing the bartender et al. And I hope they exert a little peer pressure on their crappy coworker.
\"In many restaurants, the tips are pooled, so if you have a bad experience with the server, you’re stiffing the bartender who made your drinks, the water boy who poured your water, sometimes the hostess, the food runners, and maybe the other waiters.\"
This is in direct contradiction to that other tipping advice which is to not stiff the wait staff based on things not in their control. For example, not stiffing a good waiter because the cook messed up your steak the first time.
According to this you're tipping everybody so you actually should tip less for anything that goes wrong and not just poor wait service.
I'm a vegetarian (4+ years now), for moral reasons. I may not be able to detect animal products (i.e. stock in soup), but there's a reason I ask if a meal is vegetarian - and it's not about taste.
McDonald's was successfully sued about a decade ago after advertising that their cooking oil was \"100% vegetable oil\" but outside tests proved it contained animal fat.
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Having worked at all types of restaurants, from the nationwide chain scarf'n'barf to one the the nation's top restaurants (James Beard award-winning), I can say without any hesitation that none of these \"secrets\" were prevalent at any place I've worked. Do they happen? From time to time, I'm sure they do. Actually...we used to do #1 fairly regularly, but not at 8:00....more like 10:30.
Regarding the others:
#2 - Even as a full-time professional waiter, I may not remember off the top of my head whether a dish is *truly* vegetarian. Sometimes mistakes are made (who would expect chicken stock in a tomato basil soup?), but I've always made every effort to acquiesce to my diners' dietary restrictions...even if soe of them seem ridiculous.
#3 - Has never happened in my presence. At least that I know of.
#4 - Real restaurants serve real food. Fake (chain) restaurants serve fake food.
#5 - If fish delivery guys are always off Sat-Mon, then that's the job I want. That being said, just because the fish was delivered a day or two before does NOT mean it has turned...or is even close. I'd be more concerned about the temperature inside the walk-in cooler than the delivery date of the fish. Repeatedly opening and closing the door lets out a lot of cold air.
Let's also note the source. The purpose of Readers Digest is to make elderly people afraid of everything and everyone outside of their retirement communities.
So, uh, this is a list for people who haven't read _Kitchen Confidential_? Seems pretty light-weight to me.
If they lie to the vegetarian in #2, why wouldn't they lie to the fish-lover in #5?
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I just finished reading this and the original article and wanted to add in my own secret of having a good dining out experience and a way to break a sort of \"barrier\" between the employees and yourself.
Its simple, when you are finished eating, clean up after yourself.
When I dine out at a restaurant, I stack up my plates, glasses, napkins, etc, and gather it all neatly in the center of my table when I'm finished.
It shocks the waiter/waitress or owners (I like mom and pop places) the first time they see it. However, from then on out, they will recognize you, treat you well, and allow you the opportunity to make a friend or two.
5. Don't order fish on Sunday or Monday. The fish deliveries are usually twice a week, so Tuesday through Friday are great days. Or ask the restaurant when they get theirs.
Why ask? You will just lie to me, right? (See items #1 and #2)
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A few years ago I was employed as an exterminator for corporate accounts, not homes. What the waiter's told Reader's Digest is nothing in comparison to what I have seen in restaurants, food warehouses, animal processing plants and a whole list of others. Since that time, I have never eaten anyone's food except my own. The one and only super clean building I was in happened to be a Japanese restaurant's own small warehouse. You could have eaten off the floors there.
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Was this article written 20 years ago?
I am chef in institutional feeding and unless you are feeding prisoners nobody uses powdered eggs anymore.
With modern logistics and broad-line food service distributors like SYSCO or US Foods operators can get fresh seafood pretty much 5 days a week. Sure there are a few smaller and more remote spots where this might be true but for the vast majority of food service establishments this myth is a thing of the past.
The whole thing about the decaf vs regular and the veg stock vs beef stock... any place with a service staff with a collective intelligence over 60 would not do this. In today's hyper-litigious society restaurant owners and waitstaff are too reticent to pull this move anymore. There is also the whole food allergy/ sensitivity thing: What's worse, making some sick or taking 10 extra minutes to brew some regular coffee?
I agree wholeheartedly, and would actively try to call these people out long ago when I did work in food service. Many people have crippling food allergies and people faking only takes away from their actual struggles. People ALL THE TIME would say they are allergic to mayonnaise. I would ask the server to ask the costumer if they were allergic to the egg, oil, or vinegar. I would not accept the answer \"I'm just allergic to mayonnaise\" because that makes me possibly liable for whatever component (egg, oil, or vinegar) they may ACTUALLY be allergic to as it may be in another part of the dish. Every single time eventually the costumer would admit that they just did not like mayonnaise and wanted to make sure it didn't end up on their sandwich. DO NOT FAKE A DISABILITY TO ENSURE SERVICE, you are simply insulting those with actual dietary problems!
i'm terrible at threaded comments
Really? Wow, I've worked in restaurants for years, and I would never lie to a customer about what is in their food, be it caffeine, fish stock, salt, onions, whatever. Annoying as it may be, people can have serious health issues or allergies, or religious or personal beliefs that I feel I should respect. Such behavior on the part of a server is disrespectful and potentially dangerous. I know customers can be a pain in the ass, but guess what? It's your job to deal with them. Deal with it or get out of customer service.
I foresee angry messages.
Most of this is bullshit. Waiters are commenting on how food is made and when fish deliveries are. Like they would know. If you ask a waiter if something is vegetarian and they answer right away, don't believe a word of it because \"99 out 100\" times, they don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
It drives me crazy that servers would actually say things like this because their freaking livelihood depends on people going out to eat!