Selective service, by Matt Satow

I recently dined at a restaurant where I found the service to be particularly unexceptional. Perhaps I was just in an especially irritable mood that day, but the experience definitely left a foul taste in my mouth, despite the perfectly good food. And, the worst part was, it was one of those build your own bowl stir-fry places. The kind of place where the waitress’ job consists of little more than taking your drink orders, bringing an occasional refill and dropping off your order card to give to the wok cook once you’ve thrown together your veggies and sauces. I stood at the counter while the dish was cooked and brought it back to the table myself, so no food running was even required by this so-called waitress. The amount of effort it would have taken to provide me with what I consider to be adequate service would have been practically non-existant. So, how do you screw that up?

I was out running errands at a nearby mall in the middle of the afternoon when I was struck by a mean stir-fry craving. Obviously it’s not my preference to eat alone, but despite the circumstances the stomach wants what the stomach wants, and who am I to stand in its way? I’m sure that when the waitress saw me sitting there she was less than thrilled to be waiting on a 1-top, just as I’m sure I would have the same reaction in the same situation. The natural instinct may well be to focus 99 percent of your attention on the tables with the biggest checks, but good servers are able to disguise their true motives by providing good service indiscriminately.

When the server came over she was cold and impersonal, which is fine by me since I don’t really enjoy making small talk, but if I’m getting icy service I expect that everyone around me is also getting their share of wind chill. When the 4-top next to me arrived that was when I started to get a little annoyed. Suddenly my waitress had morphed into the poster-girl for hospitality. In fact, she was so over-the-top friendly that at first I mistakenly assumed that she and the diners were old friends. That’s when she pulled out the corniest waitress move in the book: the uninvited sit-down. I’ve had the displeasure of witnessing this particularly obnoxious and, in my opinion, completely inappropriate maneuver a handful of times before, and as soon as I saw her reaching for that chair I knew exactly what was coming. She pulled out the chair without a seconds hesitation, scooted herself up to the table and began chatting with her new-found best friends about donating to whatever cause this particular chain had decided to raise money for in an attempt to fool their clientele into thinking they’re socially responsible. “Now, you guys look like really nice people, so let me go ahead and tell you about this cause we’re trying to raise money for. For just five extra dollars…(blah, blah, blah).” No one hates getting hit up for donations while they’re shopping more than me, and the truth of the matter is I probably wouldn’t have given this sorry excuse for a waitress the lint out of my pocket to save an entire family of pandas had she asked, but for some reason I still found myself annoyed. You’d think I would have been grateful not to have been bothered, but I just kept thinking to myself, what? I don’t look like a nice person? Is it that obvious?

Ten excruciating minutes later – I kid you not – she finally got up to tend to her other tables, save for mine featuring one patron in desperate need of a refill; a refill that never quite made it to my table.

The bottom line is that whether a server realizes it or not, diners are aware of their actions even when they are waiting on other tables, and it’s important to treat all customers with the same level of care and attention, even a one top with an unmistakable look of social irresponsibility.