What did You Order?
Published by Bill November 14th, 2006 in Do Unto Us – Or Else.We’re your customers. That’s right, we pay your bills - so listen up. Why can’t you remember what we ordered? It’s not like you’ve been on a sabbatical. Consider the difference. One competent, professional waiter delivers hot food from the kitchen and carefully places the correct plate in front of each of us at the table - without saying a word. A second waitperson arrives at the table braying out a litany of, “Who ordered the chicken fried?” “The bar-b-que ribs? Where do they go?” “Ok, I’ve got a side of mash, a pinto and two orders of fries. Anybody got a clue?”
The food is getting cold by the time the second waitperson finally delivers it. But the main difference is we had a really good discussion underway before No. 2 rolls in like a bowling ball. It doesn’t matter if we’re discussing serious stuff like business, family problems or will the Yankee’s make the playoffs. Maybe we’re just chuckin’, jivein’ and laughing ourselves silly, but whatever the mood and conversation, when waitperson No. 1 delivers the food and leaves, we’re still on a roll. When the bowling ball waitperson finishes, the table’s ambience is blasted away like he/she just scored a strike.
Years ago a sales meeting was called in New York, and the group of twenty-four attended a Broadway musical as a perk. A dinner was arranged at Sardi’s Restaurant because even rubes from the outlands (like us) knew the Sardi’s tradition of after-show dining. Two captains took our individual orders since the group was large. We had cocktails before the show, and now after the show, we were well into the wine. Frivolity reigned.
Suddenly a phalanx of waiters, carrying two plates each, bursts out of the kitchen and begins whirling around our table shouting out Italian dishes (properly pronounced: a problem of communication with outlanders). On their second march around the table a waiter finally scored a home for a plate. The clamoring was deafening, and we still had to switch several plates after the dust all settled. This group regularly entertained in fine dining restaurants, and the unpleasant Sardi’s scene is still remembered by some decades later.
You say the pressure of getting all of your tables served makes remembering what each diner ordered impossible. Hogwash! It can’t be that difficult.
What if you number the seats of each table on your order pad starting with No. 1 as the seat closest to the kitchen; then continue numbering clockwise around the table? Better still why doesn’t the restaurant provide you with numbered order pads?
Try to start the ordering from seat No.1 and take the orders in succession around the table, but that’s probably not going to work. For one thing, some restaurants have as their practice (even in the age of feminism) taking all the women’s orders first. A further complication arises when one or more of us still is undecided on our order, or wants to see what someone else is ordering. Not to worry, your order pad it numbered by seat, right? You can take orders randomly, writing them into the correct seat number slot.
When you return with the food, just set the proper plate in front of the proper seat number, and smile. At that point you’ve graduated from Bowling Ball No.2 to Professional No.1 - now you’re worth a much bigger tip.
Bravo, bravo, bravo. This just points out the decline of the service industry in general, from dry cleaners, to waiters, to physicians, to . . . well, you get the picture.
ONCE I WAS IN THIS LITTLE CAFE AT MEDINA LAKE WITH TWO FRIENDS. WE NOTICED WHEN WE WERE PAYING THE CHECK THAT THE WAITRESS HAD WRITTEN ON THE CHECK “LONG BLONDE HAIR — CHEESEBURGER” AND “GUY — HAMBURGER NO PICKLES” AND “BROWN CURLY — GRILLED CHEESE” TO ENABLE HER TO REMEMBER WHAT EACH OF US HAD ORDERED. IT COULD BE SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS THAT, OR SIMPLY NUMBERING THE CHAIRS AT EACH TABLE TO KEEP THE ORDERS STRAIGHT. I’M ALWAYS EMBARRASSED FOR SERVERS WHEN THEY HAVE TO ASK, NOT TO MENTION PEEVED AT THE INEPTITUDE.
It may be a bit off subject, but this theme reminds of the time I went to a Chinese restaurant in London’s Soho with three friends, one of whom had just returned from Hong Kong, where he had worked in the police force for many years.
When the menus came, he took it upon himself to do the ordering — in Cantonese, and with much panache, it must be said. The waiter looked a shade surprised, as my friend was not Asian (his policing days were in the colonial era, but nodded as he took the order.
He then went to the dumb waiter shaft and called down in broken English: “Two number 10s, one 14, four number 8s and a 42.
This rather took the wind out of friend’s sails.