Are You That Table? How to Tell — and Turn It Around

Waiting tables is a one-way street where the customer always has the right-of-way with a perpetual green light. Servers work with a flashing yellow light, having to proceed with caution at all times in case the customer chooses to barrel ahead without the use of manners or regard for the one who is there to serve them. Customers can say and do pretty much anything they want to their server without fear of any consequences while a server is expected to remain calm and professional at all times no matter how badly they may want to respond to some uncalled-for behavior. 

A customer can express what they feel, but the second a server does it, they risk having a manager being called to the table, or worse, seeing their tip in jeopardy. The customer is in the driver’s seat and waiters and waitresses go along for the ride no matter how much road rage they have to endure. 

Some customers are more welcome back than others

These are the types of patrons some servers probably wouldn’t mind if they never saw again. Yes, restaurants depend on repeat business and all customers are necessary, but some can be more welcome than others. If a customer is upset enough about something that makes them consider never returning to the restaurant again, management has to look at what’s upsetting them and see if it’s worth fixing or not.

Management will always want to resolve the issue, but they might not mind so much if the guest ever comes back or not. Maybe the restaurant just isn’t that into them. Or, maybe it’s the restaurant’s way of “quiet quitting” where they do what’s required of them to serve a customer but they don’t go above and beyond because they’d rather that seat be filled by, I dunno, a nice person. 

Hospitality is a two-way street

For restaurants to work in that most special of ways, customers and staff almost operate in tandem. There’s a mutual respect and a merging of actions that come together to make a perfect restaurant experience and it usually requires nice people. You know how when two cars get to a four-way stop at the same time and the driver to the right is supposed to go first? That’s a shared respect. When the driver who isn’t supposed to go first decides to go ahead and inch out into the intersection and ignore the rules of the road, the respect hits a dead-end street. And then if you honk at them for going out of turn, they act like you’re the problem and they drive off, all mad. 

I say go off with your mad self. Nobody needs that kind of inconsideration at a four-way stop or in a restaurant.

If a customer is complaining and unable to be satisfied and is unpleasant to be around, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a restaurant might hope they’re angry enough to follow through on their threat of never returning. That customer might think they’re breaking up with the restaurant when the restaurant is actually breaking up with them. A manager’s refusal to give in to an unreasonable request might be the planting of a seed hoping the customer chooses to find another place to eat next time. 

Restaurants want a customer who’s friendly and a pleasure to serve; the type of person who waves a thank you to the car behind them when they’re allowed to merge into a lane, not the kind of person who lays onto their horn the second a light turns green and the car in front of them isn’t moving fast enough. 

Some customers need to be shown the off-ramp

Not every customer will be a joy to be around, but it’s the repeat offenders who restaurants might hope leave just angry enough that they don’t come back. If the customer hits a roundabout and ends up at the restaurant again a few weeks later, the restaurant will hope the diner has changed enough to make their return worth it. It’s not impossible, people change. But a lot of times a rude customer stays a rude customer and their repeated visits are like driving into a cul-de-sac of customer service and all a server can do is turn around and start over.