Service is supposed to be served with a smile, but being served should come with the same expectations: smile, be kind, and be patient. 

Basic human decency, you know? 

Unfortunately, in the short time I’ve been working in the restaurant industry (I work at a small, touristy, Mediterranean restaurant on St. Armands circle) I’ve already experienced people that seem to leave their manners at the door. 

I totally get it. 

I’ve been that hungry customer before, waiting for a table or wondering why my food isn’t appearing in five minutes. But the reality is that restaurants are complicated places with many moving parts, held together, often, by chaos, luck, timing, and in my case, hummus.

Serving, hosting, and cooking jobs seem straightforward, until you’re the one doing it. That’s when you realize the jobs involve coordinating (and relying on) ten things to go well at once. 

Running a restaurant can be compared to a pilot trying to take off. That pilot can’t just sit down, close the doors, push a button and head to Paris.

Pilots must complete complex checklist; mechanics need to inspect the plane; aircraft fuelers have to load the gas; air traffic control has to give all clear; passengers have to be loaded and secured— it’s a lot. 

A restaurant operates the same way: cooks making twenty dishes at once, servers handling multiple tables, managers ordering food and supplies, new staff being trained, hosts handling guests and calls and waitlists… It’s a lot.

On top of that, every employee is pretending like they’re not panicking even a little bit. 

So, when your Coke takes seven minutes instead of four, we’re not trying to ruin your day. The restaurant probably got busy all at once, or we ran out of tables, or the soda machine is out, and we are doing our best to keep up. A few extra minutes won’t hurt, I promise. 

Customers expect fast service, quality food, and a welcoming atmosphere. Employees work hard to create that experience, but sometimes, expectations differ from customer to customer. 

Ever since I was little, I’ve heard the motto, “The customer is always right.” But customers sometimes stretch the meaning of this saying too far. It’s not fair (or right) to be unkind and yell at employees when you don’t get your water refilled right away or your steak wasn’t cooked to perfection (if there are good reasons why it’s happening, which is most of the time).

One person who popularized this motto was retailer Marshall Field (one of the country’s earliest and most popular department stores). Fields wanted to build loyalty and gain competitive advantage by prioritizing his customers’ satisfaction. 

The motto adopted by customer service giants like Ceasar Ritz. But a small Mediterranean restaurant is not the Ritz, and the expectations put on its employees should be different. 

The customer may be right, but that ends when they’re yelling at a teenage girl for not bringing bread re-fills quick enough, or speaking angrily to a waiter, or berating a host, all of whom make a minimal salary for their labors.  

Service is supposed to be served with a smile. But being served should come with the same expectations. Kindness goes a long way and honestly…it makes the food taste better.