Worker Shortages in Restaurants - How You Can Help

[MineralMan]

My wife and I have moved to a new town, a suburb of Minneapolis. The city, Maple Grove, has a remarkable center shopping core that serves much of the western metro area. It's just a couple of blocks from our new place. So, we've been trying out restaurants, of which there are many. Some are unique, and others are chains.

Last evening, we went to Biaggi's, a chain of Italian restaurants. It was busy, but seemed a bit understaffed, so we shifted into patient mode for the evening. Our server, a young woman in her 20s, was clearly new to this work. She didn't know what a Negroni was, when I asked for one after being prompted to order a drink. "What's in it?" she asked. I told her, gin, red vermouth and Campari. "I don't know if we have those." she said, with a worried look. "Oh, the bartender will know how to make one." "OK, I'll try."

Later, when she came to take our entrée order, I ordered a mixed seafood capellini di mare entrée. She said, "Do you like that one? I don't really like seafood very much." I laughed, and said, "I do." "OK." Now, that's not a question a server should probably ask, but who cares? She was just curious about a menu item she had never tried.

Anyhow, I got my Negroni, which was nicely made, and the seafood capellini was darned good, for a restaurant being so far from any ocean. The server was new to the job, quite obviously, but that's OK. She was attentive and curious about the food and her customers. So, we were encouraging and cooperative. She also got a very good tip, at my wife's insistence. I hope she stays with the job. Soon, she'll be a very good server.

So, be patient right now with restaurant service. Most restaurants are short-staffed and may have inexperienced people waiting tables. Encourage them. Keep your sense of humor alive.

[luvs2sing]

1. Good customers get good service..

for the most part. That’s our motto, anyway.

Several years ago, Hubster was out of town, caring for his sick father, on our anniversary. He got back the next afternoon, and we went to our favorite celebration spot for dinner. We hadn’t seen each other in four or five days, the family stress was high. We were seated, drinks were ordered, and we began decompressing. It took the waiter quite a while to come for our appetizer order, but that was okay. We were talking. It took even longer for him to bring our appetizer and take our food order. I began noticing the servers dashing around anxiously and eye-rolling and some raised voices among the customers. Some customers were leaving. And Hubster and I were enjoying our appetizer and talking.

About the time I realized we had waited a pretty long time for our meal, the waiter came over and apologized profusely for the slow service, saying that the kitchen was short-staffed. We assured him all was well, ordered another drink, and kept talking.

When our meal finally arrived, it was delicious, as always. We had talked out all the family stress, and we were ready to enjoy our dinner. Afterward, the waiter and the manager brought out dessert menus and said we were getting free desserts because of our kindness and patience on what was clearly a horrible day for the restaurant. We certainly didn’t expect that, but we were grateful not just for the sweet treats but for the brief reprieve we had given that poor stressed-out waiter and for the time we were able to just sit and talk things through during a rough time. We also tipped him very well.

[MineralMan]

5. That's generally true, too.

My wife and I are always aware that we are being served by someone who could well be having a bad day, be under stress, or worried about something. We cut servers a lot of slack, generally.

One of my favorite restaurant experiences was in eating at one of those high-end restaurants in Las Vegas. We were celebrating getting engaged at a trade show, and decided to splurge and go all-out in our choice of places to eat.

After being seated, it was clear that the waiter who came to our table was new. He wasn't some young guy, but I guessed this was his first shift in that particular restaurant. He seemed nervous and unfamiliar with the menu. He seemed nice, though, so we just chuckled about having a new waiter in a pretty darned expensive restaurant. We decided just to go with it and have fun during our multi-course meal.

At one point, I asked him, "This is your first day here, right?" He nervously said, "It is." My wife, then my fiancée, said, "Don't worry. We're in no hurry." So, the meal went on and the courses were served, and we conversed and bantered with our waiter in a friendly way throughout. At the end of the meal, when he brought the check, he said, "I just want to thank you two for being so patient with me and understanding." We tipped him very, very generously. It was part of the fun of our night out, really.

[LizBeth]

2. Customers are mean and getting more so along with low wages. I am applying lots to places

at around 16-17 an hour and not service work. Lots of applicants for these jobs. 100-250 apps. I worked at hotel and I just do not want to take the abuse again even though here, they are getting to 15 an hour. I am so damn tired of mean.

[GPV]

7. Yes, so many mean people around. A woman made a server cry at my son's restaurant, and

they banned her for life.

[Grokenstein]

17. That's good policy.

[Salviati]

19. More places should do that.

[csziggy]

10. I don't understand being mean to the people who are there to help you

Unless the service people are obnoxious to begin with, I am very patient with them - and I can only remember two or three times when they have "started something" in my many years as a customer. (Both of the specific times I can remember were a total failure to get service - once I simply walked out after waiting for a menu for twenty minutes while the servers gossiped in the corner of an otherwise empty restaurant.)

If I am out for a pleasant dinner, why would I poison the event by being mean to the servers and other people there to help me? It doesn't make sense!

[MineralMan]

13. Agree 100%

I will not spoil my own evening out by being a dickhead. What's the point of that?

[hatrack]

24. Don't. Piss. Off. People. Who. Handle. Your. Food.

True story - this was some years ago at a restaurant in Lawrence, KS, since closed, a nice semi-upscale place.

You probably know John Heard, who was a character actor in a number of movies and TV shows. He was usually a bad guy or a bureaucrat, and was in The Sopranos and Michael Clayton and a bunch of other stuff.

So anyway, he came in one night (performing in KC, I believe) and ordered steamed vegetables with rice. Dinner arrived, and he pitched a fit: "I ordered steamed vegetables, these have obviously been microwaved, and that's not what I ordered, do you know who I am, blahblahblah!" and really ripped the waiter a new one (the vegetables had been steamed, btw)

The waiter apologized and headed back to the kitchen to redo the entree. Right before the line cook replated the vegetables, he grabbed the plate of rice, went back in the storeroom, dropped his trousers and sat in the rice.

Mr. Heard enjoyed his remade dinner.

[csziggy]

29. Hah! He deserved what he got! nt

[CrackityJones75]

3. Could not pay me to live in MG.

Gross.

Hope you guys enjoy it but man that area is just gross. The people, the urban sprawl, the nothingness but chain stores. Yuck!

[zeusdogmom]

4. I know some very nice and happy people who live there.

My motto : bloom where you are planted. Be the beautiful flower in the weeds

[CrackityJones75]

6. Right. I wasn't planted there.

And won’t be transplanted there either. MG is the model of how we should NOT be expanding. Yuck.

[MineralMan]

11. Wherever YOU go, there YOU are. That's always true.

Places are what you make them, frankly. You really do get what you expect to get. I expect to like this new place, so I imagine I will like it. We chose our new home here because it had the features what we wanted at the price we wanted to pay. We didn't pick it based on the place where it is located, but because we had specific wants and they were met.

We also found a Mexican restaurant with a menu that is full of Baja California cuisine - the same stuff I grew up with. It's not a chain restaurant. Everyone in it speaks Spanish. Right across the street from a big shopping center. You find what you want to find, wherever you are, I've found.

Yes, Maple Grove is a huge shopping destination for the West Metro. That's cool with me. It just means more choices and options.

[calimary]

16. Hey, I like that, zeusdogmom! "Bloom where you're planted."

"Be the beautiful flower in the weeds."

Well, maybe you'll drop some seeds or send out roots that'll spread and sprout. And then you're likely to have more flowers!

[MineralMan]

8. Don't worry. We won't pay you to move here.

Wherever you live, there you are. We're meeting neighbors in our little development. Most seem very nice. We have a very busy street right next to our place, but the road noise can't be heard inside our townhome. That road makes it dead simple to get around the Twin Cities, since there's an entrance to I-694 one traffic signal from our house. The other way gets us to I-494 southbound. Hwys 169 and 100 are also close. So, we can get anywhere quickly and easily We used to live in a neighborhood in St. Paul, a working class neighborhood. That was OK, too, but it was on the edge of the city, so finding places to eat and shop involved a drive. Here, not so much.

Stores? Well, I can choose, for my grocery shopping, from Cub, Lunds, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods. None are more than 5 minutes from our home. Tons of restaurants. There's a Lowes one right turn from Hemlock, the road that goes past our house. There's a Hardware Hanks, just down the road about a mile, as well, if I don't want to go to Lowe's. Costco is right by the Lowe's.

We're still exploring, since we've only been here for three weeks. We like it. Whether you would or not is not really a concern of mine. I'll be perfectly fine if you don't move here...

[Thtwudbeme]

25. I google imaged it

I think it's pretty. To each their own.

[MineralMan]

31. Thank you. It's just a typical Twin Cities suburb,

except for the concentrated shopping areas right in the center of town. Because several highways go here, it's a central location for many suburban communities. That's why so much shopping exists in Maple Grove. Around that, however, is a mixture of single family homes in all price ranges, along with low and high-density housing. Parks and lakes are within the city limits and city services are easy to get to.

It's not a place where everyone wants to live, but it's very convenient if you do live here. It's not as diverse in population as St. Paul was, of course, mostly due to higher housing costs. However, if you don't mind townhome living, prices are about the same here as anywhere else in the Twin Cities. Our two-bedroom, two-bath, 1400 sq. ft. quad townhome was in the mid $200s. Same pricing as a mid-century rambler in St. Paul. We had one of those, and it's about to go on the market. We'll just about get our money back for the new place.

We moved to this part of the metro, because my wife's old friends all live in the western suburbs. This morning, she's out at brunch with two of them, while I mind the fort here.

If you live anywhere around the Twin Cities in Minnesota, it's going to be a lot like Maple Grove. That's just how it is. This is a nice suburban community, but it is what it is.

[marie999]

9. We help by giving a generous tip.

Our tipping policy is $5 per person or 30% whichever is higher.

[MineralMan]

12. That sounds about right to me.

The other thing we do is leave cash tips. We never put tips on the card, and we make sure our server picks up the tip.

[TNNurse]

14. Wish more understood that cash tips are best.

You know that the server gets it that way.

[Wounded Bear]

15. I have never understood the joy of being mean...

restaurant servers are there to serve us. I have a lot of respect for them, generally. It takes a certain personality type to be really good at it, and I see no reason to look down on...well, anybody to be frank.

[Grokenstein]

18. An old but evergreen Twitter thread, well worth reading/retweeting

Link to tweet

[SWBTATTReg]

20. Reminds me of that motto 'treat others as you would want to be treated'...it seems like that

this saying gets ignored too many times, and we see a lot of selfish people instead (Me me me Me me me!), who interrupt and hang onto to you for the evening and tell you everything from A to Z even though you are not even in the least bit interested (you wouldn't be able to get a word in anyways).

Unfortunately, these 'Me' people take too much out of our lives (believe me, my SO and me tried to get away/stay away from such people, but they have an irritating habit of finding you anyways). My SO says to grin and bear it, but I can't see the logic of enduring such boorish behavior, after all, we're out for the evening and wish to talk w/ each other while we have a little peace and quiet away from home. It's the bane of all good conversations, that one that literally knows everything, and needs to tell everyone else what they know too.

Like you, we prefer to make an experience that both parties will enjoy, the server (and their fellow workers) and you and your party. Sometimes more will come out of such enjoyable experiences that money alone, can't buy (and of course a good tip is always appreciated).

[MineralMan]

27. Irony does not become you.

[niyad]

22. I like our Biaggi's very much (pretty sure it is part of your chain, a relatively small one).

Good menu, very good service whenever I have been there, and wonderful desserts. Like you and your wife, I try to be patient with new staff. Don't want to scare them off!

[NullTuples]

23. The best way to help workers...

...is to contact management or the owners and tell them they need to hire more people or you won't be back.

[MineralMan]

26. Not really. It's better to help service workers have a good experience

with customers, since there are many customers who will berate them for the least thing. Management is not waiting on my table. The server is.

[NullTuples]

30. I disagree. We're at a moment in time when restaurant and service...

employers are at a disadvantage. It's a rare opportunity for workers to make gains. And I feel customers must support them.
By this I mean complement the work your waitstaff did, but also pressure the manager or owner to hire more. That gives the employees extra leverage.

[niyad]

28. years ago, a friend and I went to a local favourite restaurant for breakfast. It was

unusually crowded, so I knew that service would be slow, and we were prepared to be patient. But after about 15 minutes, we did not even have menus. I was just about to go to the hostess to at least get menus when our regular server appeared with our regular order. She had seen us come in, and, knowing our regular order, had placed it. Needless to say, she got an extra-generous tip that day.

In another favourite, family-owned diner, they would occasionally get slammed. They knew that I would pick up the coffee pot or water pitcher, or cutlery. As long as people had water and coffee, they tended to be more patient, and it was just an easy thing to do.