Waitress left 2 pennies and note by customer

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. "Waitressing"

Yeah, no gender issues there.

One of the first things I learned when I waited tables was to never note how busy you are. This is common sense: from the customer's perspective, it doesn't matter whether the restaurant is packed or empty: they pay for service, period. It is a mistake of perspective to note that you are busy.

Fair enough.

Still, you don't have to be a cheap dick about it. This is a problem on the customer's side, too. The customer is such an asshole that he (or she) thinks that the teaching is up to him (or her), and that it is monetary in nature. There's little doubt that whoever wrote this note thinks that he is doing something useful: training a service employee in her job. Probably feels all righteous about it, too, some nonsense about incentive structures and learning, and the like. This person is, put plainly, an asshole. Mature people who care for others don't carry on in this way.

I can't tell you how many times I've left a waitstaff person who struggled with service 18%. That's my dropdown: from 20% to 18%. And I don't give a good goddamn if I'm "incentivizing poor service," or anything else so stupid, because - by and large and with failures and successes - I try generally not to be an asshole.