Comment by Stunting | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Stunting | Hacker News Reader

I was a waiter on the night shift in a Baton Rouge Waffle House.

Adored my time there, learned a lot and made enough money to pursue my dream career.

Among them: - You can be an asshole but as long as you follow protocol things will run smoothly. Had lots of arguments with cooks about whatever was happening, but if you stand in the right spot and call the orders correctly, and mark the plate the right way, your food came out when it was suppose to, the way it was suppose to.

- When it comes to increasing tips, Charm beats good service. At 2 am, all the drunk people enjoy chaos and jokes more than getting their orders correct.

- the person who decides when your food is served holds 100% of the power. If you’re going to be belligerent, you’re gonna wait to eat. If you’re gonna irritate the cooks, you’re gonna lose tips cause your food comes up last.

- security is only there for the appearance of safety. If a group of drunkards starts a brawl, the one hired hand isn’t going to stop them. Call the cops, clear out as many breakables and weapons as you can, and get the onlookers to stand back is the most you can do.

- Getting yelled isn’t as bad as you think it is. You can still operate in chaos if you follow your routine

- number one way to increase tips is volume, and the number one way to increase volume to your section is to wipe the table whenever they’re coming through the door.

That wiping trick is brilliant! Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Explain wiping the table? Are you fooling people into thinking the place is busier than it is?

I assume the effect is that a group of diners walks in, thinks "ah let's get the clean table!", and wanders over to your section.

I would think it probably also subconsciously signals that someone is ready to serve that table quickly and getting you your food faster, as opposed to an equally clean table across the room with no staff near it.

Waffle Houses are notoriously dirty, especially late at night when the drunks come in. Whether or not you're part of the party scene you want a clean table to sit at. Seeing someone wipe down a table while you're walking through the door gives you some assurance that the table hasn't been vomited on in the past few minutes.

> the person who decides when your food is served holds 100% of the power. If you’re going to be belligerent, you’re gonna wait to eat. If you’re gonna irritate the cooks, you’re gonna lose tips cause your food comes up last.

That works better for the customer (vs. the waiter) than for the waiter (vs. the cook). The customer has the leverage of leaving the place just as the food is served, never coming back, not leaving any tip, and/or writing scathing reviews for the restaurant. Almost none of this is useful to the waiter in the relationship with the cook. In some places even management avoids pissing off the cooks as they may be the most critical part of operating a restaurant business.

The problem with that reasoning is that the customer has a binary choice to make, to leave without food and have to repeat the process of finding an open restaurant and going through the process again. Add to that the fact that they already committed to a decision (the food they ordered), that they already waited for the food and it must be coming any minute now, and that it smells like food. Chances are most people would stay[0].

On the restaurant's side the decision is linear, they can judge how long they can make them wait.

I don't have data and you don't either, but I'm ready to bet no-one leaves for just waiting.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

I have left a restaurant after ordering, but it's because I was waiting nearly an hour after ordering and needed to get back to work.

> The problem with that reasoning

I never suggested they're perfect or that they'll even bring direct benefits to the customer but they are still at the customer's disposal and can server as leverage. A waiter has little recourse against the cook other than to find a way to make up or quit.

> the customer has a binary choice

This is all I was highlighting. The customer has a (relatively easy) choice compared to the waiter's choice against a cook.

I did leave at least once after waiting for about an hour for a regular dish, especially after seeing that everyone else at the tables around us were getting served. Whether this was an argument between the waiter and cook mattered less to me. Anecdotally, I know plenty of other people who also did it in similar situations. So while I don't know how widespread this is it's not just a viable measure, it's also plausible in practice.

And I'm never one to argue or be anything but nice to people that make and serve my food. After waiting for an hour the tip incentive for any of the staff is all but gone (they probably guess they won't get any) so the service level is less likely to suddenly shoot up. All you're doing is escalation of commitment [0]. I personally try to cut my losses when an evening already feels ruined. There's always a backup plan.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment

I think you're missing the point. The client has those options. Whether they choose to use them or not is a different matter. But they are all very effective. Especially the 3 where the "pain" is almost exclusively with the restaurant [%] and staff (no tip, not coming back, bad reviews). It's the last resort measures that are the most effective. They're still perfectly valid measures if they can give you leverage over the other party.

> Chances are most people would stay.

Chances are most people would tip even if their experience wasn't that great (saying this both as client and former waiter in a different life). But tipping is still a perfectly good leverage against bad service. Leverage isn't judged by how many people use it but how effective it is.

Unfortunately for the waiter there's little to no leverage in a conflict with the cook. I worked as one in my teens. We were the last in the food chain: arguing with the customers or cooks was terminal because the boss could not afford to lose either one over an ill-tempered waiter, especially when we were seen as "a dime a dozen".

[%] The measure of leaving when the food is served is not the most effective because in many run of the mill restaurants it just gets recycled in the kitchen. Not much is lost from the restaurant's perspective while the client may have lost more time. In some cases though where the dish can't be recycled it could come out of everyone's paycheck (cooks and waiters alike).

People don’t look at the reviews before going to the Waffle House. You don’t expect a five star experience. That’s not meant to be an insult to Waffle House. When you go in you know what to expect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com