Last week, I was opening up the dining room for dinner. We had a lady here from lunch who was already paid out but sitting in my section. I went to clear something from her table and we got to chatting for a few minutes. I could tell from her face that she wanted someone to talk to and although the conversation was fairly normal, tears welled up in her eyes. She asked me how I was doing, I said I was a little tired from starting a second job this week, but excited. She said she loved coming to this restaurant and had never seen me before, and then we exchanged names. I held her hand for a few seconds. That was it.

She left and came back and handed me an envelope with $1000 in it. I have no idea anything of her life story, maybe she’s lonely and just needed to talk to someone, and felt really good giving someone else a blessing. I cried for her that night and I felt so guilty, like I didn’t deserve this, but the lesson I walked away with is that I’m doing the right thing at work. Talk to people, we work in hospitality and it’s our job to make people feel welcomed and cared for and seen. A lot of us are in it for the money but it’s bigger than that.

My work is implementing a new rule that we have to use the qr code for tabbing people out. It's called Sunday and it claims that people t!p more and leave better reviews. It also apparently uses Ai to reccomend menu items. Soo... wtf is my job then? I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with it and if it actually follows through on the things it claims? This flyer went up abt a month ago. I should also note that they're giving anywhere from $50-$80 just to do the training for it, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for how much you get.

Edit: apparently the QR code will be optional. They're pitching this to us that it's going to make it easier for us to split checks, but I'm a good server and I used seat number so it's never been that hard for me ha ha. I'm mostly worried that people are gonna feel more comfortable stiffing me or walking their checks. I feel like it takes out a whole step of my service. I prioritize connection whenever I serve tables and a big part of why I like doing it is because I get to talk to people.

I definitely greeted her, unfortunately it was probably around 3 minutes though. I DID bring her water, and her check, but she was right about the response. My fiance passed away a couple weeks ago and ive been in a terrible place and on edge lately, and this is the very first time ive snapped at a guest. Oh well.

Had to learn that I will never answer or I'll just straight up lie whenever a coworker suddenly asks me how I am and what I have planned on my day off. 90% of the time it'll just lead to "Oh can you cover my shift then?" It was never about striking up a genuine conversation or asking how I am. It just really irritates me. They pretend to care at the start and when they secure my answer, then they trap me with the "cover my shift" bullcrap. I fell for it the other day after I'd answered that "I don't think I have much planned just going to clean up home a bit". Then when it hit me I felt so bitter and disappointed..

I wouldn't be so irritated if they didn't always start with bs, and just ask me straight up if I'm able to. Depending on the day I'll almost always say yes, but if you lead me in with pretending to care about asking about how I've been and if I have any hangout plans, I will never see you in the same light again.

Anybody else have had the same thing happen to them?

I work for a smaller chain restaurant. During the week, it’s usually slow enough to where we don’t have traditional servers so whoever is behind the counter, also takes tables.

The issue I have is that my manager who is on salary is always taking every big table and party. Her and I started serving at the same time a few years ago so it’s not like it’s something I don’t know how to do. It just really upsets me because anytime I try to go to a table larger than 4 people, she literally spawns out of nowhere to claim it with welcome napkins, or claims it verbally. I’ve never been able to take a party in her presence.

On top of that, if there’s a lot of bigger tables and a single customer or children came to dine in, she’d have me take it because there’s not a decent tip outcome from them. To put it into perspective, there was one day where she had 6 bigger tables and the only table she let me take was a single person who came to dine in alone.

Just yesterday I saw that she made over 400 dollars from all of the parties that came in and it makes me so frustrated.

We have a couple new managers who are very nice and never intervene with tables UNLESS it gets too busy. Would it be worth telling them about how much this bothers me? Could something change? I know I’m not a labeled server so I feel guilty being angry about this, but it eats at me. I don’t know what to do.

If you had a teenage or young adult daughter who wanted to work as a server, how would you feel about it and why. All the elaboration welcome. I’m really curious about other women’s experiences!

Hi all, recently I had a shift at work as a waitress where I felt a bit chaotic and not on top of things. It’s been my first month working at this place, and on that shift I was with an even newer person - showing them the ropes etc. - and felt like they were more on top of things than me!

The worst two mistakes I made was giving one table a bottle of the wrong champagne (realising after pouring all their glasses), and charging another table for a bottle of red instead of a glass 😅😅 and later while cleaning, I just didn’t do it v smartly - starting to clean the dishwasher when there were some dishes left I hadn’t seen.

I know these are not disasters! But still, felt like incompetent blob. One of those things where you get more stressed the more mistakes you make, so you make more mistakes because you’re more stressed.

I’d appreciate any advice or anecdotes you have from your own experience: How to bounce back from shifts that feel like disasters (either in the moment, or during the next shift)?

Just got an interview for a Barback position in Manhattan.
Some context, I used to be a server at a diner-in movie theater in lower manhattan and had to leave to finish school. Since graduating I wanted to try bar backing and hopefully switch to bartending. I struggled a bit but I soon started to get some interviews and trail shifts. Still no offers. I then went back to try to get my old server job, but never heard back from the theater. It turns out they closed their location and no longer have servers in that theater. This morning I got an invite to do an interview at a restaurant nearby where I used to work and would really love to get an offer this time.
Are there any tricks to help out with this interview?

Title explains it. Maybe you can't tell them to eat a frozen bag of d***s but you can tap it

It’s at least twice a month that I’m seeing people on the server life or the waiters sub complaining about non-white tables, specifically Black people, either directly or indirectly. Whether you’re aware of them or not, your biases doesn’t live in a bubble. It shows when you act scared of your table or give them bad service. It hurts the people you’re trying to get money from, and it also ends up hurting all of us servers as well. People feel it, hear it, and see it on here. There are literally studies about it. Cracker Barrel literally used to let servers refuse Black tables until the 2000s. Our whole way of making money literally comes from racism, and yet you disregard the very same group of people this system was meant to hurt.

I mostly go out to eat at the same 5 restaurants, and depending on the race of who I’m with, I get treated completely different by the same servers. I act like the kind of guest I’d want to serve, and I make sure to leave 25-40%, but it’s definitely noticeable just as a guest. When I’m working, it’s even worse. I was told at one place that I was only hired bc I’m Black so they “won’t be called racist”, even though it was a casual dining restaurant and I was the only server with past experience. I’ve had coworkers get mad at me bc I sat them a table that looks just like me. They thought I should take every Black person because “they’ll like you better”. At first, I thought it might be better for people to get service from someone who actually wants to serve them. But then the tables started connecting the dots and asking me about it, and I couldn’t even be honest without risking my job. So I called my coworkers out, but it still happens sometimes.

And then I hop on the internet and it’s just more racism. People suck. They send orders back for dumb reasons, they run you, they make a mess, they’re disrespectful, they stiff you. It’s shitty, it’s wrong, and we should absolutely vent about it. The restaurant industry in the US enables assholes to do fucked up shit and get away with it. But instead of realizing that, you decide to hop on the internet and blame Black and Brown people. And then you choose to only hold onto the memories of the worst tables that fit into your preconceived notions. Just go out there and try, genuinely try, to give the best service you can to ALL tables. And if you can’t do that, get the fuck out of the industry instead of ruining it for those of us who don’t discriminate.

*And before people start with that “Well, I’m Black and…” bullshit, internalized racism exists!!! Go fix that!!!