Server Facts

Hello fellow bloggers,

I will be writing weekly postings about the inside views of serving within restaurants. The need to know of this blog will cover all areas about how servers operate, what goes on behind the kitchen, what we as servers experience when dealing with angry guests, and what happens around the restaurant that makes it such a fun working environment.

This posting will be information on how "we" as "servers" feel and see situations from the other side. The following five points are going to outline and introduce to those who are unaware of what goes on in a restaurant during the introductory stage of arriving and waiting for their dinner table.

Need to know:

Step1. When the guest arrives at the restaurant and the parking lot is full. This is not something that we as a restaurant operation can control. It is not our fault (server/manager) that everyone in the city has decided to go to the same restaurant, on the same night (Friday/Saturday), at the same time.

Step2. After the guest finds parking about 10 to 15 minutes has gone by and they are starving. They arrive at the front door and are greeted by a sweet hostess with a giant smile on her face. The guest asks for their table and the host passes over a little, black, coaster with a number on it. She tries to communicate that there will be a 40 to 50 minute wait. All that the guest hears is that we cannot accommodate them when they would like, and they must wait in the sitting area or bar side while starving. 

The bar is of course full of parties and people waiting for their table in the dining room side. Then, when the guest looks around and servers are know where to be seen through the large crowd. This is because, we are running food, trying our best to accommodate everyone and chasing guests into the dining room with their drinks that they left behind.

Step3. Once the guest finds a spot in a cramped space they watch for a table to open up. A bar server then comes over to say hello and offers to take a drink order while they wait. Many times the response is, "no I will wait to sit". As a server, my thoughts are, "that’s going to be a while". What that guests does not understand, is that there are tables in that servers section for the night that are preferred to be filled with guests who would like to eat dinner. No server comes into work, to work for free. So when that guest sits in a table and does not order dinner or any drinks it could take an hour before that server gets a table for dinner to make money in their pocket.

Step4. My favorite of all is when a guest sits down in my section if they have the option too. As a server I am prepared to give guests the whole experience that they are anticipating, however, they wish to wait for the dining room side of the restaurant. Why would this be? The guest likes the quiet! Unfortunately, the dining room sits three times as many people as the bar and the music is just as loud. 

I forgot to mention, that these guests already have drinks ordered from the bartender and they are sipping on their drinks like they are drinking hot coffee. Therefore, not only am I not serving them drinks to transfer over to their final bill, they are taking up a hole table and I am not making any money for the duration of their sitting. Please note, that basically in all business situations, time is actually money!

Step5. Servers sometimes happen to get those guests who sit at a table in their section for the full 40 to 50 minutes continuously questioning their servers about the wait and how much longer things will be. As a server, I will make it know that we have nothing to do with what the hostesses at the front have arranged. Servers are not allowed to interfere with the front door processes. So when that is asked we will always say we cannot be sure. Working for a restaurant that serves up to 650 dinner plates a night please keep in mind that if your server asked the hostess that question for every eager guest, that host would likely bite your server's head off.

Readers, this is just a little introductory with some insight of how things appear to be and how things actually are from a servers perspective when going out to eat at restaurants. There will be more to come and some of my posts will hopefully be entertainingly funny as this restaurant business can be most of the time.

Cheers!