Omnivore Atlanta

There aren’t many restaurants in town lucky enough to have an hour and a half wait for a table, but there are a few that do. I’m not naming names, but last night I was at one such restaurant. I didn’t begrudge the restaurant their popularity (although I did begrudge the vastly under-estimated estimate they gave me about how long the wait would be), but I did begrudge the numerous tables of diners who were well past done with dinner, and who stayed at their tables, not eating or drinking, ignoring the legions of people waiting patiently only a few feet away. Seriously, if you’ve been done for an hour, and sitting and chatting for an hour, all the while seeing that people have been standing there waiting for over an hour, GET UP!!!!! I was genuinely appalled at the lack of consideration my fellow diners showed, not just to the waiting customers (who were clearly visible) but also to their servers who need to turn tables in order to make money. I understand not wanting to end the girl’s night out, or the date, or whatever, but if you need more than say, 15 minutes, move your powwow elsewhere — a bar, perhaps? Don’t want to spend any more money? GO HOME.

Sorry, that’s the ex-waiter in me getting all excited. But seriously, where are people’s manners?

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It seems there’s a new trend in food writing, and it goes beyond the usual critical voice that we critics get to use in regular reviews. This week New York Times critic Frank Bruni chimes in with an article about his restaurant-speak pet peeve. I agree whole-heartedly with Bruni’s assessment, although I think that usually the restaurant specifically trains waiters to speak this way. It’s one of my biggest complaints with restaurant management in Atlanta — even high-end places like Trois obviously force scripted, patronizing, canned language on their service staff.

Also check out this “manifesto” that Leslie Brenner wrote a few weeks back in the L.A. Times, which is a list of “rights” diners should expect to have when showing up at a restaurant.

Of course, I did my own restaurant-bashing a few months ago with my article on the top things restaurants do wrong. But at least I tried to even it out with another article about what customers do wrong. In the battle between bad customers and bad waiters, who will reign supreme as the suckiest group? I say customers, although waiters will no doubt get the most press for their foibles.

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This week’s Food & Drink feature is dedicated to the subject of bad customers. Even though it’s been years since I worked in a restaurant, I have never quite shaken the trauma that bad customers inflicted on me and my coworkers. I felt it was time to publicly take a stand against bad customer behavior.

When I started writing, I was amazed at how much bad behavior there was to talk about. I fear I left some important villains out of the story. The most egregious omission was that of the inconsiderate diner, the one who talks on her cell phone throughout a meal, gets so drunk it’s a scary job to serve her, or brings her devil spawn in and lets them terrorize the restaurant.

Speaking of devil spawn, that’s a touchy one for me. Almost every waiter I spoke to about this article mentioned something about people’s kids, and we’ve all witnessed bad behavior in restaurants by out-of-control children. One waitress I spoke to in town mentioned having to clean up dirty diapers that parents left behind, an obvious flouting of the rules of decency. But as a parent, I also hate walking into a restaurant and being treated as a pariah because I have a child with me. My child isn’t perfect, but when he acts less than perfect in a restaurant I remove him immediately. One thing’s for sure, by the time my kid is an independent customer in his own right, he won’t be committing any of the crimes chronicled in the paper this week. I believe that kids should be brought to restaurants to help teach them what decent restaurant behavior is.

I’m interested in what other people think about this issue, as well as what you perceive to be the worst customer behavior. Next week I’ll be writing about the worst habits of restaurants. If you’d like to contribute to that discussion, e-mail me at besha.rodell@creativeloafing.com.

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