Waitress Abuse

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Waiters and waitresses are called servers now, but it doesn’t change the fact that they still wait at your table, notepad or i-Pad in hand while you take your precious time about the bacon.

The novel I’m currently reading has two guests driving a waitress crazy on her first day. One woman wanted nitrate-free bacon. Her friend wanted a garbanzo bean pancake with no raita.

Bacon is bacon and I don’t like it, nitrate-free or not. The abuse comes in when people go to restaurants to show off their online cuisine vocabulary, and not to eat; when people don’t have anything to do so they got out to kill time; when people go fishing for males or females in popular hangouts or when people go out to order vegan free lettuce and water.

Servers have to be patient. They can’t be rude, unless it’s in a movie. Jungle Fever, Spike Lee’s volcanic movie has a rude character, played by rapper and film producer Queen Latifah. She was on a roll, about why the black man at her table should not be dating the white woman, he was with.

She didn’t lose her job, but servers can. It’s minimum wage, but a job nonetheless. Restaurant food and home food are as different as night and day. That is a given. That is what leads to abuse, guests comparing the two. 

We go out to sample something different. It might be fish, but prepared differently from the way we cook it at home. Do we even know how to cook? If we order vegan latte, can we detect that the server brought non-vegan?

Restaurants are hurting because of COVID-19, which means people who rely on waitressing have a hard time financially. Some used to do it for tips, but those vanished with the advent of hashtags. What can I say?

Restaurants have fewer tables now to accommodate six feet apart, which means servers, managers, food supplies everybody, is stressed out.

Don’t aggravate matters by demanding vegan ice, with your water.

Another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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