Comments on: Overrated: Waiters Who Complain About Customers

By: hector

hector — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:15:38 +0000

Actually, it is not that uncommon for a waiter/waitress to make upwards of $80,000 in an upscale restaurant; not to mention that most of it is “cash”.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:12 +0000

No one forces you to work as a waiter. If you don’t like it get another job. I’m sure there are plenty of people that would be happy to have it.

By: Young Urban Amateur

Young Urban Amateur — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:09:28 +0000

Meh, there’s a book deal involved; money is, of course, a significant cause of bloviation. Cf. the entire journalism industry.

By: Leah

Leah — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:56:37 +0000

I can’t speak on all the other waiter blogs out there but I do have to stand up for the writer here, who’s book is an outcropping of his popular blog waiterrant.net. As a forty-year-old man who, despite having previous jobs, is basically a career waiter in NYC, this is definitely no hipster. Plus, his blog usually covers problems with various restaurant workers as much as customers, and more ofter just his general philosophizing about life.

Though I’d imagine a certain number of pages in his book devoted to bad customer behavior (and I admit that reading this stuff, as someone who knows how to behave, is pretty horrifying and funny at the same time), I think the tone of this now out-of-context list has more to do with Readers’ Digest than the original author.

By: Lawrence Kestenbaum

Lawrence Kestenbaum — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:52:37 +0000

All kinds of dark thoughts occur to a highly educated and credentialed person who works unloading trucks or emptying trash bins or delivering pizzas for a meager living. The fact that millions of other people do this kind of work for a lifetime only deepens the gloom.

I’ve never waited tables myself, but I imagine that people accustomed to abusing waiters are especially unhappy to find themselves on the receiving end.