Please don't be an asshole at the restaurant.

This post is, I suspect, an effort to preach to the choir. We have all worked shitty service jobs, or been close to people who have worked shitty service jobs. We all know to tip decently because the waiter is only making $3/hour, to not take it out on the waitress when the food is too salty because she's not the cook, etc etc etc.

But not everyone knows these things, and not everyone realizes the ramifications of their complaints.

Jon is a bartender. He's been working at a family restaurant for almost a year now, making a lot of margaritas and opening a lot of Coronas. This doesn't seem to me like a terribly long time to work in one place, but of all the bartenders on staff he's the one who has been there the longest. To me, this says one of two things: either it's a shitty place to work, or the management is too quick to fire its employees. I suspect it may be some of both since, in Jon's less-than-a-year at this place, more than a few people have been fired and people get bitched out for all sorts of crazy things.

Jon was scheduled to work the "slow" shift today, which at his establishment means that he comes in when the restaurant opens and goes home whenever business slows down enough that they can get by on one bartender for the rest of the day. Usually, this means Jon works an eleven hour shift, 10-9. He doesn't mind the slow shift because, especially on weekends, it means that he makes a lot of money. As a bartender, he gets hourly pay plus tips, and also a small tip-out from the waitresses because he mixes a lot of drinks for them. All in all, it's not a bad deal from a money standpoint.

As scheduled, he showed up for work when the restaurant opened this morning. So did the other scheduled bartender. So did the waitstaff and the manager. The hostess, however, did not. At 10:00 a.m., the bar can get by with only one bartender so the manager asked Jon to play host. Jon did, although he was irritated about it because it meant $7/hour and no tips. But he smiled and nodded and seated people and answered the phone. The hostess never showed up, so he was told he'd probably have to fill in until 4:00, when a different hostess was scheduled to come in.

OK, shitty, but OK. Then, at about 2:00, a party of 10 came in. They wanted a table on the deck. The deck was already full and it looked like it would be a long wait before there were enough open tables to accommodate a party of 10. Jon told the people that they could wait, or he could seat them inside next to the window so they'd have the same view.

They opted for the window table. Within moments of being seated, two tables right next to each other on the deck unexpectedly opened up -- someone decided not to order after all, or something. Anyway, the party of 10 had only been seated for a few minutes, and they hadn't even been served their drinks yet. Jon hadn't even had time to bring over the high chair they'd requested. So, high chair in hand, he went over to the table and told them they could move to the deck if they wanted to. They did. Jon carried the high chair and the people followed him to their new table.

He had no idea there was any problem until his manager called him over to bitch at him. The people had complained about how rude he was for not carrying their menus to the new table, never mind that he had his hands full with the high chair. I have no idea what proper protocol is for a host in that situation. Maybe the host should carry the menus -- but even if that's the case, is it really an infraction worth complaining to the manager about? And even if it is, is it something that the manager really ought to yell at the stand-in host for, considering that he was thrown into the job with no training and had never ever worked even 5 minutes as a host before? I'd say probably not. It seems reasonable for the manager to say, "Next time, carry the menus" but it does not seem reasonable to make a big scene of it.

But the story doesn't end there, with the manager making a big deal over nothing. On top of getting a talking-to, Jon got sent home from work early -- he didn't get sent back to his actual position. No. He got sent home entirely. (Never mind that come evening it's going to get busy as hell in there and the less-experienced bartender will now have to handle it alone.) So in the end Jon made all of $35 today, rather than the almost $200 he should have made between wages and tips -- all because some jerk got a bug up his ass about having to carry his own menu.

Restaurant patrons, please realize that when you're an asshole because you want to get a free meal, real people get fucked. People lose a lot of money over your complaints. People even lose their jobs over your complaints.* Managers take over-the-top disciplinary actions to make up for your minor discomfort in order to save their own asses, because if they don't respond to the complaints -- no matter how ludicrous they are -- then their own jobs are in jeopardy.

The moral of the story is that unless something is actually a problem, suck it up. If you had to carry your own menu when the host was trying to accommodate your request, cry about it. If your server sneezed on your plate or called you a dick-face, then complain. Those are actual problems. Having to carry your menu when the host's hands are full because he's carrying a high chair that you asked for while leading you to the table you asked for? Not so much. People suck.

*Jon once worked at a restaurant where someone got fired for not liking salad dressing. The customers asked the waitress for her recommendation, and the waitress replied that she wasn't able to make a recommendation because she didn't like dressing. The customer interpreted this as a snide remark, complained to the manager, and wrote a letter to the owner. The waitress lost her job.