Every Saturday evening I walk into Mongolian Grill with a full night of work ahead of me. The aroma of meat, vegetables, sauces and spices searing on the large, open-faced grill fills the entire restaurant and hits me like a brick wall as soon as I swing open the door. The hosts greet me with a smile and I make my way through the kitchen to clock in.
Being a server is a very independent job with managers available to help their servers and keep things running smoothly throughout the night. Each server has a section to take care of for the night, each hustling around to make sure every guest leaves happy. The guests rush in with hopes of getting a table immediately and pretty soon the host stand is swarmed with hungry customers.
The guests in the restaurant only see the façade of how a restaurant is run. The food, their hunger and sheer lack of knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes overpowers their respect for the servers.
Many customers often disregard restaurant etiquette. As a server, I despise the customers who walk in 10 minutes before closing, the ones who only leave a 10 percent tip, ones who show little patience with their service, ones who switch tables after being seated and ones who overstay their welcome.
Although the restaurant doesn’t close until 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, walking in 10 minutes before closing time proves the lack of courtesy these guests have. Mongolian Grill isn’t a fast food joint. It takes time to cook a guest’s meal and allow them to happily eat it, which delays the closing process for the staff.
Now since everyone who works at Mongolian Grill is trained to always put the guests’ needs before their own, we happily seat the guests who walk in 10 minutes before closing and greet them with a smile that disguises our anger. Servers work hard to make sure their guests enjoy their time dining out by attending to their needs in a timely manner. Depending on how busy the restaurant is, the servers appreciate patience and kindness from their guests.
Tips are also greatly appreciated. Recently a young couple was out to celebrate their sixth anniversary at a sushi restaurant. Unfortunately, the service wasn’t running as smoothly as they would have liked, so in return they left their server a $100 tip. According to Today News, the couple’s reasoning for leaving such a large tip is because the couple has been in their server’s shoes before and wanted to pay it forward hoping to make his night a little easier.
Tipping your server is a way to say “thank you for your service.” What the people who have never worked as a server don’t know is that servers rely on their tips as their form of payment instead of a check every two weeks. Servers still receive a check every two weeks, but in Illinois, at Mongolian Grill specifically, servers work on a $4.95 wage instead of the full minimum wage entitled to employees who work outside of the restaurant business.
Along with tipping and the courtesy to avoid walking in 10 minutes before closing time, cooperation and consideration that the restaurant needs to filter guests in and out in a timely manner are also part of restaurant etiquette. At certain restaurants, Mongolian Grill specifically, servers have sections and work in a rotation, so when a guest requests to be moved to a different seat they don’t realize that they mess up the entire system for the servers and hosts.
Guests who overstay their welcome also affect the system for the servers and hosts because it then creates a longer wait for other guests and fewer tables and tips for the servers. The fewer amount of tables each server receives, the fewer amount of tips they get to take home at the end of the night. Filtering guests in and out in a timely fashion creates efficiency for both the restaurant as a business and the servers as employees.
Restaurant etiquette is overlooked by many and practiced by few, but it’s just as important and appreciated as everyday manners that you learn growing up.
So the next time you are dining out, remember servers are people too. Treat them with respect, not like a butler.
