Nine Ways You Get On The Nerves Of Waiters And Waitresses

09 Ordering off-menu

Asking if you can have chips instead of roasted garlic mash will leave your waiter struggling to fight back an eye roll. If you could hear all the shouting going on in the kitchen, you wouldn’t be asking this poor sod to go ask the red-faced chef to rustle up something he doesn’t want to.

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08 Splitting the bill at a molecular level

Why are all the other customers giving you evils? Because you’ve just tied your waiter up by making him perform time-consuming, PhD-level calculations, breaking down your bill into 27 individual items, then reconstructing it into five separate bills so that it’s all super-duper fair and nobody feels hard done by. Just split that thing equally – honestly, who gives a shit if Akshat’s starter cost 50 bucks more than everyone else’s?

07 Vandalising the table

We’ve all done it: you finish your meal, and as you chat away with your mates, you occupy your twitchy hands by picking off a beer label, rolling titchy doughballs out of bread, making tiny origami birds out of your napkin, then dumping them into your drink before piling the mini doughballs on top. The wait staff don’t just throw leftover drinks and ice into the bin, y’know. They get poured into the sink, which means your grossed-out waitress then has to pick all your doughy, papery handiwork out of the plughole while quietly dry-heaving.

06 Not moving your phone out the way

The waitress needs to put your plate down right now, because it is hot. Scalding, scalding hot.

05 Hitting on the staff

There’s something a bit skeezy about openly flirting with a waitress. Yes, there’s a chance that she’s actually into you, but there’s an even bigger chance that she’s grinning and giggling at your tipsy winks and double entendres solely because it’s her job to keep the customers happy and she really needs the tip money right now. This is especially true if you’re on holiday in the US and eating in a Hooters.

04 Leaving fistfuls of shrapnel as a tip

The bill’s paid, everyone’s putting their coat on, and all that’s left to do is leave a tip. But uh-oh… nobody has any notes or quids on them, so the tip’s going to have to be scraped together from the dusty shrapnel wedged deep in everyone’s wallets. The resulting mound of coppers is four rupees and a rusty fairground token. That weird soul-shiver you all feel as you hotfoot it down the street? That’s your waitress, staring at the useless pile of shitty metal you’ve just left her and cursing you all with hexes and hellfire.

03 Yelling and/or finger clicking

Getting a waiter/waitress’s attention in the same way that you’d call a dog over doesn’t make you look like a no-time-to-waste alpha male – it makes you look like a massively rude fanny. Remember: your waiter is a complete stranger who has unsupervised access to your next meal – wind them up at your peril, unless you want to chow down on pubes and hocked-up flob.

02 Arriving just before closing time

Alright, so there’s nothing technically wrong with bowling up to a restaurant that closes at 11pm at 10.52pm. They are still open, right? You don’t even want starters, you’re going straight to mains! But look at the gutted expressions on the face of the waiting staff – it’s like they were all set to be released from a 10-stretch in Belmarsh, and you’ve just denied them parole at the last minute. You’d better wolf that food down like you’re on Man V. Food.

01 Lingering forever

Bill paid, drinks drunk – go hooommme, man. Go home.

From the November 2014 issue of FHM India.