To Serve Man

Among the many jobs I had in my wayward youth was bartender at a college bar. I was paid minimum wage and was damn glad to have the job. It meant I could eat the next day, and I really liked eating as opposed to, well, not eating. But college students were not known for being particularly generous with tips, all their money going to pitchers of cheap beer and the occasional mixed drink if they were buying a beverage to impress someone. So I tried my best to be accommodating to get the occasional tip. After all, it was called “hospitality” for a reason.

What I understood was that the bar didn’t exist so I had a place to make food money, but to make money for its owner who took the risk of opening it, at his expense and hoped it would produce enough revenue to survive. They way that happened was that the joint was sufficiently hospitable that people would come, bring their money and spend it there. If not, then it wouldn’t survive. Harold would be out of business and I would be out of a job.

As I needed the job and was thankful to have it, I did what I could to make Harold’s business successful. It had nothing to do with my feelings toward Harold, who was an okay guy but not someone I would have chosen to hang out with, but my understanding of how the three legs of the stool kept it from toppling over. Customers came and paid. Harold earned enough to stay in business. I had a job and could eat the next day.

In response to an op-ed by Peter Hoffman, who had the Savoy and a couple other restaurants in New York City, letter writers demonstrated what happens when the concept of hospitality is forgotten.

I was a regular at those restaurants, and I was perfectly happy to pay the premium that cost, and to understand it as a kind of donation to the cause of an ethical and environmentally responsible food system. I also understood, as I added a little something to the tip, that I was extremely fortunate to be able to afford this behavior, and that most Americans couldn’t.

It’s wonder that some people view eating at restaurants as a charity, a social movement, or both, and they can afford to do so. If that how they choose to spend their money, so be it. But charity isn’t a viable business model. Whether “most Americans” can afford to “pay a premium” is one question. Whether they want to is another.

Would it be fair to suggest that most people who dine at a restaurant do so to eat food? If the cost/benefit assessment aligns, they go out to eat at a restaurant. If not, they go elsewhere or stay home. And if they go elsewhere or stay home, then the restaurant fails and the workers have no job.

Ah, the workers. They aren’t slaves, and they have a choice of whether to work at the restaurant. And if the conditions are unpleasant, the demands too great, the environment too hostile, the pay too paltry, they can choose to work elsewhere. This isn’t to suggest that workers should be abused, sexually assaulted or underpaid, and that’s the sort of bad management that will doom a business since no restaurant can function without staff. If the staff hate the joint and quit, the owner is screwed, so it’s in the owner’s best interest to treat his staff decently and fairly.

But what about those workers?

Mr. Hoffman discussed how customers seem to have forgotten their manners. He’s no doubt correct about that, and I was happy to read last month about the “day of kindness” approach one owner implemented for her employees following customer abuse.

That’s more like it, because the change I’ve seen in the past 50 years is that restaurant managers no longer stick up for the floor workers the way they used to. We didn’t tolerate customer abuse back then and very often exercised the “We reserve the right to refuse service” statement that was posted on the front door.

Customers can be monsters, but the only way to change their behavior is to stop tolerating it. Just throw the bums out!

No doubt  there are customers who are “monsters,” and there is conduct that crosses a line of tolerance. A patron who touches a server does so. So too does a customer who calls a server a racist epithet. The question of where that line is drawn is up to the staff and owner, and since it’s the owner’s business, he gets to make the call any way he sees fit.

But are customers now worse than they once were, they ever were? Customers are us, our families and our friends. Maybe we are monsters.* Maybe the servers aren’t very good at the job, or the food wasn’t up to snuff, or the customer has a legitimate issue. Just as you can’t run a restaurant without staff, a restaurant can’t survive without customers. Restaurants don’t give patrons food because they’re nice patrons, but because they pay the check at the end of the meal.

Last week, he said, a group of diners took out their frustrations on his employees after having to wait 40 minutes for a table and even longer because of a computer problem. They asked for the food to be boxed up after it had been brought to the table and then dumped the contents of the entire to-go bag in front of the restaurant when they left, he said.

“That’s just about the worst behavior I’ve ever seen,” he said.

That seems like bad behavior, not to mention a big waste of money, but it also seems as if there might be some issue on the restaurant’s side about taking its customers for granted, as if paying patrons are an entitlement and people are under some duty to patronize a business for the benefit of the owner and staff.

Between the breakdown of norms and the rise of narcissism, it’s unsurprising if its true that customers’ manners may not be what they once were. But without customers, you have no business, and the job is hospitality, to make those customers want to come to your restaurant and spend their money. No restaurant can survive if it has no one to serve.

*For those whose head will go this direction, this is not about customers who refuse to wear masks in a restaurant that requires them. If you don’t like the rule, go to another restaurant or stay home.