Among the infinite reasons and occasions people go out to eat at restaurants the holiday season is among the top three times of year people enjoy treating others—and themselves—to a nice meal. Yet diners and staff alike can be terrible at adhering to appropriate etiquette and behavior. The following is a list of my friend’s “Sally’s Top 20 Restaurant Gripes” I couldn’t have put together any better myself. As a result, Sally Bernstein has graciously given me permission to reprint her list to share with you.
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Sally’s Top Twenty Restaurant Gripes
by Sally Bernstein at www.SallyBernstein.com
1. Reservations That Aren’t Honored
When I go to the trouble to make a restaurant reservation, I expect the restaurant to be reasonably on time. I don’t expect to wait more than 10-15 minutes and I’d hope the host or hostess would be pleasant and try to accommodate my fellow diners and me.
Sally’s Right Etiquette: It is important the restaurant owners, managers, and staff all collectively work on establishing their own systems to help insure reservations are honored on time. If this means not turning over a table one more time in order to hold it open for the reserved party… you should do it!
2. Noisy Restaurants
When I dine out I want to be able to visit with those at my table. The majority of restaurants today are so noisy that is often hard to do. Much of the problem is due to the acoustics, such as bare floors (often stone), glass walls, no tablecloths, in other words, nothing to “soak up” the noise. Soundproofing foam can be added under tables, seats, or to walls. I know owners think a loud, bustling spot means a popular spot but if you can’t visit with others, what’s the use in going out?
Sally’s Right Etiquette: If your goal is for diners to gobble up your food and leave fast because of the noise level, fine.
3. Non-Printed Menus
Although chalkboard menus seem quaint and fun, too often they are placed in a spot that makes them hard to read, the writing is not always legible and sometimes prices are not listed. These menus are acceptable for pub grub, a diner or a place where you order your food at a bar or counter but not a “real” restaurant.
4. Verbal Specials Recited Without Prices
When servers tell me the daily specials, I want to know the prices so I won’t be unpleasantly surprised when the bill arrives.
Syndi’s Right Etiquette: I agree prices should always be shared. If not, don’t be shy to ask. A suggestion might be to state the price before describing the dish. Example: At $14.95 is our signature dish is… By the time the waiter finishes their mouth-watering description you’ll forget all about the price and will want the dish anyway. Another pet peeve is when the daily special board doesn’t show prices… no excuses here, it should.
5. Up Selling
I dine out to relax and I don’t want to constantly be on guard to make sure I am not going to have to pay more for my meal than I planned. Rolls, appetizers, daily specials, side dishes and desserts are a few of the culprits in this category.
Sally’s Right Etiquette: To me, I don’t mind waiters telling me about Specials of the Day, or trying to up-sell me, as long as it is done tastefully and without sounding like a sales pitch. Always keep in mind, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it” that counts.
6. Iceless Table Water
The up selling to get you to buy bottled water is bad enough but even worse are restaurants that don’t even offer ice in that water.
Sally’s Right Etiquette: Reality is, ice is not an item used in fine dining. I agree, however, in many restaurants they could offer ice as an option. On an aside, in San Francisco we have an ordinance that requires the availability of regular tap water, disallowing restaurants to only “sell” water.
7. Servings That Are Too Large or Too Small
I don’t eat like a pig nor do I eat like a bird. I want to try different foods and not leave the table stuffed. Restaurants know they can charge more if they give you more food but this doesn’t work for me.
Sally’s Right Etiquette: I agree with this one. When will restaurants learn to give appropriate portions of food for the funds invested to dine in their restaurant.
8. Dirty Restrooms
Another indication of a quality restaurant is a clean restroom.
Need I say more?
9. Clearing of Plates
At upscale restaurants all finished plates should be cleared at the same time. If my plate is cleared before someone else, it could make that diner feel rushed and uncomfortable. Dining out is an event and the atmosphere should be relaxed. At a less expensive diner, those rules change.
10. No Cell Phone Use
This is just plain rude and you see it more and more today. If you must take a call, leave the dining room. But your cell phone should be turned off or on vibrate when you dine out.
11. Spreading Germs
Menus, which are not sanitized between uses (and this includes 99.9% of all restaurants). Think about those back-woods-bumpkins who flipped those same plastic surfaced pages and/or binder covers 10 minutes ago or less, yeah the same ones responsible for making escalator hand grips the most ecoli infested surfaces around…
12. More Germs
Waiters who fill water glasses by touching the water container to the rim of the glass. Picture in your mind how many others have been similarly touched before yours…including the guy across the restaurant with the runny reddened nose. Microbiology dictates that his kooties become yours as soon as you have your first sip.
13. Too Cozy Tables
Restaurants with tables an inch away from your table. Nothing like sharing your intimate conversations with the adjacent couple, or worse yet, hearing theirs.
14. Servers Invading Your Space
Servers, yours as well as random servers passing by, invading your table space and pouring wine or bottled water without first asking. Not everyone wants a refill. Regarding bottled water, not everyone at the table is drinking it. Regarding wine, the bottomless glass gives you no way of gauging how much you are drinking. They seem to forget that you are paying for the item and that it is not theirs to distribute without first asking. Doing so is bad manners not to mention invasive and disruptive, although it does seem to be common practice.
15. Loud Music
I CANNOT stand the loud, sometimes awful music restaurants play, and even worse, it is LOUDER in the LADIES’ ROOM!!!!!!!!!! I can’t even carry on a conversation in most restaurants, from chains to luxury restaurants, anymore.
16. Comment on Loud Music
As regards the ladies comment on loud music in the Ladies’ Room, I want to say that it was probably a man’s idea, designed to get them out of there quicker…
17. Kids
When you have children in your party, their food should be served as soon as possible.
18. Hard Butter
Restaurants that serve hard butter should know better. Butter should be served at room temperature so that it is spreadable.
19. Bread
Most diners expect bread to be served at a quality restaurant and are not happy when they have to ask for it or when it arrives late.
20. Gratuity Scam (twice)
Restaurants that add gratuity to the bill without disclosing it. And restaurants that then try to trick you into giving an even larger tip by having a blank line on the credit card slip for even more gratuity, again without disclosing that they already added it into the bill.
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QUESTION: Do you have other grips/pet peeves to add to this list? Let us hear from you by posting your comments below. We’d love to hear from you.
My pet peeve is wait staff, managers, chefs and other personnel, as well as friends, approaching my table expecting to shake hands during a dining occasion. I know they mean well, but I sit down at a table with clean hands and like to keep them that way. This should also help keep a kitchen sanitary.
I can’t drink water with ice, it hurts my teeth. So when I’ve had icewater placed in front of me, I ask for water without ice. I prefer it room temperature, even. So when I ask, and the server says, “I’ll try,” and continues to pour from the same carafe (with a couple cubes slipping in), I’m furious through the entire meal.
I second the loud music pet peeve! I have moved tables in restaurants to avoid being by the speaker (and secretly unplugged one when I was near it!). And its usually the quality of the music that makes it so offensive. I have asked waitpeople if “something can be done about the terrible music”. I have also gone into restaurants and, hearing the music, walked out.
Have you ever thought that perhaps you should just stay home? That way you will receive water- just the way you enjoy it, music- at just the right volume, butter at exactly the right spreadable temperature, kids or no kids depending upon your circumstance, a clean restroom that anywhere from 50- 400 people will NOT use over the course of a 6-hour shift (and by the way… if you’re pissed at the restrooms being so filthy- blame your fellow woman. They’re disgusting!!! What’s wrong with using the trash can???), the exact proportion that YOU… NOT 200 of your fellow diners… JUST YOU are accustomed to, and finally… You can eat precisely when you want to, without having to deal with the obnoxiousness of someone else sitting at a table for 3 hours, when we assumed it would be 1 1/2 to 2 hours, and now you’re blaming us on the fact that we’re supposed to magically, and with ESP, know how long every diner is going to sit… to go along with your warm butter, your exact proportion and your taste of music.
STAY HOME!!!!!
This has nothing to do with etiquette. It has everything to do with the fact that you are a spoiled American who demands everything their way, with absolutely no sense of adventure towards being interested in how others may do things.
Give us all a break.
The fact is that if a restaurant patron is a paying customer, the experience of dining out should be pleasant. That is the ‘point’: for restaurant owners to design a dining room, food menu, and service plan that leaves the customer feeling like they’ve been treated well and that their money was well spent. Of course, as ‘Eric’ says, the writer should stay home if there are no businesses with quality service in the local area, but really, that is just sad. Restaurant owners would expect nothing less for themselves if they were guests in a restaurant, and would expect all of it to happen smoothly and ‘behind the scenes’, as it were. The dining experience should feel like an affordable luxury, not a place where someone simply brings you a plate of food – that is what eating at home can be like, less formal, less expectations.
Eric (not me) wasn’t saying that the writer should stay home because there are no businesses with quality service, you have missed his point.
How on earth can you say “the point for restaurant owners (is) to design a dining room, food menu, and service plan that leaves the customer feeling like they’ve been treated well.
How can a restaurant owner factor in the temperature sensibilities of a 30 year old man vs. an 80 year old woman? How can a restaurant owner account for the fact that a 10-top of 20 somethings really dig the vibe, while a two-top of 70-somethings think the music is way too loud?
And the Hard Butter comment? Sure, sounds great. Right up until the Health Inspector comes in and docks 1 pt. for keeping butter off the ice or out of the refrigerator… in other words, we’re not supposed to!
(Oh and if the Health score isn’t 99, we’ll hear about that too.)
Some of you on this thread are completely unrealistic.
If I spend my (or my investors) hard-earned $500,000 on my dream restaurant, I’m going to design it, equip it, put music in it, any way I like.
Restaurants are not a government service!
If I’m wrong, I won’t be in business. That’s the only comment necessary.
You have no right to act like restaurants should placate to you.
Try something different… try the way the owner intended you to experience his restaurant, instead of trying to make it more like your living room.
I’m reading through a number of your blog posts and really enjoy your ideas, tips and advice. Regarding “pet peeves” in restaurants, my number one complaint is air temperature. Particularly during the Spring and Summer, restaurants seem to be crazy cold. I’ve carried a sweater or wrap in my car for years because of this problem. If we’re seated near a vent or ceiling fan, it’s perfectly OK to politely ask to be re-seated away from the vent or fan. Servers are treated so rudely so many times a day a little courtesy and kindness is much-appreciated and your request will most likely be accommodated, if possible. If it’s busy and no other tables are available, you may have to wait; or go to the car and get your sweater!
Dear Jellybono: I agree with you about the AC situation. Wouldn’t it be an interesting amenity to provide special—logo, of course—shawls/wraps for diners to use while dining in their restaurant? If any reader uses this idea, please let me know and buy me a drink when it is launched.
Dear Syndi Seid,
I respectfully disagree with your point Number 6.
“The up selling to get you to buy bottled water is bad enough but even worse are restaurants that don’t even offer ice in that water.”
If I order Bottles Water, why would I want it mixed with “tap water” ice cubes? In most European countries, they would never serve bottled water with ice.
Sincerely
Dear Michael B.: First, the quote was not mine. It was Sally’s. I agree with you about not having ice in bottled water. All I said was waiters “could” offer ice, just because many American’s want it—even if it is tap water ice cubes—and for a waiter not to offer would be “ding” against the waiter. You, I, and others would naturally refuse. Thanks for writing.
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