Having worked in every sort of restaurant, I am very forgiving. I get it. Full service, fast food, delivery, I’ve done it all. I also tend to tip above average even though I live a modest lifestyle because I get it. Even subpar service is worth something. But on Saturday, our server plumbed new lows.
After the worst service I have ever received anywhere, I tipped 0.30 cents. It wasn’t good. Not even worth that 0.30 cents, bad. We couldn’t beg our server to pay attention to us. Our food went to someone else, so dinner took forever to arrive. Our server never told us or apologized. She was AWOL. We only knew because my wife overheard a different server at a table next to us mention they’d been given the wrong order, which they’d started to eat.
It was ours. Okay, crap happens. I have been there and done that. But no sign of our waitress. I could see her across the room, waiting attentively on others, but I could not get her attention.
When she first brought our drinks, we asked for water. Our late food arrived before we saw a glass of water, and we had to remind her when she finally swept by on her way – I can only assume – to help someone else. You guessed it – she did not bring out our late food. And it was easily 30 minutes to get the water. She never apologized for late food, late water, or ignoring us and was effectively MIA the entire time we were in the restaurant.
We eventually got her attention to ask for take-out containers, and she forgot. I flagged her down, and by the time we got them, it had been 15 more minutes since we’d asked. She did apologize for that, but it was too little too late especially when every other server was buzzing about checking nearby tables often while she was missing most of the time.
Maybe it was me, but that’s not how this works. Even my wife was displeased.
My food was delicious, and the drinks were fine, but everything about how we were served was worse than lousy.
We paid cash and rounded up to the nearest dollar, took our leftovers, and went home. I feel bad about that, but there was no other way to send a message. You do not get rewarded for something like that.
Her loss of income was deserved, in my opinion, but servers typically deserve a decent tip, certainly in this economy. So when I see things catching on that will likely detract from that, it gets my attention. This story was from the UK, but it is apparently a thing in California (and very likely other liberal ghettoes), and I can see it catching on with the climateers as a way to assuage their guilt at the expense of others.
That is, after all, the game.
Customers have reported charity donations for a scheme called Carbon Friendly Dining being added to restaurant cheques, on top of service fees.
The scheme, an initiative backed by retail consultancy Lightspeed, aims to tackle global warming by charging each cover £1.23 to pay for fruit trees to be planted in developing countries.
You can ask to have the fee removed, which most may not bother to do, and maybe they should. Carbon Offset schemes are money laundering confidence scams. Much like how the emissions and pollution created by green energy are greater but offshored to the third world countries where carbon-friendly dining says it will plant some trees.
So, trees are good for the planet again? Is there a consensus, or is this just some more green wool you can pull over people’s eyes?
And how much is left for trees after you pay the people who run it and other operating costs? Assuming it plants anything. As noted, carbon capture forestation is often reimagined as cutting down fewer trees than initially planned – if even that.
The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.
Whether you think the add-on is helpful for the planet or not, it increases the cost to the consumer. Many will not care (and should), but somewhere, that fee will – I suspect – eat into the server’s gratuity.
Most waitstaff bust their ass in a job that is typically entry-level, low wage, with high turnover. Now and then, you get a professional who has done it for years and likes the job. They are amazing and rewarded for providing exceptional service. And, of course, everyone has an off day. But adding charges is never a great idea, and in the end, I suspect this will affect tips, not because of the service but because of the unnecessary added cost.
