TTPMO: Poorly trained waitstaff

Some sneedy whinging to reward y'all for having lived through the Thanksgiving saga:

So you're going out to eat. Maybe you're too tired to cook because you've been in the kitchen for the last forty-eight hours straight, or maybe your parents are in town and you want to take advantage of their generosity, or maybe (as in my case) both. You find a nice restaurant. Nothing too expensive, but not too cheap either --- a place with actual cloth tablecloths and/or napkins, some nice-looking sconces or other decor that didn't come from Ikea, or at least doesn't look like it did. You sit down, peruse the menu, forget to actually make a decision before striking up a conversation with your seatmate, and then have to tell the waiter/waitress to give you just another minute. You put in your order. The food comes. It's tasty. You share a bit around. You argue good-naturedly over who gets the last French fry. You're enjoying yourself.

And then, all hell breaks loose.

Some of you at the table have finished eating. Some of you haven't. The waitress comes over and starts taking the empty plates. I frickin' HATE that.

Do they really not realize how incredibly rude that is? I'm still eating, here! I've got my fork and knife, I'm actively chewing, and someone is clearing off the other half of the table. It's like they just can't stand how slowly I'm eating. Like the fact that I'm still enjoying the meal that I paid for is getting in the way of the rest of their lives. Are they trying to make me feel guilty or something? It's like, "Hurry it along, lady! These guys managed to finish their food in a reasonable amount of time, so what's wrong with you?" Oooh, that pisses me off.

I keep trying to see it from the waiter's/waitress's point of view. I know that they're busy people, and they're trying to keep everything moving forward. But it's not like they really need to chase us off the table, and it's not like the poor Ecuadorean immigrants working at the sink give a shit about how fast the plates get washed. So what's the deal? Is it so bloody hard to wait until everyone is done and then clear the table? You wouldn't want me breathing down your neck while you ate your last bites of dinner, would you?

And another thing, while I'm getting myself all righteously indignant. You know how you tell your wait-person what you want to order, usually going around the table in some kind of logical fashion, and then they write it down on that nifty little notepad? Right, so, said wait-person should be able to figure out who ordered what when they get it from the kitchen. Which means that there's absolutely no excuse for them to come to the table with a plate of food and ask, "Yo! Who ordered the penne?" Seriously. That sort of thing might fly in a diner or a bar or something like that, but in a nice restaurant? Come on. I've even had that happen in a seriously expensive restaurant, and guess what? I never went back.

Finally, just to round out the rant: I shouldn't ever have to be thirsty. I shouldn't be sitting with an empty water glass, ever. If I am sitting with an empty water glass, it shouldn't be that way for longer than a minute or so, and I certainly shouldn't have to flag down my server to fill it. I'm paying them to notice these things, not to be chewing gum and gossiping with the maitre d'.

Well, I guess I've gotten crotchety in my old age. But this is something I've noticed more and more lately, maybe because we cook at home almost all the time and tend to go out quite rarely. This is what makes the difference between a good restaurant and a great restaurant --- not the food, but the service. At Per Se, which granted is at the top of the scale on both, the food was brilliant and the service was impeccable. We were made to feel welcome, never rushed, and my water glass was always full, often without my noticing that it had slipped below the one-third mark. And while it's true that really good food can make up for crappy service, or that thoughtful service can make up for mediocre food, it's also true that crappy service can ruin an otherwise perfectly good meal. Is it so much to ask to have both?

(For more waitstaff pet peeves, see this New York Times blog post.)