A waiter decided to share what really happens behind the scenes at restaurants

The first restaurant was opened in 1765 in Paris, and only soup was served there. Now, we can choose from hundreds of different places and order what we want to eat. But for many, going to a restaurant is accompanied by a lot of discomfort and even stress. Why is it so expensive? Did someone eat from my plate? Do I tip or not? (After all, they already have a salary, don’t they?)

One of the authors of awesome.club he talked with a waiter he knew and thus discovered several interesting details about the behind-the-scenes life of the restaurants. In this article, you’ll see how many dining establishments try to rip off customers, which places to avoid, and whether it’s true that restaurant workers eat our food. Follow!

Hello, my name is Michael and I have been a waiter for 10 years. Everyone around me thinks I’m incredibly lucky: I deliver and take dishes and I earn more than my uncle, who is a foreman. However, in order to receive a good salary today, I studied at a technical college, took private courses and even took out loans to get an internship in Europe. I even worked for free, just to gain experience, without which my career would not have taken off.

Today, I work at a restaurant that is considered one of the best in my city. To get here, I had to go through four stages of interviews and work as the “helper boy” for three months. I need to know what each dish is made of (there are 40-50 items + seasonal offers), set the tables, make sure the customers are comfortable and perform miracles of acrobatics with the heavy trays in my hands. It is a difficult job, but one that I love very much.

So what does a waiter’s salary consist of? It may depend from place to place, country to country, but generally speaking we have hourly pay and an individual percentage if the employee has passed the assessment. Everything else is tips, which, before the transition to card payments, could make up 2/3 of our salary. Today, people tip less, and we ourselves don’t always keep that money for ourselves. There are other schemes:

we can deposit the tips in a big jar and, at the end of the day, we share the entire accumulated amount among the waiters.the general tip is given to the boss, and part of the money is returned to us as a bonus.

Some waiters try to please the customers, others, not so much. I remember once when some people spent about 80 reais and gave a 200 note. Our newbie, Maria, didn’t give them change, and when people got angry, she rolled her eyes and blurted out: “This is the my tip, wow!”

On a good day, you can earn a good amount in tips, up to 200 reais. But not all waiters are rolling in cash, some eat ramen noodles and are deep in debt. What happens is that many of our “brothers” like to enjoy their time in expensive restaurants — it seems that they finally want to relax and sit down at a table to be well attended, instead of running back and forth between the kitchen and the hall.

My colleague, Olga, once had a nasty fight with a waitress at a cafe across the street from our establishment. From there, dear Olguinha elaborated an evil plan of revenge. She finished her shift, then put on a pretty red dress, lipstick on her lips, and went to the front restaurant. Olga was served by her opponent, so she made complex orders and changed them about 10 times, checked the cleanliness of all glasses carefully and spread the tip around the table. Her victim complained to the boss and demanded that he no longer let Olga into the restaurant, but my friend did not formally break any rules. Well, the only thing is that this revenge cost him a little dearly.

According to my observations, most often, problems occur at large banquets. Think about it: a crowd of people, noise, almost no one pays attention to what you are ordering. What could happen? Well, for example, they may not bring all the dishes to your table. Or they can reduce portion sizes and consume part of the “saved” products. The most daring employees can get something for themselves, in the middle of so much mess, and even add the extra expenses to their account. Therefore, I will tell you what you should do.

When attending a feast, ask the waiter to print out a list of all dishes. This will make identification easier: you will see more easily if, instead of five cold meat dishes, they only brought three. If you make additional requests as the feast unfolds, try to write everything down.

If it was agreed that you would bring your own food to the banquet, it is better not to leave the products in the kitchen. If you’re bringing your own sausage for cold cuts, cut it at home and then just ask to serve it on the plate in front of you. Otherwise, you could end up losing part or all of what you took with you. Never order multiple servings of food on a single plate. If you’re going to order, for example, two servings of sliced ​​vegetables and three servings of sushi — ask them to be served separately, on different plates. This is a little secret, but some employees may want to save money and serve less. For example, two 300g slices can become a dish with a total weight below 500g.

Most diners order what they want right away, so it doesn’t make much sense to leave the menu on the table where it can get messed up. Also, when the order is large, we need free space to arrange the dishes. However, many times, there are not a lot of menus available.

At my old place of work there were 40 tables and only six menus. The hostess would tell us to quickly take the menus to the other tables, but some customers would grab the menus and not let go of them. They could hide it in their coat, put it under the dishes, on the chair, sitting on top. If you’re in a nice restaurant, just ask the waiter not to take the menu away. Customer’s request is law for us.

In professional courses, we are taught that empty or dirty plates should not be left in front of the customer: it is disrespectful and inelegant. However, if a person hasn’t touched the rest of the food for 15 minutes, then we can take their plate away. On the other hand, in some establishments, glasses are not removed for purely financial reasons: when looking at the empty glass, there is a greater chance that you will want to order another drink.

In good restaurants, it is enough to put a fork and a knife on the plate, with the ends facing each other. For the waiter, this is a sign that the meal is “on pause”. In simpler establishments, employees may not know this language, so it might be better to call the waiter and ask not to remove anything from the table. Just do not put a napkin on top of the plate, otherwise it will certainly be taken away.

There was a curious situation with napkins. Into the restaurant, a rather fine-looking man entered and he placed his order. He ate it all and then started looking around. Then he took a pen, wrote something on the napkin and quickly left the hall. I went to his table, took the napkin and there it was written: “Do not remove the plate, I am not finished yet”.

On seeing you, does the waiter rush to wipe the food crumbs off the table or start scrubbing vigorously? No, he’s not obsessed with cleanliness — the opposite is more likely. Using a cloth to wipe in front of the customer is unprofessional. Take a closer look: is the surface sticky or dirty, i.e. maybe it hasn’t been cleaned and only started to be after your arrival?

Other point. You placed a complex order, and it was served five minutes later. I can bet it was reheated ready-to-eat food. How long it stayed in the fridge, only the chef should know. With the drinks, the same thing: if they brought it right away, it means that the glasses were already filled and ready. They could have stayed there for just five minutes, but also for an entire day.

Were you served a dish with a generous amount of pepper on top or sauce? Ask to exchange it. It could be that another customer didn’t eat it all, and the leftovers were topped up and served to you. In general, sauces and spices are chefs’ best friends when they need to disguise flaws.

Not to mention that the customer may not like or want pepper. The person should be able to choose if they want to add something to the dish. Therefore, in quality establishments, your food will not be dusted before it reaches the table. Unless, of course, this is something called for by the recipe.

Almost everyone who finds out what my profession is seems to feel compelled to tell the same joke. The same as always. The customer asks the waiter: “Is it true that you eat our food before it reaches the table?” The waiter replies: “Well, then it’s more a matter of who ate first.”

At the restaurant where I work today, employees who have “tasted” dishes will be fined and fired. However, I know many stories about employees who, even with free meals and a video surveillance system, did not fail to “nibble” on food before it was served. We call people like that “seagulls”, and only establishment owners can fight them.

In fact, there are not so many “seagulls” these days, but there are countless people who love to finish eating leftovers. Especially in more economical places where students often work. I myself worked in such places in my youth, and almost everyone ate the leftovers left by customers. Some took only food that was not touched, in pieces, for example; others wouldn’t let go of even bite-sized slices of pizza.

We once had a couple. My professional intuition quickly told me that I would suffer with these clients. And it was potato. First, they ordered two mushroom soups and a Caesar salad with chicken. When the dishes were almost ready, the young man called me: “Look, I just remembered that I don’t like mushrooms. Make some vegetable soup, please.” Then they switched to Caesar with prawns, vegetables instead of mushrooms, and finally: “We don’t want soup anymore, we prefer omelette”.

When the customer changes the order, we have to make a new dish from scratch, and the previous one is paid by the waiter. That’s because the order has already been…