Sit at a Clean Table or Shut Up

[powerboy]

I always go for the clean table. I will gladly wait while one becomes clean

[Willis]

Are we allowed to giggle knowingly when someone earns it though?

Nobody ever earns or deserves to have their FOOD tampered with. When I was a cook, that was the one thing I never ever did. Food tampering is never cool with any customer no matter how unsatisfiable they are. If it happened to you, you wouldn't have that smiley.

[tropicsgoddess]

Why are people so picky about where they sit? As long as the table's clean, I'm good. (I do prefer to not sit next to screaming children, but I'll ask politely.)

That's what I was never able to fathom before and after my days as a Hostess. SO and I don't really care, but we have to be a little more discerning on where we sit since he's a big guy (6'9" and over 300lbs). As long as there's a nice amount of space for us and anyone else that comes along to be comfortable in and the table is clean, we don't care.

[XCashier]

This reminds me of my first job at the Pizza Restaurant. We had dozens of tables out on the floor, as well as several booths lining the wall. Guess where everyone always wanted to sit? Yep, the booths. Didn't matter if the tables were absolutely spotless and the booths looked like the City Dump, they just HAD to have the Holy Booth of Pizza Dining.

And being a family-friendly pizza restaurant, cleanup was never easy. Nope, there was pizza smeared all over the tables, seats, walls and windows, napkins and crusts everywhere, spilled beer and soda, ranch dressing and buffalo wing sauce, and the oh-so-classy people who changed their baby's dirty diaper there at the table and left it in the middle of the dishes and pizza pans!!! Yep, just the sort of atmosphere you want for dinner.

[Munkie]

After watching the movie "Waiting", I became unfailingly polite to whoever my server was. No matter I was nice before, I was extra nice after that movie. I always tip, and I like to stack everything for them to make it easier to remove it afterwards. I take my garbage with me (or leave it on the dishes) but if I had children, hello, i'm going to the frickin bathroom and using the changing station that is there FOR THAT SPECIFIC PURPOSE.

Whatever idjits change their kids at the table... thats nasty. Like, seriously.

But those of you who haven't seen Waiting... please do. It'll give you an inside to being a server.

[Peppergirl]

And for those of you who have seen 'Waiting' that think perhaps some things are exaggerated....

...think again.

That's all I'll say.

[smileyeagle1021]

Yeah, when I worked fast food that always amazed me, we'd have 4 dirty tables and a restaurant full of clean ones and without fail people would bitch about the 4 dirty ones...
oh and on the don't piss off the waitstaff and food tampering bit... there are things that food workers can do that isn't really "food tampering" that still is less than ideal
ie, the nice customer gets the overflowing fry carton, the jack ass will get his fry carton barely filled, the nice customer will get their drink topped off, the jack ass is getting whatever the machine dispensed for the size, the nice customer we will go out of our way to use the better ingredients, the jack ass will get whatever ingredient happens to be at the top of the pile as long as it meets health code, the nice customer will get their requests taken care of first, the jackass will have to wait for us to finish for the nice customer
... I could go on, but I think I've made my point that there is reason to be nice to the people who handle your food not because of food tampering but because if you're nice we'll make sure you get the best quality.
(note, I haven't worked in the food industry for 4 years now, but I still remember all the tricks that DIDN"T involve tampering with the person's food)