The ranting waiter...

I'm sure there are difficult careers out there - neurosurgery springs to mind. You know, the whole thing of holding somebody's life in your hands strikes me as rather a large responsibility. Fighting as a member of your country's military could also be conceivably described as a challenging form of employment. Nurses seem to work fairly hard for their money as well but none of these jobs come close to what us waiters must go through on a daily basis.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about;

Being a Saturday night it's quite busy in the bar - I'm the only one serving due to my colleague's failure to wake up before his 6pm shift. People (read bogans) are lining up at the bar with the majority having the unusual ability to see that I'm serving as fast as I can. Except for one bloke. He's tapping his coins on the bar trying to get my attention. He's trying to make eye contact each time I walk past. He's clearly getting impatient and I still have three customers to serve before his turn is up.

Eventually (about a minute later) his turn is up. I wander over and ask him what he'll have. He stops tapping his coins on the bar and looks around for a wine list, letting out a pensive 'aaaahh' in the process. I wait patiently, mustering up all possible strength to prevent myself from saying the first thing that comes to mind;

'Here's an idea. Next time you come to the bar, work out what you want to drink before you start trying to intimidate me into serving you next. Fuckwit.'

See what I'm talking about? I'll take a scalpel to someone's brain before this shit any day of the week. Or maybe just his brain.

Seriously though, if I wrote a blog entry about every rude and/or obnoxious customer that came into our reputable establishment I would probably be writing around the clock. I'm not sure that would make for very good reading - unless I was an awesome writer with a massive following like this bloke. Sure, he hasn't been working as a waiter for about a year now but his archive has more than enough customer-hating to keep you amused for hours.

Despite the way that The Waiter tears down shit customers in his blog, you can't help but admire his professionalism when it comes to actually serving them. I know I would have struggled to keep my cool as well as he did in this situation.

And I think that's what it's about. Professionalism and keeping your cool. Sure, there will always be rude and annoying customers but as an employee of the 'hospitality' industry I should always remain calm and polite while providing the best service possible.

In the meantime, here's another tip for you all. If you decide to ignore the sign that says 'Please wait to be seated' - deciding instead to walk through and seat yourselves - don't complain to me when you haven't got any menus on your table...