High Top City

My brother and I average about 2-3 trips to the Boston Blackie's in Deerfield a month. We normally go on Friday's, and we sit in the bar area to avoid all of the riff raff who might be from Buffalo Grove (I kid). Now, the food is good and reasonably priced, so my brother and I don't mind the fact that the median age is probably over 65 (although I'm confident the mean is much lower*). Of late though, a somewhat disturbing trend is developing.

*I really wanted to make a standard deviation joke above but exercised some self restraint. Mean seemed like a more universal reference.





We've had a waitstaff rotation that runs about four waitresses deep. Although the ace in the hole bartender who fronts the rotation is getting a little chummy. Perhaps too chummy.

Let's run down her case.

Pros
-Remembers our appetizer order (Nachos). This is pretty good work.
-Quick trigger finger on the refills. But not too the point where it's overwhelming. If I have a 1/4 of a drink or less, let's be ready. If I have a half of a drink or more and you refill me, you're just being dramatic now. This point isn't lost on her.
-Positive Attitude.

Cons
-Thinks she's too good of friends with us now, so she does stuff she wouldn't do with a regular table (Cracks wise, won't come out from behind bar to give us the check, making us get up, a major faux pas).
-This evening she took our ketchup, because clearly, we didn't need it.
-We have yet to get anything free.

Now I'm sure there are former waiters out there reading this right now and taking liberty with the last point. But consider our perspective. We're in there almost every friday. We sit at the same table in the bar. We order the same thing pretty much every week. We put a lot of our money towards their food. And what do we get in return? Not even a free soda.



Now for a second, let's neglect the last point, because I already had a customer service rant in a previous post. That then changes the list to three pros, and two cons, so she still ends up coming out ahead. And in the grand scheme of waiter archetypes, I think there are worse to be had. In particular, the aloof waiter and the chatty waiter.

Now the aloof waiter is hard to spot at first. He probably has a chipper attitude, greets you politely, maybe even has a goatee. But the first sign of things going wrong is after he takes your drink order, he doesn't return. Oh, and forget about drink refills, so anything spicy is out of the question tonight. So eventually when he comes back with your drinks, everyone wants to order fearing he'll never come back, only he doesn't have a pad of paper to write on, giving him another reason to leave again. Once your food is generally ordered, you can expect one meal to be screwed up, and to wait an unreasonably long amount of time in between him clearing your meal, and bringing you the check. This waiter is usually found at moderately crowded, American-food serving chain restaurants. Think Houlihan's around 4:00 or any restaurant in Champaign.

Conversely, the chatty waiter can normally be spotted right away. You haven't picked your menu up and she's blabbering at you about the specials. And a note to all waiters- of course we don't know what the specials are. We just got here. She's a little too excited to be working wherever she is. Asks if you've been there before, and because you're presumably at a chain, the answer is always yes, to which she responds "great!" Now the specials is where this waiter really shines. She tells you how one of the specials is "the best she's ever tasted," before asking if you need a minute to look over the menu, the answer to which is always yes. On behalf of regular people, nobody prints out a PDF of the menu to read in the car so they're ready to go (Although I have seen my Dad rip through the Cheesecake Factory Menu like it's a novel, and with a few more ads, it pretty much will be).

The chatty waiter is probably a relative of the too chummy waiter, because much like I described above, the chatty waiter acts like your best friend, even if you've known her 5 minutes. It's like the last guests from a party that won't leave. "Yes, we're enjoying our food. In fact, we'd even enjoy it more if you got the hell out of here for upwards of five minutes." Expect forced shtick, too many drop-ins, and to have like three full cups of whatever your drinking due to her overzealous refill style. Oh, and if you make fun of us for not saving room for dessert, say goodbye to your 20% tip.

So I guess the lesson to be learned today is to not have me as a customer, because I will analyze the hell out of your performance. This is probably true. But more importantly, be on the look out for these different types of waiters the next time your friend gets off the couch because his NCAA '08 season ended on PS2 and says "it feels like a 3-course menu night from Friday's."

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