That’s the old adage. It goes for every line of work I’ve ever had. When I sold sporting goods, if I told someone they should size up in their Nike’s because they run narrow, they’d say, “no, I’m a size 9.” I’d retrieve the 9 from the back room, they’d try it on, and sometimes say, “this is a little snug. What about a 9.5?” The saying implies that as the seller you have to make concessions to the buyer. Making two trips to the stock-room isn’t that big of a deal. I’m willing to let you think you’re right if it means you think I’m invested in this sale and in turn, you may turn around and pick up a pack of socks too. Back then, I was willing to concede my time and efforts to the customer.
When I moved into the restaurant industry, I noticed that those years of retail groomed me for the interactions I would have while serving tables. When someone’s dinner is on the line, the stakes feel higher. If someone doesn’t like a pair of shoes, they can return them. That situation can be rectified with a simple exchange or return. Then they choose a different pair and a new balance is restored in the universe. With dinner, you get one shot. Someone wants their salad thrown in the broiler to melt the cheese? Nothing like hot romaine in the middle of an E. coli outbreak. “We can do that for you, sir.” Maybe the stakes feel higher for restaurants because supposedly the perceived right-ness of the customer comes back in the form of tips. The more concessions you make, theoretically, the higher probability of a tip that will pay for gas to make it to your next shift. Saying “No” in the restaurant industry is like speaking of Macbeth before curtain call. It’s a death sentence.
Exceptions are most certainly not the rule, but at one pizza place I worked at, management was taught to limit our forfeitures. “Take them for a ride, but don’t give them the keys to the Cadillac.” In instances of strange requests, we wouldn’t say, “no” outright, but we’d walk right up to the edge. It was a good compromise of conceding to the customer while retaining the integrity of the product we sold. “I’m willing to bend the rules for you this time, but another crew leader may not be in a position to do the same in the future.” It wasn’t a flawless system, but it kept the power in the server’s hands while giving the impression that at that moment, the customer was the most important person in the world and tips were better because of it.
But were they? Studies have shown that quality of service only accounts for about a 2% difference in tips. Anyone in the industry will tell you about encounters they’ve had where they busted their ass for a clearly affluent guest who requested hundreds of dollars worth of perfectly seared prime cuts and uncorked 40-year vintages and left a fraction of the established 20% standard tip. However, many servers can also tell you about average joes who required the bare minimum of service leaving 50–100%. Tip amounts aren’t about the service, they’re about classism. Some people dine-out for the opportunity to give their charred bottom-left burner a break, and they usually appreciate the servers and cooks efforts. Other’s dine-out for the chance to tell someone what to do. Unfortunately, most servers know that the Venn diagram of classist eaters and bad tippers is just one big circle.
The concept of tipping comes from a prohibition-era conundrum where restaurants had lost their cash cow — alcohol, and restaurant owners saw an opening to exploit. The cash that servers had been refusing from customers because of the appearance of bribery became the money that would supplement a lower hourly wage, thereby tipping the scales back in favor of profit for the business. But a hundred years later, alcohol is back on the menu, but somehow, that possibly illegal (but certainly immoral) construct still stands.
This brings us to the point at hand. The restaurant industry’s place amidst a global pandemic.
In March, my restaurant shut down, as did most sit-down places. It’s safe to say that it had more to do with losing money than the fact that the clientele we serve is primarily older. Scientists and people who actually believe scientists would refer to our customer base as generally an “at-risk” demographic at the hands of COVID-19. At the time, it felt responsible to close. Closing eliminated the chance that I (someone who had recently returned from a cross-country flight) or any of my potentially asymptomatic coworkers unknowingly spread a life-threatening virus to a community that stood a high chance of suffering a lonely death. It was easier to justify unemployment over viral manslaughter in my mind.
A true cynic at heart, I figured I’d end up riding the unemployment wave for a while. But at the first indication of a flattened curve, the flood gates opened. Every restaurant in town reopened. They restructured their dining rooms to follow social-distancing guidelines, and most spent tons of money they didn’t have on plexiglass to place between points of communication. Some stocked up on personal protective equipment for their staff. The overhead for these restaurants to return to working order under these guidelines has been massive, especially for an industry that had restricted ways of turning a profit if at all. But the drive to spearhead the “return to normalcy” movement couldn’t be stopped. By investing in the new normal dining experience, restaurants hoped that the customers who had spent months having fever dreams about their food would reciprocate the money spent. “Surely the people will appreciate with their wallets the lengths to which we are going to provide a non-essential service, in a safe manner for both our employees and customers right?” You tell me. Have you?
Since I’ve been back at work, in a mask, washing my hands between every task, 2-step sanitizing every table, touching the forks that have been in customer’s mouths, my income is lower than it’s been in years. It’s now my job to assess everything I do in regard to sanitization, and creating a zero-risk environment while also noticing everything everyone touches. Is someone leaning on a table they don’t intend to sit at while they look over a menu? I grab a bleach solution, towel, and viral disinfectant and spend the next two minutes making that table safe again. My shifts have decreased in length, but I come home more exhausted than ever before. But it’s not the busy-work that wears me down. It’s the interactions.
“Is the staff practicing social distancing outside of work? I want to make sure it’s safe. I have a bachelorette party that’s hoping to come in for drinks”
“I already told you what I wanted, unless I told that other guy. You all look the same in your fucking masks.”
“I have to go back to my car to get my mask so I can go to the bathroom? I’ve been here for an hour.”
“When is all this going to be over? I’m sick of the government.”
“Why don’t you have a full menu? You’re open aren’t you?”
Every day it seems we’re inundated with a video of someone at a private business throwing a toddler temper tantrum about being told the rules of the new normal. It usually involves being asked to wear a piece of cloth over their face. Literally the most minor of inconveniences in a world where economies have tanked and half a million people have died because of particles ejected from the mouth while talking. But at the heart of those videos is an employee who, for the first time in their career said “no” to a customer. “The customer is always right” is so ingrained in the service industry that refusing to give concessions one time results in absolute hostility. Challenging classism in the face of a pandemic has exploited the fragility of those who thought their power to order grocery baggers around was anything more than narcissism. The altruism on the part of the person making a laughable, tragic, minimum wage shows more about our future than anything.
What I used to do when someone denied my suggestion to try the 9.5 shoes instead was pull both sizes and leave the one I knew they needed by the door to the stock room, knowing full-well that either they’d act as if I had never even suggested a larger size and request it, or they’d stand there in their wrongness and be wrong and purchase the wrong size shoe out of shame that the 18-year old kid intimately knew the ins and outs of things he was selling. Either way, I was going to have to put one shoebox back on the shelf and it really didn’t affect me which size it was. The forfeitures we make are usually small and don’t have a lingering effect, but when it comes to conceding on a point that could result in death with a tube down the throat so you don’t drown in your flooded lungs in a quarantined hospital bed that has been the final resting place for many others before and will continue to be for many after, the buck will stop with me.
This is going to sound insane given how much complaining I’ve done about feeling powerless, but in my opinion, the Coronavirus has given power back to the service industry. While the power to reject classist standards of service has had a net-zero effect on our wallet, despite empty viral tweets from quasi-famous people urging their followers to tip better, it’s not manifesting. When one person tips well, it’s instantly negated by a dash on the tip line by someone who was offended by having to wait 30 seconds while I washed my hands and sanitized the payment device FOR THEIR SAFETY. Where the return of power comes from is in the integrity of our jobs. Making concessions isn’t a part of my life anymore, especially when my health and the health of my coworkers and family is on the line. If you are made uncomfortable by the new standard of service, it’s because your perceived power in that situation comes from a place of ingrained oppression and we aren’t here for that anymore. If our lives and paychecks are on the line so you can gorge on appetizers and pay a 300% upcharge for a glass of wine, then I’m sorry, the customer is not always right.