The restaurant is a finely-tuned machine. Well, sort of.

Imagine this: you walk into your favorite eatery. It’s 7:00 on a Friday night. From the difficulty you had finding a parking space in the parking lot – eventually cozying up in-between a white Nissan and a Chevy truck – you realize that this joint is jam-packed. There’s people sitting outside idly chatting as they wait for their table as you enter the building. Automatically you hear the rumblings of voices, all trying to talk over the table next to them. Because of your keen insight, you already placed your reservation during this always busy time. Your hostess sits you at a rather crowded table, but because it’s only two of you, you are given a smaller table. Your waiter greets you graciously and runs off to get your drinks that you placed. An iced tea for you and a Cosmopolitan for your female friend. It takes a little while for your waiter to return -perhaps two minutes – with your drinks.

“May I start you off with an appetizer?” she asks. “No, thanks. We’re going to go ahead and order our meals”, you reply. “Okay, what can I get for you?” she responds. “She’ll have the Sicilian Ribeye, and I’ll take the Grilled Shrimp Linguine”, you say. “Excellent. How would you like that cooked, ma’am?” She asks, to which your companion responds, “Medium Well”.

So, off your waitress goes. Perhaps she comes back quickly with some bread sticks and butter for you to snack on. Which, curmudgeonly, makes you remember the last time you were at that seafood place down the street and they didn’t bring you any bread sticks. You had to sit there for at least 30 minutes without anything to eat. Occasionally, she’ll return to fill your drinks, perhaps bringing your companion a glass of water to accompany that Cosmo she had.

You start checking your watch. It’s 7:25. That means it’s been 25 minutes already, since you remember making your reservation for 7:00. What’s taking so long? It takes what? 10 minutes to cook a steak? Not as long to toss together a sauce, some pasta, and shrimp? You see your waiter talking to another table next to you, “Miss” you say to her. “Miss, excuse me?” -she’s not responding. Finally, after she’s done talking with them she comes to you, “How long is it going to be? It’s been almost 30 minutes.” She tells you that she’ll go check on it for you and comes back to tell you it shouldn’t be too much longer. But, you’re starving! It shouldn’t take that long and the table across the room who sat down after you is already eating their meal!

Finally, she brings your food. Oh, joy! It looks great. Uh-oh… her steak is under-cooked. A minute or two later, you catch your waitress and tell her the situation. She apologizes and brings it back to the kitchen. 5-6 minutes goes by and she then brings it back, cooked to perfection. Unfortunately, you’re already half-way through your meal because she didn’t want you to have to wait. Now she’s upset that you’re going to finish before her and she’s complaining to you. Your perfect night is in a downward spiral! When the meal is over, you don’t want dessert nor do you don’t want coffee. You just want to get out of there so you can grumble in the car about how terrible the experience was. Especially when the bill comes and it’s $57.41. You can’t imagine paying that much for such a terrible experience, although your waitress was as kind as she could have been. So, you leave three $20 bills on the table and walk out. Your waiter or busser comes behind you and cleans up the table and resets it for the next group of people.

This is a generic experience that you thought was going to be good, but turned out to be a pretty poor one.

Let me explain to you how the restaurant works: The hostess keeps track of all the tables in the restaurant and knows which ones are available and which aren’t. Because you placed a reservation, she chose a table that was convenient for both you and her. She’s not going to give you a 4-person table because she can seat either a 3-person group, or 4-person group there instead. Your waiter is probably already dealing with her 3 or 4 other tables in the area, so when you sit down it’s more than likely in the middle of her taking an order or delivering drinks/food to another table. Not to mention the other two or three requests she’ll get before she can even say “hello” to you. After taking your drink order, she goes to the POS (Point of Sale Machine) and puts them in. Now she has to wait for the bartender to make that cosmo you ordered. While she does that, she’ll go check on another table or two, taking a totally different table’s food out from the kitchen to be delivered. Bringing your drinks and taking your order, she’s back at the POS to put in your order. Again, she’s running out food and dealing with her other tables. She might be spending more time at other tables, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t caring about your food. Because you’re sipping your drinks and you didn’t order appetizers, she has no reason to come back to your table until your drink is gone or your food is ready. The kitchen is backed up with the business of the night and ticket times are running longer than the 15-minute target time. The grill man has 8 different steaks going at 5 different temperatures, along with 3 orders of grilled shrimp (including yours). Sautee has 6 dishes of his own, is waiting for your shrimp from Grill, and screaming to the dishwasher that he needs oval-plates who then stops cleaning the plates he’s working on to bring those ovals to him. The expediter, or “expo”, who is the middle-man between the kitchen and the FOH (Front of house), is scrambling to put together tables’ food as he has all the tickets timed off on his “line”. After 20 minutes, your waiter bursts through the kitchen door asking him where your food is and the expediter responds “it’s coming! shit!”. There is nothing your waiter can do at this point to make your food come out, not to mention the table who sat down at the other side of the room that made you jealous; they started eating before you because they ordered a dinner salad and a bowl of soup, which neither takes more than two minutes to throw together. Your waiter brings your food to you as soon as the kitchen makes it, but unfortunately it’s under-cooked remember? So she’s got to bring it back to the “expo”, who then hands it to the grill man who’s still got 7 steaks working to deal with. After it’s done, it comes back to you and you’re still upset after you eat and leave, so you end up leaving your poor waitress a $2.59 tip.

Your waitress is on the front-lines. She is the soldier of the restaurant that takes all the flak from the customers. It’s her job to keep you happy. If the kitchen is taking too long to make the food, she has nothing to do with it. But, because the length of time the food is taking is making you unhappy, you take it out on her by leaving her a shitty tip.

When you go to a restaurant, you need to understand how things work and why things happen the way they do. Now, it could have been your waitresses fault, but she’d probably tell you and apologize; perhaps give you a free dessert. The kitchen doesn’t really care how long food is taking. It’ll be done when it’s done. They don’t get paid based on the happiness of the customers, they get their $7-9 hourly regardless. It’s the wait-staff that lives and dies by the customer. So, the next time your food is taking longer than it should, ask why, and don’t get upset at your waiter. Because it probably isn’t her fault.