Confessional

What your waiter really thinks about you

THE High Street restaurant where I work is very busy, and I feel as if I’m constantly battling with the most entitled parents in Britain.

The idea of ordering ‘off menu’ seems to have taken hold even for toddlers, so I will be given an order for six people, but they will add ‘we’d like the bread gluten-free for Sasha’ and ‘Tobias won’t eat eggs, so he’ll have pesto on the side in a dipping pot instead’. I rarely hear ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. The worst time is the 11am to 1pm slot, when the yummy mummies come in for coffee and chats. Their toddlers run riot and the babies can be screaming their heads off, with double buggies blocking my way, but the mums are busy gossiping.

I spend a lot of time crouching down, offering crayons and picking up dropped bits of dough ball from the floor. One couple recently were so obnoxious I had to ask my manager to deal with them. First her starter was ‘dried out’ (it wasn’t), then his soup was cold and the main course ‘took too long to arrive’, which is generally the chef’s fault, not the waiter’s.

Sometimes, people are embarrassed about complaining and I try to fix things for them, taking the wine or the puddings off the bill. But when they’re clearly out for a freebie, it’s hard to bite my tongue.

Obviously, diners who tip well are my favourites, but you can’t tell by looking. We had a table of very dry academic types, talking about scientific research. They didn’t say thanks or even look at me during their dinner, but left a huge tip.

The chatty mums are pretty tight-fisted on the whole and they are by far the customers who cause the most trouble.