Waiter Rule

Dear bloggie,

Actually I heard this theory before, quite some time ago... But I heard it on the radio today, so I decided to blog my thoughts on it.

What is the waiter rule? According to wikipedia:

The Waiter Rule refers to a common belief that ones true character can be gleaned from how one treats staff or service workers, such as a "waiter". The rule was one of William H Swanson's 33 Unwritten Rules of Management, copied from Dave Barry's version "If someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, they are not a nice person."

I seen my share of people who are "really" rude towards waiters. You can argue some of these waiters had it coming, but how true is this waiter rule?

Take a instance where I wat standing behind a malay guy at Popeye's. The guy ordered a fried fish set, and eventually he suddenly started to throw some rather rude remark to the waiter... Why? No tartar sauce. I still recall "How can you eat fish without tartar sauce? I eaten fish all over the world, not just here but I never been served with fish without tartar sauce". And the waiter show his muka bosan, trying to keep his anger intact while getting some tartar for the customer. Frankly speaking, I really had the urge at that moment to tell the tartar sauce addict to go eat his fish with some of his sperm sauce instead... It's just too much, to talk so condescending to someone for just some tartar sauce. And frankly speaking, I don't think they usually give tartar sauce for their fish set anyway unless you request for it.

Another instance is when I was having a team dinner with my co-workers. Eventually we planned to go Chili's but we had quite a huge number of people to fit into 1 table. So we request to combine 2 table together. Suffice to say, we got rejected. Eventually they got upset and ask to talk to the manager. Ironic, the guy who rejected our request is the manager. Now, from a neutral party perceptive, the 2 table we requested to join were actually side by side table, meaning even if we join the table, we won't be blocking anyone. Eventually we walked out of the Chili's and went to Tony Roma instead while complaining about the lack of "customer is always right".

How do I treat waiters? Well, for me it depends. Most cases, I will treat they as if someone equal to me. I don't feel like I should be treated like a King by these waiters. They are after all, like us all... Same human being...