One of the biggest reasons I left hospitality was how seriously everybody takes it.
From the customer's perspective here's what's happening:
You're asking for some food, then that food is brought to you, and then you eat it.
From the restaurant's perspective:
Someone asks for some food, you make them that food, they eat the food, they pay you for the food.
And yet, if any tiny thing goes even slightly awry in that process, everyone gets legitimately upset. Customers will be actually emotionally invested in the fact that someone's food arrived at the table six minutes after someone else's food. Servers will get actually honestly furious at each other over whether the utensils, glassware, and flatware is properly polished and presented. Chefs will loose their ever-loving minds over the preparation of ingredients. Like, actually really mad, genuinely feeling these unpleasant, exhausting emotions over the making, serving, and eating of food.
It's ridiculous, the whole thing is ridiculous. The longer I worked hospitality the less I could muster up the energy to care. Oh, your delicious, cooked-to-perfection, pork chop arrived in front of your idiot face seventeen minutes after you ordered it instead of twelve? I do not care at all and yet, I was being paid to care. Clearly the wrong job for me.
No one should ever be mad in a restaurant. Not the employees, not the customers. Getting upset over eating is just absurd to me now.
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