Today, my husband wanted to eat at the restaurant. I tried to go with them, but my intuition said no. I didn’t feel like eating at the restaurant. So I asked my husband and daughter to go without me. After they left, I prayed for them so that they could have good time with kind waiter/waitress at the restaurant. After they came back, they told me they didn’t meet anybody rude at the restaurant. I got relieved to hear that.
Why I am writing this? I know it might sound ridiculous to you. But there is a solid reason for me to worry about eating at the restaurant.
I am not a big fan of eating at the restaurant in America. The main reason is on the waiters/waitresses. Based on my personal experiences, I hardly never ever had a great experience from waiters/waitresses at the restaurant in America.
Whenever I was in the middle of important conversation with my friends, they came to our table interrupting our conversation and asked if everything was okay. Then, whenever we needed their assistance, they were gone somewhere. When I asked for assistance to other waiter/waitress, they always responded “I would look for him/her for you.” According to American friends, waiters/waitresses have their own territory to earn tips, so the customers are not supposed to ask other waiter/waitress. And we ended up for waiting our waiter/waitress for a bill for a long time.
Here is my recent experience. My friend invited me to the restaurant. I was reluctant at eating at the restaurant, but I wanted to be social. I simply wanted to have a good time with her. So I accepted her invitation.
Right after I started eating, I found a white long hair in my egg. It was obvious that the hair came into my food when the cook was cooking the food. I didn’t want to lose my friend’s appetite while she was eating. So I didn’t say anything. I just stopped eating my food.
After my friend finished eating, I mentioned that to my friend. She strongly suggested that I should report our waitress about that for them. My friend called the waitress, and I told the truth. The waitress raised her voice and nudged me why I did not tell her right away. The waitress never apologized to me. She said it might have come from the cook who prepared this food. She said she would tell it to her (the restaurant owner or the cook, I don’t know). As you can imagine, the waitress never came back to our table, nor the restaurant owner or the cook. I didn’t get any apologies from anybody.
This story didn’t end here. I have one more thing to share with you. At the payment, my friend wanted to treat me, so I respectfully accepted her offer. I took a look of the amount on the bill. She added 30% tip from the total amount. I was stunned. I didn’t understand why she gave such a big amount of tip to the rude waitress.
Some days later, I mentioned it to another American friends. According to them, normally people don’t want to show themselves as stingy in tipping, so they leave a big portion of tips no matter what their servers do. And, since tipping is an American custom that has continued for many years, they have to follow regardless of their likes or dislikes.
I have seen some news about the no-tipping movement. I am glad to know at least there are some more people who feel the same way as I do. I hope they will change the tipping system eventually. Until then, I will avoid eating at the resultant in America as much as I can. It is not a big deal for me. Eating food equals to in-taking energy. I would like to intake good energy from what I eat.
♬ Any feedback? (^^♪
three wisdom 