Polite company: Asheville service industry professionals offer a guide to restaurant etiquette

POETIC JUSTICE: Post 25 bartender Claire Winkler expresses her feelings about bar patrons' less-than-courteous behavior with this haiku: "Put your phone away/Savor sensual delights/Except the barkeep.” Photo by Jack Sorokin

Restaurant staff are required to be courteous: It’s just part of the job. When they’re not, customers complain on sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Restaurateurs, however, can’t rate their patrons. And while most of the customers a typical server sees daily are well-behaved, some are anything but.

Despite increasing informality, there’s still an etiquette to dining out, but those rules can be complicated. Emily Post dedicated 43 pages to various aspects of dining out in her classic Etiquette, but we’ve narrowed it down to a few simple rules, including a few concerning things she would never have imagined.

  1. Make a reservation, be on time or cancel it. Not all restaurants take reservations, but always call to check. And as the Copper Crown’s Kate Bannasch observes, “If you can’t make your reservation, call and cancel. So simple to do, yet so often overlooked.” Failing to do this means someone has to wait for a table while one sits empty in the midst of a crowded dining room, because they were told it was reserved.
  2. Acceptable tipping is 20 percent. Reservoir Dogs should have settled this once and for all: We all wished Mr. Pink an untimely demise after that scene. Why not 15 percent? Because the minimum wage for servers ($2.13) hasn’t exactly kept up with the cost of living. Besides, it’s so much easier to calculate a 20 percent tip: Just take the total, divide by 10 and multiply by two.
  3. No touching. The most common response to our social media query about restaurant etiquette concerned sexual harassment. As eight-year industry veteran Candyce Collard put it, “I’ve had my ass grabbed many a time, and I’ve never even worked at a bar and really only one place that was open late. … So yeah, Don’t f**king touch people.” Claire Winkler, a bartender at Post 25, added, “Your bartender is not your girlfriend for hire. If we’re nice to you, it’s because we’re professional. Do not mistake kindness for an invitation. If we’re interested in you, we’ll let you know.”
  4. Hang up your phone. A 2014 Slate article cited cellphone use as one of the causes of longer wait times in restaurants. While you’re finishing that call to Uncle Steve, the waitress is standing over you, tapping her pencil on her order pad — and someone at another table is waiting to order dessert or get another drink. “Just go outside if you have to take a phone call,” says Strada co-owner Anthony Cerrato. Winkler, meanwhile, gave us a brilliant haiku that covers rules 3 and 4: “Put your phone away/Savor sensual delights/Except the barkeep.”
  5. There are rules, man! Like it or not, every social setting has its rules — some spoken, some not. Observe what others are doing and act accordingly. Is there only limited staff? Are people ordering at the bar? Maybe you should, too. And if you want to attract a server, don’t wave your hand in the air.

It’s also good to know how things like wine service work in fancier restaurants. “A guest ordered a bottle of Beringer white zinfandel,” remembers Robert Johnson, a 20-year veteran of local fine dining service. “I present the bottle and pour a taste to make sure it’s good. The gentleman swishes the wine around the glass, takes a long, deep sniff to get the bouquet, takes a sip and says, ‘It’s not what I expected, nor nearly as good as I hoped. Do you have another one that’s better?’

“No, I don’t! It’s white zinfandel!”

Traditionally, if you order off the bottle menu, when the waiter pours a taste, it’s to find out if the wine is corked or has oxidized. If it doesn’t smell like wet cardboard or taste like cheap vinegar, then it’s probably still good, and you should drink it. It’s generally fine to ask for a taste of something you can order by the glass, since those bottles are usually already open.

  1. Obey the law. Health laws protect us from horrible diseases caused by food-borne bacteria; alcohol laws limit booze-related fatalities. Kyle Beach of Buxton Hall Barbecue has a cautionary tale about a table of well-dressed 30-somethings: “I noticed empty mini-bottles in their section, removed them, and told them consumption of alcohol from outside of the establishment was illegal. I came back, noticed more, and informed them they’d have to leave. A lady in the group flipped out, spat at me and used very bad language.” Note: Spitting at or cursing your server is also taboo.
  2. Be civil. Don’t shout things like “I pay your salary” at the waiter (which, apparently, is common), and don’t smash the toilet basin, as has happened to several local bars. And before you remove your prosthetic limb and leave it sticking out in the aisle, maybe you should ask if that’s OK. This actually happened to former Magnetic Field bartender Ken Klehm. “My grandmother was an amputee since her early 20s, so that wasn’t what threw me,” he explains. “It was just treating that kind of dining place like it was your own home.”

Another sore point, says longtime local server Michael Parker, is “changing a baby’s dirty diapers in front of diners. I have seen this twice. She put her baby on the vacant table next to her and cleaned and changed it. Two couples at separate tables had front-row seats to this. Let’s just say the guacamole was no longer appealing after that.”

In another such incident, says Cerrato, “The customer after them sat down and got it on their jacket! That was really hard to explain,” because the staff hadn’t seen it happen. But they subsequently found the diaper in the bathroom — which was equipped with a changing table. “Fortunately for us, the woman was very understanding and supernice.”

SHARE

Thanks for reading through to the end…

We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.

We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.

About Jonathan Ammons
Native Asheville writer, eater, drinker, bartender and musician. Proprietor of www.dirty-spoon.com Follow me @jonathanammons

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

14 thoughts on “Polite company: Asheville service industry professionals offer a guide to restaurant etiquette

  1. boatrocker

    The fact this article was even written speaks volumes to Asheville’s kowtowing to the Almighty Tourist Dollar.

    Locals who do these type of things obviously never have worked in the biz, so servers, serve them ‘cold shoulder’, as your business doesn’t need their business anyway. And if they leave whiny reviews online, well, the restaurant biz was doing just fine before Yelp and similar sites.

    Restaurants that ‘play that game’ are just as much at fault.

      • Lulz

        Spit works both ways. I ever see someone spit in my food, the ensuing beatdown would be epic.

        • Peter Robbins

          After the cops hauled you away, I would take care of the waiter by tipping a lot more than 20 percent. It’s hard to find a joint with good entertainment.

        • Snowflake (Social Justice Worrier)

          Better yet, call the cops and claim assault. Save the food for DNA analysis. The restaurant scene would be dramatic and the person would certainly lose his/her job; restaurants won’t permit that kind of publicity. And do film it for all of us, please.

          • Peter Robbins

            Now you’re called Lulz a wimp and a tattletale? At long last, sir, have you no shame?

  2. John Penley

    Please do a folllow up and go to the fast food type places and ask those who work for minimum wage for their rules for customers. The non minimum wage service industry jobs in Asheville seem to be almost all white people because those jobs and the owners hiring practices reflects long time Asheville institutional racism and discrimination.

  3. Lulz

    Little industry insider tip. Servers make the most money off all paid employees in the business. And if tipped with cash, often can hide the money from taxes.

    Servers though are not entitled to 20 percent for crap service.

  4. boatrocker

    Hilarious- thus far I’m the only one who calls the behaviors listed in the article selfish and immature-

    There’s your answer, Asheville restaurants. Your patrons feel entitled to make an ass of themselves because, money!

    And folks wonder why we despise tourists and local yuppies afflicted with affluenza? hmmm

  5. Deplorable Infidel

    Always calculate your tip on the PRE TAXed bill amount…not the total! no need to TIP on the tax paid!

    • boatrocker

      Your post sounds like why they spit (if you’re lucky) in your food. (Hint- for acting like that, they do. Eat up).

      May you be reincarnated in your next life as a server in a local restaurant, and may you also be not able to wear something low cut in order to genrete income to feed yourself.

      For living in a country that devotes over 55% of our GDP to the military, and you can’t tip 20%. Hmmmm

Leave a Reply to boatrocker ×

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.