One can easily imagine this restaurant scene, the guest places the order “mushroom omelet, fruit no potato” the server neglects or does not hear the “fruit no potato” request, the server delivers the “mushroom omelet with potato”. The guest explains to the server that she ordered “fruit no potato”, the server proves beyond a shadow that the order relayed to them was “mushroom omelet”, because that is what is clearly written on the order check, no mention of “fruit no potato”. Clearly the guest did not order “fruit no potato.”
Fantastic, the server has proven that 1) the restaurant does not train 2) the server is blissfully unaware that a tip is voluntary 3) treating a guest as if they are having short term memory issues is a losing proposition .
The guest will of course in the end get the “fruit”, however having to dance with the server leaves them quite unhappy. I am amazed that experienced servers and knowledgeable restaurateur’s believe that proving the guest wrong serves some higher purpose. Please let the rest of us mere mortals in on that higher purpose.
Hospitality requires that when you invite someone into your restaurant you treat them as an honored guest, as a partner, as a relationship to be cultivated not as an adversary to be vanquished.
