Influencers have had a bad time of it at restaurants recently. There they are, just trying to record a quick video and take a few pictures of their lunch, and restaurateur Jeremy King (of the Ivy and the Wolseley in London) goes and writes an article saying they’re ruining the dining experience of “bona fide guests” – something he says staff are “desperately trying to stop”. I’ve read pieces calling TikTok the end of the London restaurant scene. Friends’ parents have even said they would get up and leave if they were sitting next to anyone filming their meal.
This surprises me. I have worked as a waitress in restaurants for more than five years, a job I love, and the joys of which most often come from the customers I serve. Of course, for every 10 great customers, you’re bound to get one that’s not so great – I’ve come across my fair share of those.
And so I can confidently say that influencers are the least of my worries as a waitress. In fact, I’d rank them and their camera crews at the bottom of my list of the rudest types of customers I’ve come across. It’s a list which I’ll now be sharing with you, in the hopes that once you’ve read it, you’ll agree that influencers really aren’t the ultimate devil of the dining room.
1. The arrogant and ill-mannered
This is the most common type of rude customer. They range from people with a simple inability to say “please” and “thank you” to those who seem to think being awful to others is a kind of sport. I once asked a couple whether they had any allergies. They looked me up and down, smirked at one another, and then one of them declared: “We’re allergic to poor people.” I and my mounting student debt stayed well away from this pair, for my health as much as theirs.
These types of customers also tend to reinterpret the purpose of the waiter to suit their very specific needs. I believe – and many would agree – that my job is to ensure people have an enjoyable and stress-free meal. But some diners assume that, since they’re paying, they can have whatever they want, whenever they want it, whether that be food that doesn’t exist on our menu or service that goes well beyond my pay grade. A customer once requested that I do their supermarket shop while they ate their lunch.
Another low point was serving a group of women sitting outside with their dogs. One of the dogs decided to have a poo beside their table. The owner of said dog summoned me over and demanded I clean it up.
2. The work-from-homers
A very specific type of customer, and one seen more and more often at the restaurant I work in. The Work-from-Homer arrives, orders a single coffee, sits there all day, ignores any requests we make to have our table back, and participates in Zoom call meetings for the entire restaurant to overhear. What’s worse is that they’ve evolved over time: become smarter, more prepared, and much more resourceful. I recently watched a customer pull out an extension lead from his rucksack, allowing him to charge his laptop, phone, Apple watch and headphones – I really thought his electric toothbrush would appear at one point.
You might think these are the ideal kinds of customers, neither needy nor fussy; all they ask is for you to let them work in peace, waving you away when you offer up your service. Problem is, we run a restaurant, not an office space with free wifi and unlimited tap water for the price of £3.49, and their presence detracts heavily from both the restaurant’s atmosphere and the very little service charge I receive at the end of the month.
3. The clicker
There’s a lot of overlap between the Clicker and the Arrogant type, but I decided that people who click their fingers to get my attention deserve a category of their own because they often consider what they’re doing to be polite – normal, even. Out of principle, I’ve always refused to be hailed in such a manner, but this comes with its own issues. The Clicker has been known to morph into the clapper, the whistler, even sometimes the glass-tapper – never will they grasp the effectiveness of simply saying “excuse me” or even “hello”.
4. The flirt
In my first summer of waitressing, I served a man whose first comment prior to his order was: “Do you have a boyfriend?” I made the mistake of telling the truth, admitting that I was single, and thus inadvertently opening myself up to an aggressive amount of unsolicited flirting. My response was a hasty retreat to the staff room. Since then, I’ve learned I can count on my colleagues to either swap sections or kick these customers out of the restaurant.
5. The brawler
What do you get when you mix a hot Saturday afternoon with limited outdoor seating? The answer is the Brawler – someone who will physically fight their way into an outdoor seat during the two brief months of the year when it is enjoyable to sit in them. On a warm, sunny day, the battle for these tables is brutal. I’ve had to break up physical scraps between customers who use everything from their handbags, prams, or even the chairs to guarantee themselves an al fresco caesar salad and iced americano. There is a benefit to this: I now consider myself fully equipped to referee a boxing match.
6. The complainer
I want to make it clear that by a Complainer, I don’t mean someone who is frustrated by the quality or quantity of their food or how long it takes to arrive. You can be a perfectly nice customer and still not be happy with your food. There are, however, three specific types of complaints that mark you out as rude.
The first is the customer who complains about things completely out of my control. For example, the noise and smell of cars on the street, the temperature outside, or – my favourite one – the positioning of the sun. Unfortunately, their anger only intensifies once they discover that I can neither stop traffic nor control the weather. Saying this, one customer discovered that my standing position was blocking the ray of sunlight that was previously in her eyes. I was instructed to remain in place until told otherwise.
I also have no control over restaurant prices. That is why I give everyone menus: so they can pick what they want depending on their taste, mood and budget. Nevertheless, I’ve had diners explode when confronted with the bill, claiming that the price can’t be right and I must change it. And no, my manager cannot change it either.
Then there are those who complain about me or my colleagues to one another while I’m standing right beside them. It might surprise you how many people feel perfectly comfortable saying things like “I’ve heard the service here is appalling” or “I don’t think she wrote down my order – she’ll definitely get it wrong” while I’m standing at their table awkwardly waiting for them to make up their minds. I’ve always been curious: are these remarks something they want me to hear, like helpful feedback that they’re too scared to offer directly to my face? Or is it that, as with the Arrogant customer, to them I’m just an invisible person in an apron?
The final type of Complainer is the one who wants me to tell off other people’s children, especially when in close earshot of the parents. Families with children have just as much right to dine out as anyone else. If you don’t want to hear or see children, then I suggest going somewhere they are banned.
7. The one for whom rules don’t apply
These people possess no ability to abide by the rules put in place to make the lives of other customers and staff easier. They bring their own food, play music out loud, and sit at tables that don’t fit their party number. One colleague, after asking a customer not to smoke on the non-smoking terrace, caught him having a cigarette in the restaurant loo instead.
They enter spaces they’re not allowed into, wandering around kitchens and staff rooms, asking why the breakfast cereal they spotted on their adventure couldn’t be offered on the menu. They come in when we’re shut, and stay long after we’ve closed. For most customers, all it takes is a simple nod at the clock or a reminder that closing time is in 10 minutes to get them to leave. For the Rules Don’t Apply customer, you need to engage in a full-on theatrical performance to make any impression.
Recently, after half an hour of waiting for a guy to leave after closing time, the team and I decided to get on with shutting down the restaurant: turning up the lights, switching off the music, mopping the floors and changing out of our uniforms. None of this was acknowledged by our rude customer, so we were left standing in our coats for another 15 minutes before said customer shut his laptop, gave us a wave and left without an apology.
8. The dine-and-dasher
The extreme form of the Rules Don’t Apply customer is, of course, the Dine-and-Dasher. It baffles me every time this happens. How can people sit and order food, revel in the hard work of others, then just get up while no one is looking and disappear without paying? And it’s happening more often. There’s nothing more mortifying than having to go to your boss and reveal that one of your tables, who ate and drank more than £100 of goods, has left without paying. The first time it happened, I was 19, new to the job, and terrified that I would be fired or at least made to pay their bill.
One time, I managed to spot two women running off without paying. I sprinted down the street until I reached them and demanded they come back and settle the bill. Oddly, their response was: “We can’t pay, we have a meeting to get to.” Such a reaction stumped me more than the actual act itself. In the end, I managed to get them to come back and pay up.
9. The influencer
As you can see, a camera-wielding, relatively self-obsessed influencer does not come close to matching the rudeness of any of the above types of customers. I’ve actually had a lot of fun helping influencers create content, when asked politely, and in a way their presence is mutually beneficial; they get lunch, the restaurant gets a paying customer plus advertising, and waiting staff get our service charge. Win-win-win!
Of course, if an influencer does begin to present any of the above traits, then I would definitely consider them a rude customer. But this has nothing to do with them being an influencer. It’s simply because they are rude.
The Guardian
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