A Mandatory Draft. {for front of house workers}

I've always been known for my radical ideas. Not so much that my phone is tapped or I have to wear aluminum foil on my head to receive special signals. But enough so that some of my closest friends look at me askance, tilting their heads like confused woofs and say, "O come on Shuna! You don't really think that, do you?!"

I then look deep into their eyes and assess the terror level.

    [Decide, based on its intensity, whether to say if I was joking or not.]

Don't get me started on people who smoke cigarettes. Or the death penalty. Or needle-exchange programs. Or our impending presidential election. Or the state of our over-fished oceans.

Or the devastating oil tanker crash into the Bay Bridge, dumping thousands of gallons of oil into our water.

Believe me when I say you don't want to know what I think.

But this new KQED piece is on a much less serious note. I'm tired of hearing everyone's service sob stories about this waiter or that in that restaurant or mine or wherever! Go be a waiter! It's not an easy job! Go and be a floor manager and try training waiters in America! Or stop your moaning.

Or get your this-is-how-they-should-wait-on-me expectations in check.

You probably haven't even gotten this far into my snarky post. But if you have, check out my crazy idea at Bay Area Bites, KQED's food blog extraordinaire.

Comments

[LAS]

Heh. I've suggested this very idea out loud before. More than once.

[Rachelle]

I love your site and (almost) everything you write about, but I'm sorry I'm not on board with you on this topic. I have held many of those jobs and, I agree, they're hard work. However, that's not an excuse for taking one and doing a shitty job, so yes, I do have high expectations of wait staff, etc. I'm the type of person that needs to excel at whatever I do. Even at times in my life when I've held a job that I didn't enjoy, I still did it to the best of my ability. I expect as much from others too. It may be a hard goal to reach, but it IS attainable. Maybe I've misunderstood your point and, if so, I apologize, but I too have strong feelings about this.

[Natalie Sztern]

It took me to today's post to notice the whisk you have a picture of...well i am 51 and i remember my mother had one of these gizmos that i would use to whip up cake batters. I rmember the turning of the wheel and I used it to beat eggs, if I remember correctly, and it would go quickly and then get stuck and it had a mind of its own making me reposition it all the time.