It seems this column always ends up with a focus on crime. I can only expect that to become more common as the holidays approach and crime rates rise. This week’s stories are not only about crime, but the general stupidity of those who commit it. These people pictured themselves as modern day D.B. Coopers […]
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Recommended Viewing 11/15
For this week’s recommended reading post, I decided to try something a little different. Normally on Mondays I post a series of articles that I found interesting over the last week. This week, I decided to highlight some of the funniest videos on the internet about servers. Most of us get to work with some […]
Weird Restaurant Stories 11/13
As I perused this week’s restaurant stories, one thing became very clear. It was an incredibly bad week for restaurant managers. Several of this week’s stories contain the “manager’s behaving badly†meme. There are also some great follow up stories that will sound familiar to long time readers of this column. All of which have […]
A World Without Tips
I am still incredibly grateful for my recent guest post on tipping. It inspired my response that discussed the economics of tipping. It also raised a few other interesting points that I am now learning are common misconceptions about restaurants. For people who have never worked in a restaurant, these misconceptions can easily be mistaken […]
The Economics of Tipping
I still occasionally get the guest who will say, “I can buy this wine for half this price at the store.â€Â Which is true, but it doesn’t come with a staff to serve it and a crew of chefs ready to cook you an incredible meal from a fully stocked kitchen. I wonder if the […]
Recommended Reading 11/8
Saturday night we had a notable guest at the restaurant. I say notable guest rather than celebrity out of fear that many of my readers would only know her from Dancing with the Stars or Raising Hope. The older folks out there would then facepalm remembering all of the great work she did in our […]
Weird Restaurant Stories 11/6
This week I ran across an article of particular relevance to this series. Most of the regular readers know that each week I give an award to the restaurant hero of the week named after Chef Jonathan Justus. I guess the bad review he received on yelp did not hurt him too much. His restaurant […]
David Goes To Dentist
Earlier this week I mentioned a toothache that was sending me to the Dentist. What I failed to mention is that I would rather work doubles the next five days waiting on nothing but small children than go to the Dentist. So as I sit here in front of my computer trying to produce some […]
Weird Restaurant Stories 10/30
Welcome to a very spooky Halloween installment of weird restaurant stories. How was that for a cliché introduction? I am going to attempt to avoid clichés in this post. That means no reporting of haunted restaurants or robber wearing Halloween masks. To avoid the clichés even further this will be the first ever violence free […]
Restaurant Etiquette: Pop Quiz
Restaurants truly want you to feel comfortable in their establishments. It is the hospitality industry. We want you to feel like guests in our home when you eat at our restaurants. At the same time certain societal norms need to be upheld. Just as you wouldn’t put your muddy shoes on a host’s coffee table, […]
About The Author
David Hayden was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He took his first serving job in 1996. Since that time, he has worked for over a dozen different restaurant companies. He has held both hourly and salaried positions at independent and corporate restaurants. He has waited on over 100,000 guests and trained hundreds of servers. He has been named "Best Server in Kansas City" the last three years by the local weekly paper.
Critiquing The Server
As you are reading this, I am most likely sitting in a courthouse awaiting a trial. Not my trial or anything of that nature. I was summoned for jury duty. If this is the last post for a while, you will know I was sequestered for the crime of the century. In anticipation of my […]