BiteClub

Those of us in the restaurant/bar industry are really hurting from his recession. I guess everybody is. And it’s summer, which always means a slowdown, especially in hot ass places like Sacramento. Years past, I’ve always counted on summer tourists to bolster sagging local patronage. But this summer hasn’t brought in many of my fellow Americans. I guess the poor sons-of-bitches in St. Louis, Memphis, Denver, and Minneapolis are feeling this recession too. Thank Christ the Euro’s still stable. We’re lucky to still have the Swedes, French and Germans visiting us out here in California.

Sort of. Depends on who you ask.

In restraunt service areas all over this land, waiters and waitresses can be heard clucking like caged hens about how European tourists don’t tip. It can be especially frustrating because they usually do require extra consideration and effort. For one, Euros are often horrible olfactory offenders. A Belgian family, fresh off the July streets of Sacramento, bears striking resemblance, in terms of sheer body odor, to the locker room of the visiting Detroit Lions after a midday preseason scrimmage at Houston Texans.  So manly! Imagine a wet Golden Retriever, panting, in your lap, and he cuts a canned cat-food fart.  It’s a fog made of shit, instead of vapor. I’ve heard accounts of waiters developing severe migraines and vomiting uncontrollably within minutes of serving these gamey, frog-eating bastards. In the days I waited tables, I used to keep a deodorant stick in my locker expressly for this purpose. The moment I spotted a dazed looking family of Euros in sensible, androgynous shoes and fanny packs, I would do like a coroner and retreat to my locker so that I could stroke three hits of Old Spice directly into my moustache. Only then could I serve their shandys and ice free sodas in the proper spirit of diplomacy. 

But any professional can cope with the stench. Two major obstacles prove especially more difficult to navigate. For one, there’s the language barrier, which, at very least, makes it slightly more difficult for a server to slip into autopilot.  At worst, it’s like trying to mime a game of charades at a party where none of the guests know, or like you. Nobody’s laughing or guessing, or having any fun at all. And after a while, you have to just give up and leave the party. Unless you’re a waiter. You can’t leave your own house.

If for any reason, you ever want to see somebody squirm, head over to a Fuddruckers, sit down at the bar, and watch the servers until you spot the hackiest one. This is the guy or gal who gives the biggest smile and the same endorsed spiel, verbatim, at each new table. A special kind of robotic clown who doesn’t mind telling the same joke over and over, even though it never gets any real laughs. He’s the guy who doesn’t know that microwaved Sysco products, while consistent, aren’t real food. In other words, the perfect server for one of these places. Anyway, watch one of these yo-yos bumble, fumble, and mumble as they deal with tourists. He can’t read their tastes, and they don’t understand his act. He just keeps trying to upsell guacamole and they just keep shrugging and smiling nervously. It’s hilarious. Few things throw corporate restaurant cheese dicks off their game like being met with naked stares and dead silence. The whole routine goes to shit. It’s like C-3PO with his eyes unplugged. Does not compute!

This linguistic barrier, along with the cultural, is a double whammy. Like trying to have a conversation with an elderly deaf lady. Even if she could hear what you were saying, she still wouldn’t know who the hell Lil’ Wayne is. That may be exactly the rub with these European travelers. They don’t get our fake restaurant culture. I’ve heard that in France, people don’t go to a restaurant because it’s been thematically pre-fabricated to resemble their Grandfather’s fishing cabin, or because it’s been loaded up with replicas of costumes and props from 80s cop movies. I heard European custom is to go to restaurants that have good food. Food that’s been prepared by proud craftsmen who care, and served by professionals who know how to take care of people. In a strange and wonderful fantasy land like this, going out to eat isn’t a simulated experience. It’s going out to eat, one of life’s true, simple joys. In this mythical place then, restaurant jobs might not be seen by ruling class douchebags as “entry level” or menial. These jobs are studied professions for the trained and proud working class; the jobs that men and women are paid wages to do. In this Garden of Eden, tips are not necessary because the server is paid a sustainable wage. Ergo, no tips.

So really, this European failure to tip is just ignorance. They weren’t part of the secret handshake deal (between restaurant owners and their patrons) that created tips. It’s the same ignorance of custom that our own lower class suffers from. We’ve just got to figure out how to educate them without making them want to stiff us (Let me know if you figure this one out).

 So buck up, American Server. The dollar will come back. People will start coming out of their homes again and into your establishment. In the meantime, have a mercy for our dimwitted friends from across the Atlantic. Their money is keeping the house afloat.