Rule Ten: Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy Every restaurant has at least one server who is chronically pessimistic. They come in for every shift expecting the worse. Even when they are proven wrong they find a reason to complain. If the ceiling started raining hundred dollar bills, they would complain about having to pay […]
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The Rules of Serving: Rule Nine
Rule Nine: Never Get Just One Some of the most influential philosophers of the last five hundred years have done some of their greatest writing on the concept of a “social contract.â€Â Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, and many other have written at length on the subject. The notion of a “social contract†pertains to the […]
The Rules of Serving: Rule Seven
Rule Seven: Be the coworker you want to have.  Once you have been at a particular restaurant for any length of time, the floor chart can tell you a great deal about how your shift will go. Most servers can see the people they are working with and find reason for either optimism or […]
Memorizing Orders
When I started my first serving job years ago I worked for a company I will affectionately refer to as “Five Four.â€Â That isn’t what it says on the signs out front, but it what we all called it. My first day a manager who introduced himself as “CSV†told me that if I couldn’t […]
The Rules of Serving: Rule Six
Rule Six: Never spend money you haven’t made.  I am glad July of 2010 is behind me. I cannot recall a month that was less lucrative in my serving career. My income dropped by well over 50% last month. Unbearable heat combined with a disproportionate number of patio shifts took a chunk out of […]
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.