bitterwaitress

The Glossary

 

Here are terms that we use to talk about diners, chefs, managers, and each other. We will

update as necessary.

 

A

 

 

Art - two definitions:

1. A loosely defined term used by some chefs to describe their precarious combinations on

ingredients. Often a euphemism for dishes in which presentation and embellishment are

used to compensate for a lack of flavor.

2. The aesthetically compromised paintings or multimedia abortions created by talentless

relatives or children that restaurateurs (you know who you are) hang and talk to nauseating

length about with uninterested diners.

 

Asshole - Any diner, coworker, manager or kitchen personnel who exhibits the slightest bit

of insolence, or who lack a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the difficult job and

troubled life of the waitress. A popular, all-around term bandied about at least every few

seconds.

 

Attentive- A term used for a server particularly adept at creating the illusion of concern for

the diner and/or proficiency at their jobs.

 

Australian- Resident of “down under,” and one of the many foreign cultures which tip

poorly.

 

B

 

 

Bitch - Do we really have to define this one for you? Reserved for women, gay men and

closet queens (a certain short chef who began life as a jewelry designer….).

 

Bastard - Usually reserved for male diner, ages 40+. These individuals exhibit brusque

behavior and a condescending attitude used to compensate for a small penis, a fading career,

or both. Paul Sorvino is a great example.

 

Butter- Culinary panacea used in nearly every dish in every restaurant as it imparts flavor

and texture which can be achieved by no other means. If you ever wondered why

macrobiotic food tastes so god-awful, it’s lack of butter. You cannot avoid it, so deal. On

occasion, table butter is dipped into the dishwater before being delivered to surly guests.

 

 

C

 

Campagna - The one New York restaurant so evil to their staff, so repugnant as people,

that I actually recommend you never go. A favorite among b-list musicians, faded stars like

Tina Louise and of course, Madonna. By the way, any Department of Labor people

examining tip-outs to non-servers (like the kitchen staff), check this place out. [Now defunct, but still so loathsome as to warrant merit. And scorn.]

 

Cash - The preferred method of payment and why we do this thankless job. The only

reason we do this. No, servers really do not enjoy bringing food and drinks to you and

cleaning up your slop, entertaining your demon spawn and feeding the needs of your

comprimised egos, despite what Danny Meyer and his cronies might tell you.

 

Comment Cards - One of the most popular weapons in the arsenal a restaurant uses to

make diners believe they care about anything beyoned taking your cash. (The others include

using your last name when you get your credit card back, or putting a stupid note in your

take home bag.) Comment cards play on people’s need to be heard which is most often

expressed as a desperate craving for attention. They are extremely popular in therapy-crazed

New York and San Francisco. A frequent vehicle for druken scrawling and completely

useless suggestions. (”Make your own bread! Let us bring our own wine without paying!

How about our own food?”). Almost always destroyed, though not uncommonly the really

dumb ones are posted for the staff’s amusement.

 

Check - The thing you pay, and on which you tip 20% after tax. Check is a physical object,

and not a command to be uttered. It is acceptable to make the pen gesture to request your

check. If you have misbehaved, you will often find things added on to it. After all you are

only meant to pay it not to look at it.

 

City Hall - Another useless restaurant in Lower Manahttan. Avoid.

 

Credit Card/Card - A method of payment, not the preferred one (that’s cash). If you must

pay with a credit card, use Visa, as American Express takes more out of the total. Some

unscrupulous restaurateurs and very short men, such as Mark Straussman of Campagna,

actually deduct credit card percentages from their servers tips. What a pig!

 

  

D

 

 

Daigle -Term reserved for a server most highly respected by her peers. As a verb, it means

to generate exceptional tips by wooing patrons with Southern Hospitality, behind which

they cannot sense the scorn.

 

Danny’s Diner - Idiomatic expression used by the staff of Union Square Cafe for that

institution. Partially a slur, since it implies dismissive service and substandard food. Wait a

second…

 

Double - One of the cruelest tortures of a cruel industry. For you complete morons, it

means back-to-back shifts, as in lunch and dinner (or breakfast and lunch). Doubles suck

and they are foisted upon new waitresses who have no seniority or upon that individuals

whom management is trying to punish or force to quit. They are the primary cause of

burnout and illegal stimulant use in the business (with a healthy bout of post-shift drinking

or screwing to come down.) “You won’t have to work doubles” is a lie told to prospective

employees on the scale of “Just the tip, it won’t hurt” is to virgins. (They love to use this line

at Gotham Bar & Grill) Smug managers revel in what they believe is intelligence by calling

doubles “favors.”

 

Dick/Dickhead - Though this term is often used interchangeably with “Bastard” (above), it

really is a reference to the penis (or the glans, in the case of “dickhead”), which may be

dipped into the iced drinks or into the room temperature, non-acidic foods of unruly guests.

Don’t think for a second that this doesn’t happen.

 

Discover Card- Method of payment accepted by some restaurants, and a sure sign that a

person is cheap, a bad tipper and out of their league.

 

 

E

 

Enlightened Hospitality -In theory: a sissy term coined by Danny Meyer to reflect what

Southerners and Italian grandmothers have known all along - be nice to people. The “five

tenets” of enlightened hospitality place the staff above everyone else, even above profit. In

reality: a sissy-ass system of institutionalized hypocrisy and propaganda, as anyone familiar

with the implementation of it can attest. The perfect example is the unwillingness of its

practitioners to add gratuities onto large parties, or to confront guest who don’t tip, or do so

poorly (usually their friends), all the while claiming to “look out for” the employee. See

“Kool Aid”

 

Entertainment Card - A card entitling diners to discounts at restaurants that lack the

innate quality required to fill their seats without silly promotional gimmicks. Often used by

the cheapest of diners, who forget to tip on the pre-discounted total of the check. The only

acceptable use of this card, which is too often given as a gift, is to order an additional entree

to sample the skills of the chef. You’re cheap, and probably won’t do that. Moreover, the

chef whose restaurant accepts the Entertainment Card is probably not that good anyway.

 

F

 

 

“Feel the Love”- Now the motto of bitterwaitress, it was once the mantra of servers at

Union Square Cafe who worked with that establishments most acerbic legends. Vera, you

know who you are, and we love you. Ah the Golden Days…

 

Forum-Weird, cult-like group sometimes brought in by managers to give seminars on

forgiveness. Hmm….

 

Free- the cost of the meal which is the goal of most diners who complain unnecessarily

about irrelevant things. Yes, it will be noisy at 8 PM on Saturday, so what the hell are you

thinking? Good diners get free things from happy waitpeople, but this happens so rarely

that it can be construed as a sign of the Apocalypse.

 

Frog - One of the always charming French - they hate everyone and anything not directly

from France. They don’t bathe and are constantly yelling/whining. They think they know

about food and wine and that Americans are beasts. (Then why did Alain Ducasse set up

shop in New York….?) They always complain about the American wine and then order a

Chardonnay or Cabernet from Napa!

 

G

 

 

Gotham Bar & Grill - Renowned New York dining institution known for creatively

presented food. A favorite among assholes, as it is owned and run by them. Desperately

craving their fourth star from the New York Times, they have yet to realize the necessity of

keeping a staff for more than six weeks as an important part of attaining this goal. Once prominently

nailed by the Department of Labor for requiring servers to tip out management. Nonetheless, they make some killer desserts.

 

  

H

 

 

Holidays - Culturally sanctioned days which inspire greater levels of diner hostility on the

part of patrons, and small-dicked management hubris, than is normal on most other days.

Face it diners of the world, your Valentine’s Day is no more special, and you are no more

deserving, than the table next to you. Stay at home, screw like a good couple, and go out the

next night.

Hostess - In most cases, the bulemic 19 y.o. woman sleeping with the manager. In some

(rare) cases, your greatest ally. In almost all cases, someone who is tipped out unnecessarily

because the owner is too cheap to pay her.

 

I

 

 

Iced Tea - One of the surest indicators of someone who is afraid of life (i.e. the pleasures

of mild alcohol use) and who is also cheap (i.e. the verbal tip). A favorite among Christians

and Ladies Who Lunch (both of whom are afraid of life and VERY cheap). It is usually

served with lemon and Sweet-n-Low. It is ALWAYS a pain in the ass to make and requires

stupid spoons whose only real purpose is to be use to snort crystal meth between shifts on a

double.

 

K

 

 

Kiss of Death - When you are praised and praised and given a shitty tip usually

accompanied by putting the tip in your hand as they shake it good-bye and say this is for

you. It is used in every restaurant.

 

Kool Aid - A crass but apt comparison of adherence to the tenets of Enlightened

Hospitality to the tragedy caused by Jim Jones to his cult followers.

 

M

 

 

Merlot-A grape native to France and the source of some of that nation’s finest wine. You

know that and I know that, but to most people Merlot is ordered because it is what they

think is “classy.” Merlot grows well in Bordeaux and in parts of California, but is ill-suited

for Italy. Thus, in the completely warped logic of Italian restaurants, it is the most popular

wine to order there. Most California Merlot tastes like wood and is a pretty good way of

getting a pretentious idiot to plop down a lot of money a bottle of swill. Oh, for the truly

braindead, the “t” is silent. But go ahead and say it because you’ve probably already made

an ass of yourself.

 

P

 

 

Polenta - An Italian poverty food essentially akin to grits that had become in vogue during

the nineties. Ostensibly healthy, it is often used as a vehicle for cheeses, oils, butter, and nuts

and other things which simply do not belong in it. The polenta at Union Square Cafe

smelled so bad, was so foul, rank and putrid, that on more than one occasion guests asked to

be moved away from a table where it had been ordered.

 

Pig- In addition to being a fairly common livestock, pig was the term used by the waitstaff

of Union Square Cafe during the glory days of 1996-1997 to refer to the customers. It was

based on the contemporaneous presence of scum clientele and the special roast suckling pig

on Friday nights. e.g. “Hey, the pigs you have on table 12 want some more wine. Fuck they

are gross!”

 

R

 

 

Real Job - That which most people assume we do not have. Certainly long hours of

stressful labor isn’t really work. Of course the skills of dealing with many people at once is

not valuable. Training and education are not part of a real job. No, real jobs entail sitting

around, getting shat on by an old boss all day, then in turn being an ass to others, getting

frustrated and taking it our on your waitress at dinner that night. If that’s a real job then I

don’t want one.

S

 

 

Split Check - The most obvious harbinger of the cheap, the stupid, the meek. Check

splitting is an enormous burden on the waiter, a pain in the ass for the restaurant (like I care

about that) and a sure way to invoke a cook’s tirade (as if they ever felt they needed a

reason). If you have any decency, don’t even think about asking for split checks. But then

again, you probably don’t.

 

 

T

 

Tip - 20% or more of the total of your bill left in cash without comment.

 

 

Transmedia- Yet another calling card of the cheap, yet another ploy to rob the clueless

restaurateur. Then again, if the restaurant can’t figure out not to fall for this ploy, it’s best

they go out of business. Hey, that discount you get on it…the tip comes first.

  

V

 

 

Verbal Tip - The belief on the part of some diners that effusive praise of service is

somehow a substitute for monetary compensation. These are some warped muthas. Say all

the nice things you want, just drop the 20% with the check and we’ll get along just fine.

 

W

 

 

Water with lemon - Iced tea (see above) without the useful spoon.

 

White Zinfandel - A horrifying abuse of the greatest of California’s indigenous grapes (at

least they the experts tell us it’s native this week.) Oenology aside, it is a blatant and

unforgivable rape of red wine. White Zinfandel is the calling card of the completely

uninitiated diner. The individual “enjoying” this beverage will most certainly have some sort

of steamed fish with no starch and a myriad of vegetable substitutions, or even worse, a

grilled-chicken-Caesar salad. By ordering “White Zin” you are FORCING your server to

abandon all hope of a tip and therefore dooming yourself to mediocre (at best) service.

Spare yourself the agony and order a Coke. At least that way we can assume you have been

through rehab or something.