[Customer entitlement at restaurants is at an all-time high,
making work unsafe and unbearable for many in the industry. The way we
think about hospitality needs to change.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT  
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Khushbu Shah
December 29, 2020
Food & Wine
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_ Customer entitlement at restaurants is at an all-time high, making
work unsafe and unbearable for many in the industry. The way we think
about hospitality needs to change. _

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Chef Angie Mar was in no rush to re-open indoor dining at her upscale
New York City steakhouse, the Beatrice Inn.

“I didn’t feel super comfortable with it yet,” says Mar,
explaining that she had yet to purchase the necessary air filtration
system and figure out protocols to ensure the safety of her staff and
guests. It was an early fall day and the weather was still pleasant,
so she stuck to the 12 tables she could comfortably seat outside. A
woman showed up for dinner with her boyfriend in tow, demanding a
table indoors. When Mar explained the situation to the customer,
offering her a table on the sidewalk instead, she was met with extreme
vexation.

“I can’t sit outside! I am wearing Gucci,” huffed the woman.
It’s a revealing interaction, one of thousands, that displays just
how deep customer entitlement runs in the hospitality industry—and
restaurant workers are at a breaking point.

The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the industry, decimated wages, and
sent restaurants into a tailspin of closures, reopenings, and
ever-changing guidelines, all while exposing workers to health risks.
And there is no real end, or government assistance, in sight. To make
matters worse, customer entitlement is at an all-time high, according
to the numerous servers, maitre’ds, managers, and owners that I
spoke to across the country. “It’s obscene to me the way people
are acting,” says Mar.

Customer entitlement, or what customers believe they are owed, has
long been an issue in the hospitality industry. Restaurant workers
swap stories like war veterans about ridiculous demands, difficult
customers, and bad tippers. But the pandemic, and the terrible
customer behavior that has come with it—impatience regarding wait
times, name-calling, frustration over limited seating and menu
options, and disregard for safety protocols—has only served to
highlight how pervasive and, frankly, dangerous the problem really
is. 

This issue of entitlement is rooted in the popular adage “The
customer is always right,” which sits at the center of American
hospitality. “It was definitely something that was hammered into me
when I first started in this industry,” says Lauren Friel, the owner
of Rebel Rebel in Somerville, MA. “I was told that not only is the
customer always right, but we want to awe and delight them. The idea
is that we will bend over backwards for the guest.”

Liz, a server whose name has been changed because she requested
anonymity, says she works in a similar environment. At the steakhouse
in Connecticut where she is currently employed, management enforces a
culture of “always accommodating the guest” at all costs.

“We are expected to provide them with above-and-beyond service, even
if they are abusive,” she says. “It makes us feel like we are not
allowed to have the expectation of being treated like a person.”

The idea that the customer is always right is pervasive not only among
hospitality professionals, but also among customers themselves.
“We’ve taught the American diner that there are no boundaries and
they can ask for anything and everything, and that it should be given
to them,” says Friel.

The precise origin of the phrase “The customer is always right” is
not known, but its popularization is most commonly attributed to three
men: Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker, and Marshall Field, all
of whom founded popular department stores around the turn of the 20th
century. At the time, “caveat emptor,” which translates to
“buyer beware,” was the more common attitude. It placed the onus
on the customer to make sure everything was correct—and placed zero
responsibility on the company to do right by the customer. The gradual
rise of the phrase “the customer is always right,” however,
shifted the power balance away from the company and toward the
customer.

This notion was solidified in the American restaurant space in the
mid-1990s, in part due to the release of restaurateur Danny Meyer’s
industry-shifting book, Setting the Table. Meyer advocates for
building a culture of “yes” in the book, recounts Miguel de Leon,
the wine director of Pinch Chinese in New York City. It was something
that was common in Meyer’s establishments and quickly spread
throughout the industry.

“I saw that customers almost always got what they wanted,” writes
Keenan Steiner in Grub Street, about his time as a server at Meyer’s
flagship restaurant, Union Square Café, adding that employees often
referred to the restaurant as “the house of yes.” But it begs the
greater question, says de Leon, of “Yes for who?” The answer under
the culture Meyer evangelized is the person with the money, which in
the case of restaurants is the diner. “The commodification of
service becomes completely transactional,” says de Leon. "It becomes
about what the restaurant can do for the diner, he explains. “There
is a lot of harm in that.”

Hospitality workers are often drawn to restaurant work because they
like to take care of others. “A huge reason why we are in this
business is because we want to make people feel good, make them feel
special, and make them feel cared for,” says Friel. “Being of
service and serving others is a very noble thing,” adds Caro
Blackman, the maitre d’ of Maydan in Washington, D.C. She believes
that most people who work in hospitality are empaths who want to
nurture other people. “I just don’t believe the customer is always
right. That’s a very unhealthy expectation,” says Blackman. “Any
healthy relationship has to have healthy boundaries, period.”

American diners, however, struggle with the concept of boundaries,
which Friel attributes to the lack of clear industry standards for
what hospitality should look like. “There is no rubric, no guide to
tell you how long is too long to wait for something. Is it one minute?
Is it five, or ten?” Increasingly, the diner decides what those
boundaries look like, based on their own expectations. It gets
dangerous, says Friel, when those desires and expectations “start to
encroach on someone else’s humanity.”

In its current iteration, hospitality feels like a one-way street,
where customers are emboldened to make impossible demands and engage
in behavior that can be disrespectful. It’s not uncommon for diners
to make unreasonable food requests. Abigail, a server in Charleston,
South Carolina, who asked to be identified only by her first name,
says that at a popular Southern restaurant she used to work at,
customers would demand dishes not on the menu, like a baked potato or
a certain type of fish. A manager would then be tasked with picking up
the dish from a restaurant across the street to make the customer
happy. She also recalls the table of three women who would frequently
split one rack-of-lamb order between them, but demand the lamb be cut
into three pieces and cooked at three different temperatures—no
matter how busy the restaurant was.

Customers throw temper-tantrums when service doesn’t meet their
personal expectations. Liz recalls the story of a customer who was so
upset at the size of the free birthday dessert given to his daughter
that he berated the staff until the cops were called. Another night, a
patron came in demanding a seat at the packed bar. When the bartender
was unable to magically conjure up space, the patron threatened to go
to the corporate offices “to make sure she lost her job because she
couldn’t make people get up out of their seats for him.”

Instances of name-calling are quite common, too. Judy Ni, the owner of
Baology in Philadelphia, recalls the story of a customer berating a
young employee, who is Black, calling him a number of derogatory names
and racial slurs, including the N word, because he wasn’t given his
order “quick enough.” Jeffrey S., a server at a seafood chain in
Connecticut, witnessed a woman scream slurs at his coworker of Latin
descent and call him an idiot repeatedly because she was unhappy with
her wings. (There was nothing incorrect about the order, says
Jeffrey.)

Blackman recalled the time a customer remarked that she would
“probably drive her future husband to drink.” Ursula Siker, the
owner of Jeff & Judes, a Jewish deli in Chicago, says customers have
sent harassing DMs to her restaurant’s Instagram account, calling
her “unprofessional” and “a disgrace” due to wait times for
their food.

Diners often feel entitled to restaurant workers’ personal stories
and space. A customer once sent an angry email to a restaurant owner
because a server in Phoenix, Arizona, who asked to remain anonymous,
wouldn’t reveal the meaning of a deeply personal tattoo located on
his arm.

“My tattoos represent past relationships, old buddies, and a friend
I lost to suicide,” says the server. “They are my memories. They
are my experiences. I didn’t get them for you.” The disregard of
physical boundaries is a rampant issue, too. “It’s why I make sure
to stand far enough away when waiting on a table so customers can’t
touch me,” says Abigail.

Many servers are reporting that the lack of respect for boundaries has
only gotten worse since the pandemic kicked into high gear. This is
especially troubling given that boundaries have grown even more
important to ensure the safety of both restaurant workers and
customers. “A lot of people have not been respectful towards us with
the COVID restrictions,” says Jeffrey. He frequently gets requests
for samples of sauces or extra pieces of food like shrimp or corn (for
free). “They really think I’m going to go back to the kitchen and
jeopardize everybody in this restaurant to get them extra things I’m
not even supposed to be touching.”

Many customers refuse to wear masks, or get angry when asked to wear a
mask at the door. “We call them ‘mask-holes,’” says an
operations manager of a restaurant group in Mississippi who asked to
remain anonymous. They often take their anger out on the people
working at the host stand, who are frequently some of the youngest
employees of the restaurant group.

“They are just doing as they are told,” she says. “It’s hard
for people to understand that to dine with us, you have to follow the
safety protocols, because while they might only be here with us for an
hour or two, our staff is here anywhere from four hours to ten
hours.”

Nayda Hutson says she has similar issues at her Charleston pizzeria,
Renzo. She must constantly combat the “immature” behavior
surrounding masks, she says, recalling a customer who repeatedly tried
to enter the restaurant mask-less. He was a doctor, no less, who
worked around patients with COVID-19.

Working at a restaurant in 2020 has meant constant exposure to people
who don’t take safety, or the health of service workers, seriously.
Abigail recalls overhearing a table at her previous restaurant
discussing how they recently attended a huge party at a local creek in
the hopes of catching COVID-19 and “getting it over with.” “I
had to warn the server and the bussers to make sure to wash their
hands extra after dealing with this table,” she says. “It’s just
so awful.”

It’s incredibly frightening too, says Liz. “My job has never been
more absurd, more political, and more dangerous.” She says that she
is constantly dealing with diners speaking to her from less than ten
inches away with no mask on, due to the dining room being so loud,
even at 50 percent capacity. At one point, the entire kitchen staff at
Liz’s restaurant got sick. “We are really, really scared," she
says. "I have personally had a family member die from this.” Jeffrey
carries a special kit that he put together for himself in his fanny
pack filled with sanitizer so that he can clean anything he touches.
He is incredibly worried about getting someone else sick, having
already lost three family members during the pandemic.

Diners expect a magical world when they walk into a restaurant. “We
create a world where they get incredible food, impeccable service, the
music is beautiful, they get everything they want, they are drinking,
they are happy,” says Abigail. “The norms [and realities] of the
outside world don’t apply.”

And during the pandemic, diners are seeking normalcy. Customers
don’t like that the safety measures, such as mask-wearing and
temperature checks at the door, keep drawing attention to the fact
that there is an outside world where if you don’t follow the safety
protocols, you could die.

Meanwhile, restaurant workers are expected to maintain that illusion
of magic by grinning and bearing it. Ni recounts her time as a captain
at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York, where she would laugh
in a specific way if a table was bothering her. Her fellow employees
got the message, but customers were none-the-wiser. Jeffrey says he
has now taken to crying in his car on his breaks, “just to make sure
everybody else stays happy.”

The American approach to dining is very individualistic. It is about
what the diner wants, when they want it. It does not matter what is
happening at the restaurant, which in many ways is a choreography as
precarious as a set of spinning plates. It does not matter that there
are other diners with needs, too. There is a belief the rules apply to
everyone else, except them. “It’s a continual championing of the
individual,” writes Priya Basil in her 2020 book, Be My Guest.
“The hospitality industry thrives on the message that you are the
only one who counts: you should come first, your every need considered
and catered to. You deserve it, after all, as long as you can pay.”

That final sentence is a damning indictment of the power structures in
American hospitality. “Money does something to people, where this
version of entitlement means that they can buy anything, literally
anything, like respect and freedom,” says de Leon.

Blackman once had a customer try to bribe her with over $500 for a
table because he had lied to his wife about getting a reservation at
the restaurant, which is booked out months ahead of time. He believed
his money should put him ahead of customers who tried multiple times
before finally securing a table—and there are restaurants that would
have given in.

Customers also wield their power through tipping. Though a number of
people are advocating for the restaurant industry to finally rid
itself of an antiquated system that is rooted in slavery and
perpetuates harassment, it is still the most common system. Servers
and other front-of-house staff are paid at a subminimum wage, which is
often around $2 an hour, with the idea that tips from customers would
make up the rest of their salaries. “You can’t buy a sandwich with
that money … you can barely buy a Coke,” says de Leon. Instead,
front-of-house staff must attempt to accommodate every guest's whim,
because they might not get paid otherwise. Customers demand
perfection, even though restaurants are run by human beings, and each
mistake comes at a cost.

Every person I spoke to had multiple tipping horror stories to share.
Abigail says a table once ordered $200 of food but gave her a $5 tip
due to a small miscommunication with the kitchen that resulted in a
delayed order. Hutson recalls the time a middle-aged couple came into
the restaurant and placed an order for a heavily modified pasta and
pizza with the server. When the bill arrived, the couple became irate
and demanded the pasta be taken off of the check because they claimed
to have never ordered it, even though they had eaten it, and if the
restaurant didn’t comply, they would take it out of the server’s
tip. Hutson comped the order, so as not to affect her server’s
income, but the incident felt like a punch in the gut.

Jeffrey remembers witnessing a coworker, a single mother, wait on a
table when the restaurant had first re-opened during the pandemic.
Management had strict rules that all food was to be served on
disposable plates for sanitation purposes. The table ordered nearly
$300 worth of food, but tipped his coworker nothing because “they
weren’t given proper plates and silverware.”

“It’s very insulting when people don’t tip you because most of
them don’t realize what we go through behind closed doors to get the
food to your table, especially during the pandemic,” Jeffrey says.
“They don’t realize that the $20 you leave on my table, at this
point, means everything to me. It’s how I survive.”

De Leon says that customers are constantly deducting mistakes or
disappointments from a server's tips instead of speaking to management
about what they wish was fixed. “A dish wasn’t great, so instead
of leaving 20 percent, maybe you leave 18 or 15,” he explains.
“The part that people forget is that these tiny, tiny choices add up
to something so consequential—someone's livelihood.” But guests
are rarely burdened with that consideration because they get to leave
and go home.

Often, customers will take to platforms like Yelp to complain about
their experiences. These sites have only served to bolster the power
that customers have. Siker remains frustrated to this day with the
first review left on her restaurant's Yelp page. It was opening
weekend and her team was understaffed, she recalls, but they were
profusely apologetic about it and even offered customers gift cards.
Someone left them a two-star review, which then turned into the
restaurant’s entire rating. “We are a new restaurant that opened
in the middle of pandemic, and this review is still reflecting on us
two months later.”

Friel says sites like Yelp are “vultures,” and finds it ridiculous
that you can post on these platforms with zero experience and affect
people’s businesses. “There is no real path for recourse,” she
notes. But what upsets her the most about these platforms is that it
can cost people their jobs. “I remember being a server and having a
review written about me,” Friel recalls. “My name was in it and
half of it was lies, and I just remember thinking, ‘Holy shit, I
could lose my job.’” Luckily Friel had an understanding manager,
but that is not always the case. Liz says that the corporate offices
of her restaurant look at bad reviews as a sign that staff did
something wrong. “We are always held accountable for the volatile
entitled guest,” he says. “It creates a culture of fear.”

There needs to be a re-imagining of what it means to be a restaurant
guest—with an added emphasis placed on “guest.” Restaurants are
welcoming diners into their spaces. Most service workers I spoke with
considered the restaurant to be a “house” in many ways. When you
go over to a person’s house for dinner, when they invite you into
their personal space, there are expectations that you place on
yourself as a guest, says de Leon. You try to be on your best
behavior, you appreciate and respect the food that is in front of you,
and you don’t complain about your seat. “You hope that at the end
of it, you would get invited again to that same space,” he says. So
why don’t customers see restaurants that way?

It’s a matter of respect; many diners don’t see hospitality jobs
as “real” professions. “People see it as a part-time job, and
not a real career,” says the server in Arizona. “But I have been
working in the industry for over 20 years.”

“I think the way they treat us just goes to show that they don’t
respect our jobs,” says Abigail. “Because they don’t think this
is a legitimate job, they think of themselves as better than us.”
She says she has been asked multiple times what she actually wants to
do with her life.

Liz says customers have written things like “get a real job” on
the tip line of receipts. “They think these jobs are just for young
kids or people paying their way through college,” she says. “I’m
like, ‘Excuse me?’ A lot of us have mortgages. We have families.
We operate extremely professionally.” She rages at the idea that
service work is somehow unskilled work. “Can you navigate the
psychological minefield of waiting tables while executing a dozen
other tasks?”

“We often have to act as a psychologist and a sommelier and be great
at multitasking and time management to do this job,” adds Abigail.
“You can definitely tell the difference between someone who is just
doing this temporarily, and someone who sees this as a career.”

The lack of respect for hospitality jobs as “legitimate”
professions is very American, posits Mar. “If you left more than a
couple of Euros as a tip at a nice dinner in Paris, they would be
upset, because there, being a server is seen as a legitimate
profession, an honorable profession.” If you go to Japan, she adds,
it’s not uncommon for sushi chefs to spend nine years training
before they are even allowed to touch the rice. “The hospitality
industry is something people dedicate their lives to around the world,
but it’s not seen that way here, even if we have dedicated our lives
to it.”

Not only is the profession not seen as “real,” but the people who
work these jobs are not often seen as human, either. “People think
severs aren’t people,” says Jeffrey. “We have opinions, we have
emotions, and words do hurt us.” Customers act like a server’s
personal boundaries don’t exist or matter, says Liz. “They always
expect us to sacrifice our comfort and dignity in the name of making
money.”

Hospitality workers are struggling now more than ever before. Last
month, Jeffrey made just $400, and his savings have all but
evaporated. He is worried that his car, which is on its last legs,
might break down. He doesn’t have money for repairs—he barely has
enough to pay his bills and feed himself.

“I’ve been living off frozen food,” he says. “I just pray and
try to stay positive.” But it’s hard to do that when his last two
pay checks were $67 and $43, respectively. He is far from alone: A new
report from One Fair Wage says that over 80 percent of hospitality
workers have seen a decline in tips, and 40 percent have seen an
increase in sexual harassment since the pandemic started.

The server in Arizona is currently moonlighting as a DoorDash driver,
to make up for fewer shifts and unpredictable wages. He says that some
nights she makes $500, but on others just $75. Liz estimates that she
is making less than a third of what she used to as a 20-year veteran
of the industry. “It used to be easier to put up with whatever,”
she says. “But now we are barely making any money.” The mental
health toll on restaurant workers has been enormous, as well. De Leon
says people used to show up early for their shifts answering phones at
the restaurant. Now, less than an hour before they are supposed to
start, they are still in bed.

Hospitality workers have been forced to become essential workers
during this pandemic, not because they actually are, but because
customers want to dine out. It is a luxury, not a necessity, to be
served and waited on. Hospitality workers, on the other hand, need to
come in. This is the only way they can pay their bills and keep food
on the table, which many are barely able to do.

“The fact that restaurant workers are being considered as essential
workers is mind-blowing to me,” says Blackman. “We are working the
same hours as doctors and nurses, but we are not saving lives. We’re
just here to be a luxury service for people who want to escape—but
that comes at our own demise.” 

The pandemic has cast a harsh light on the fractured foundations of
the American hospitality model, a pillar of which is this notion that
the customer is always right. It’s become abundantly clear that the
industry needs to stop prioritizing the wants of customers over the
wellbeing of its staff. “Owners really need to rethink the idea of
what hospitality is, starting with their staff,” says Friel.
“[A]ll of this preaching about hospitality for others doesn’t work
if your staff is miserable and being abused all the time.”

A happier staff also means happier customers, says de Leon. “A
restaurant needs to provide a safety, happy, warm environment for its
employees first for customers to have an amazing time.” Blackman
notes that a staff-first mentality benefits everyone. “Once you do a
staff first mentality they will run your restaurant for you better
than you could run your restaurant yourself.” A restaurant that does
not put its staff first, ultimately, is not running a sustainable
model.

Most of the people interviewed for this story believe that tipping
should be eliminated, if restaurants want to center the wellbeing of
their staff.

“Tipping is unfair,” says Liz. “It perpetuates racism, it
perpetuates sexual harassment, and it allows guests and owners to
weaponize your wage.” Friel believes that eliminating tipping would
also go a long way in getting customers to understand what dining
actually costs, and what labor is actually worth, perhaps curbing
customer entitlement in the process. Abigail is less optimistic. She
worries that entitled customers will act even more entitled if tipping
is eliminated because “we are getting paid the same, no matter how
they behave.”

The most necessary and urgent change that is needed, however, is the
introduction of the word “no” into the American hospitality
lexicon. “Gone are the days of this Disneyland, give-me-everything
era of hospitality,” says de Leon. “We need to use the word
‘no’ more, and customers need to understand that just because we
can’t offer what you want doesn’t mean that we are fighting
against you.”

“If there is anything the pandemic has taught us, it is that guests
are not used to being told 'no,'” says Liz. “It rocks their world
every time. But they need to get used to hearing 'no.'”

Restaurants also need to give their servers agency to not always say
"yes." “Owners need to stop entertaining a customer’s every
request,” she adds. “Guests need to realize they are not the
center of the universe, and just because they are paying for this
experience it does not mean the rest of the world has to fall down and
die because they wanted a birthday dinner.”

Blackman believes that restaurants should operate like a “hospitable
dictatorship.” “The idea is that yes, we want you to be here. Yes,
we want you to have a great time. But yes, it’s also not going to be
at the expense of others,” she says. “So if you start becoming
violent with your words, your energy, or you start becoming aggressive
as a customer, then we might have to close up our agreement with
you.”

It’s about putting your foot down and being okay with letting paying
customers walk out the door if they are entitled, says Mar. “That
money is not worth it. No amount of money can replace your dignity as
a human being, and you shouldn’t have to put up with that type of
behavior.”

Friel says that the pandemic has shown that the customers that are
most important to her business are those from the local community.
They are the people who not only tip well, but also regularly check
in, bringing flowers and sweet notes to the staff.

“Compare this to the one-off customers who I have never seen
before,” she says. “I don’t need or want their money if they are
rude.” Instead, Friel says she would rather spend her time finding
ways to support her community. “The regulars are the people I will
bend over backwards for happily,” she says. “Because they treat us
with respect.”

Mar says she has had some “truly incredible customers” throughout
the pandemic, but that it is unfortunately not the norm. “I even go
over and thank them for being so amazing because they are so rare,”
she says. “They are unfortunately the smaller percentage of
people.”

Instead, the majority of customers have used the pandemic as an excuse
to tip less and demand more. Jeffrey wishes customers understood that
hospitality workers are going through the same pandemic, too. “We
are tired, we have experienced death, some of us have lost our homes,
many of us are losing our minds,” he says. But at this point, he
would just be happy if customers were kinder.

“Please, just be nice. Even if you don’t tip me … just be
nice.”

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