Wine Drinkers of the World, UniteYou have nothing to lose but inflated bills and interrupted anecdotes.
Posted Monday, May 26, 2008, at 7:26 AM ET
The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened. A waiter appeared from nowhere, leaned right over my shoulder and into the middle of the conversation, seized my knife and fork, and started to cut up my food for me. Not content with this bizarre behavior, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he proceeded to distribute pieces of my entree onto the plates of the other diners.
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StumbleUponNo, he didn't, actually. What he did instead was to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul that was our chat, lean across me, pick up the bottle of wine that was in the middle of the table, and pour it into everyone's glass. And what I want to know is this: How did such a barbaric custom get itself established, and why on earth do we put up with it?
There are two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer. The first is to keep you hanging about and make it hard to catch the eye of the staff. ("Why are they called waiters?" inquired my son when he was about 5. "It's we who are doing all the waiting.") The second way is to be too intrusive, with overlong recitations of the "specials" and too many oversolicitous inquiries. A cartoon in The New Yorker once showed a couple getting ready for bed, with the husband taking a call and keeping his hand over the receiver. "It's the maitre d' from the place we had dinner. He wants to know if everything is still all right."
The vile practice of butting in and pouring wine without being asked is the very height of the second kind of bad manners. Not only is it a breathtaking act of rudeness in itself, but it conveys a none-too-subtle and mercenary message: Hurry up and order another bottle. Indeed, so dulled have we become to the shame and disgrace of all this that I have actually seen waiters, having broken into the private conversation and emptied the flagon, ask insolently whether they should now bring another one. Again, imagine this same tactic being applied to the food.
Not everybody likes wine as much as I do. Many females, for example, confine themselves to one glass per meal or even half a glass. It pains me to see good wine being sloshed into the glasses of those who have not asked for it and may not want it and then be left standing there barely tasted when the dinner is over. Mr. Coleman, it was said, made his fortune not from the mustard that was consumed but from the mustard that was left on the plate. Restaurants ought not to inflict waste and extravagance on their patrons for the sake of padding out the bill. This, too, is a very extreme form of rudeness.
The expense of the thing, in other words, is only an aspect of the presumption of it. It completely usurps my prerogative if I am a host. ("Can I refill your glass? Try this wine—I think you may care for it.") It also tends to undermine me as a guest, since at any moment when I try to sing for my supper, I may find an unwanted person lunging carelessly into the middle of my sentence. If this person fills glasses unasked, he is a boor as described above. If he asks permission of each guest in turn—as he really ought to do, when you think about it—then he might as well pull up a chair and join the party. The nerve of it!
To return to the question of why we endure this: I think it must have something to do with the snobbery and insecurity that frequently accompany the wine business. A wine waiter is or can be a bit of a grandee, putting on considerable airs that may intimidate those who know little of the subject. If you go into a liquor store in a poor part of town, you will quite often notice that the wine is surprisingly expensive, because it is vaguely assumed that somehow it ought to cost more. And then there is simple force of custom and habit—people somehow grant restaurants the right to push their customers around in this outrageous way.
Well, all it takes is a bit of resistance. Until relatively recently in Washington, it was the custom at diplomatic and Georgetown dinners for the hostess to invite the ladies to withdraw, leaving the men to port and cigars and high matters of state. And then one evening in the 1970s, at the British Embassy, the late Katharine Graham refused to get up and go. There was nobody who felt like making her, and within a day, the news was all over town. Within a very short time, everybody had abandoned the silly practice. I am perfectly well aware that there are many graver problems facing civilization, and many grosser violations of human rights being perpetrated as we speak. But this is something that we can all change at a stroke. Next time anyone offers to interrupt your conversation and assist in the digestion of your meal and the inflation of your check, be very polite but very firm and say that you would really rather not.
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Remarks from the Fray:
No doubt, the ever-growing number of socialists and Obama-backers among us will hate Hitchens for even suggesting that the hardworking, non-union waiter be chastised for being bad at his job, but when Lee-Jones opines in No Country For Old Men, that the demise of society isn't due to any one thing, likewise, every time you allow a car next to you to blast their music so loud it melts your brain, and every time you cut someone off at a red light, just to be the first in line (no one used to do that), and every time you allow your kid to infringe on the privacy of others, be it in a restaurant, or at the mall, by running around screaming, you are contributing, and complicit in the decline of this once-great civilization of ours. Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York by enforcing the small, lifestyle laws, such as jaywalking and turnstile jumping, and the result was monumental. The big crimes were less likely to happen. It's not too late for us to save this country, but we must take it back one interaction at a time. You are not being tolerant when you allow others to misbehave. The life you save may be your own.
--Sicily9
(To reply, click here.)
While it may appear rude when the wait staff seems eager to intrude on your conversation, or hastily pour out the last remaining dregs of whatever bottle you bought, consider this for a moment: Many of the waiters and waitresses, if they don't move the customers along, they don't get paid.
Waiting is a thankless and brutal profession--the tips are often below "standard" rates, the hours are long and exhausting, the attitudes from customers are often degrading and demeaning. Waiters don't have offices or secretaries, insurance plans or 401Ks; They just make twenty bucks every time you buy a bottle of vino.
Waiters need to encourage you to finish that wine, remind you that there are other folks who may want to come in and eat. And frankly, there is nothing more rude than a group of loudmouths who stake out a six-top for three hours, refusing to purchase anything else or settle the check while they regale each other with sparkling repartee. Newsflash: This is not your living room, this is a restaurant. This is a business. If you want to take hours to trade bon mots with Biffy and Buffy from the Hamptons--do it on your time, not theirs.
Maybe you should take your wine snobbery and your jacked up bottle of pino grigio, and just stay home.
There's another group of people right behind you to take that table anyway,
--Ijaugust
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Your butt in that seat isn't you, it's #4 at table 12. You're a time limit between the reservation you had and the reservation someone else has. Or, if you're at a chain restaurant, it's the time limit between you and the person holding that little light up pager. It's about a reservation that your rapacious wit might be cutting into if you settle in to enjoy a nice meal, a good bottle of wine, and fine company. The waiter pouring out the wine is a symbol that means move it along, buddy. It's hard to linger over an empty bottle or glass of wine, isn't it? If you're taking up that valuable real estate, at least you'll be paying for it by ordering a new bottle, if you do. Not that a new bottle will be a problem. They'll help you empty it to move you out. Someone else's butt is supposed to be in #4 at table 12 at 9:30 and while you're having a great time, they've got five minutes to get rid of you and then clean your mess.
You think it's about making a few more bucks on a bottle of wine. I think you've missed the mark entirely. We're on a schedule. We've got a rational way of approaching the world in everything we do. A restaurant, no matter how upscale, is still an assembly line and the diner is just another cog in the machine. The successful restaurant is one that can predictably deliver quality service and quality food every time. The only way that can happen, at least in our system, is by controlling everything that happens in that restaurant, including the behavior of the diners. That means making sure you get seated on time. That means making sure diners don't linger.
--socsci387
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As a waiter and restaurant manager of almost twenty years, I find it unfortunate that Mr. Hitchens has suffered at the hands of an intrusive waiter. Worse, it seems that he, like many Wine Spectator readers, believe that waiters are out to screw him by over pouring his wine. That sort of paranoia is somewhat inline with other of his writing--but I digress with this little jab.
Proper wine service includes pouring the wine for the customer, but not dumping, or "blasting" a bottle. More on that in a moment. Proper service maintains a level of a 60% glass pour, or a little four ounces at a time, for each customer at all times. Heavy drinkers like Mr. Hitchens are refilled at the same time his guests are refilled. They will be getting less, often just a drop, but everyone's glass stays the same. The result is psychological: all the customers feel they've been served the same amount. This way, Mr. Hitchens doesn't come off as big of a lush as his reputation, and his guests feel they've spent the evening drinking right along side him.
"Blasting" a bottle is, unfortunately, common in the industry. A Riedel Bordeaux or Burgandy glass can hold a full bottle of wine--750 ml. Often, customers believe we are underpouring because the glass is not even a quarter full. It's easy to quarter a bottle among four customers--I've seen waiters do that twice on a party of eight, then leave the empty bottles. That's unprofessional and people who work for me know that if they do it, they will be unceremoniously fired. Good service is hard enough to give in the first place, but being held suspect by your customer is a pain in the ass.
I do find it interesting that Mr. Hitchens wonders where this "vile" practice came from, since its roots are classic French service. It drives home the point that good service varies from customer to customer, and the proper level of service is what's required, no more, no less.
--ianreif
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(5/26)