Restaurant Fashion: Wearing the Food

So I'm coming to you today live from "The Joint" (you can tell how my lunch shift is going), just lookin' for some inspiration from the restaurant at which I work and trying not to be too bitter about spending the next three days here!

After inadvertently pouring rice pudding all over the chest of my young, female co-worker during a busy Saturday night shift last weekend, let's talk today about how to handle it when a server spills something on you.

I totally understand that it may be your first reaction to freak out if your server dumps something on you;  you were not expecting to shower in a usually particularly hot or cold substance and you may be wearing an expensive and/or irreplaceable garment.   But lets take a second to think about this- you can actually thank your lucky stars for being spilled on!  It is a rare opportunity to demonstrate how patient and understanding you are, especially if you are with business acquaintances or others you don't know very well.

Your server will be mortified upon spilling something on you, and whether your server is male or female, they will likely be crying.  It is also likely they will be afraid to return to the table.  If the manager arrives to tell you this, thank him or her for the concern, but please ask that they send the server back to the table so you can explain to him or her that everybody has accidents, it's no big deal, at least it wasn't boiling oil, etc...

There is no reason to ruin the evening of you and your guests over a clumsy mistake, which is what would happen if you freaked out.  If you handle it like I recommend, everybody at the table will later remark about how kind and patient you are (it NEVER looks good when you treat a server poorly, no matter what for).  So whereas you may want to strangle your server for an act of extreme clumsiness, restrain your violent tendencies and try to understand that we as servers are required to move really quickly with a lot of hot stuff in our hands while doing two or three other things at the same time.  Since the restaurant will always assume the dry-cleaning or replacement cost of the garment, relax and know that it will be taken care of.

And the trauma of spilling something on a restaurant guest is definitely worth 20%, just to show your server your not really mad!