Shit That I Love: Rude Servers

Human dignity is an extremely under-protected commodity.

Protection-wise, and necessity-wise, dignity is akin to a saltwater marshland projecting outward from the landmass of each individual’s sense of self. Just like those vital acres of sawgrass and mangrove, filtering more than their share of toxins, somehow each person’s dignity is the exact place where every shortsighted asshole developer with an uncle on the county council wants to put up a condo building.

Rude waitstaff used to bother me.

I worked less glamorous service industry jobs than waiter throughout my early 20’s. I took pizza orders in the kitchen as the first male to have the job title “Phone Girl” at an Italian restaurant. I stood for 7pm to 4am shifts at the host stand of a bar and restaurant that served overpriced fried starch to Chicago’s nightclub crowd.

Morris Day came in one time. He looked exactly like Morris Day.

The servers in these places always seemed like prima donnas to me. Here they were, raking in easily twice my income in tips, and they were rarely, if ever, nice. To anybody alive.

It didn’t make sense to me. Waiting tables couldn’t be that much worse than finding a table for Morris Day while I’m jammed on a Saturday night after a Bulls game. He’s, rightfully as befits his station, equally demanding of everybody, but you get actual money at the end merely by bringing him drinks rather than menus.

Waiting tables was a job I wanted. And rude service, if and when it happened to me as a customer, was doubly a slap in the face.

Now, though? It’s just about my favorite thing of all time.

Thanks to one man.

There’s a particular server at one of my most frequently visited haunts near where I now live in Baltimore who is delightfully, floridly rude.

I don’t know much about him. He’s older than me. He’s quite handsome. He presents as gay with the magnificent, genuine obviousness of a television character somebody who makes such statements might accurately label as “over the top.” He is excessively competent at the logistics involved in serving food to people in a restaurant. And he is spectacularly impatient.

The first couple of times I sat in his section, his whole routine really chapped my hide. At that point, I’d never encountered a waiter who combined such a deep knowledge of the routines involved in table service with such a deeply and transparently felt contempt for the concept of “needing another minute.”

I mean, I understood. As a former denizen of the host stand, I know you gotta turn ’em and burn ’em. But the absence of protocol was breathtaking.

For context, this is not a three-star restaurant. It is more of a fine, even great through the right lens, “joint.” It’s a neighborhood joint. A family joint. The menu blends acceptably-priced bar food with what I’d assume is a very credible crab imperial. Older people from the area reserve most of the prime tables during any given dinner hours. It’s more pleasant than you’d expect while remaining stolidly unpretentious.

Patrons are an equal parts blend of Hopkins kids, more sedate young adults in an “artistic” mold, local landed gentry, married couples and other dates of a decidedly un-Tinder origin, and/or retirees.

And the amount of ‘tude this dude is bringing to the table could not appear less warranted.

He’s SO extra.

Half of Baltimore knows exactly who I’m talking about, by the way.

This man changed my entire outlook on the idea of rude service one day by laying into a table of self-evident suburban dimwits.

Why self-evident?

Just that general sourpuss countenance that only happens when an entire white family dedicates itself to the unquestioning pursuit of the exactly correct middle band of what they see as the human experience, on the off chance such a pursuit might result in an oblique but elusive sense of satisfaction. They all had expensive-looking words on each item of their frumpy, mismatched, impractically comfortable outfits.

As such families do, they gave off an air of common disregard spread evenly between each and every of two parents and their teenaged offspring. The fact of their mutual dining was an evident bummer for those involved, all clearly craving release to the sweet bliss of individual screen time that would be afforded in due course, as soon as our hero dropped the check so they could retreat to the family’s nearby Cadillac XT5.

I don’t know what they were doing there. Maybe there was some sort of lacrosse-based gathering at Johns Hopkins, and Google told them there was a restaurant near where they parked. It was a beautiful summer day. They were sitting outside, the damnably inefficient only table in the section.

Anyway, this wonderful man let them have it.

I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe, probably, the family patriarch and/or the rest of them took some hateful, latency-tinged issue with this server’s entire persona. Maybe they even said something vile.

I’d prefer to think not. My ideal version of the context was that this family just kind of vaguely sucked, in both the outwardly visible ways I’ve described and the easily deduced ways those signifiers portend.

But I don’t know. All I know is the result.

This guy — my own personal hero — reamed them for being shitty tippers while presenting them with the check.

I didn’t hear the whole rant. I saw some very aggressive body language. I felt palpable tension. And at one point I did hear “…because we need that money to live off of, so (cocks head and smiles).”

It was an awe-inspiring blow for human dignity. He was like server Tom Joad.

Life is too short to hold your tongue and take less than your fair shake just because you’re afraid some vapid housewife from Cockeysville with “PINK” on her butt is going to Yelp you into oblivion. Sometimes you have to risk it all for that extra $3.50.

Plus, this place totally has dude’s back. If he says the table were a bunch of stiffs, they’ll believe him. He’s earned that right. Not everybody has, but he has. It’s good for all of us when a guy like that can own an entire family to dust while on the job and there’s not really anything they can do about it.

Simply caring about each other more than the mere prospect of bad publicity or lost revenue, even and especially when we are patently ridiculous, is like the wetland conservation of dignity.

Anyway, that’s why rude waitstaff are a shit that I like.

Sorry if that’s not enough to justify reading this.

If it’s any consolation, I also extremely like that my girlfriend just referred to this dog toy as “a dick with balls at both ends.”