The honor of a second-class profession

The GQ food critic Alan Richman wrote an article recently about bad service. I agree with most of what he says. There is, however, one point that we mustn't forget: he's on the outside looking in. There are a million valid reasons for bad service - however, there are virtually no excuses, at least from a customers point of view. And the saying is, after all, that the customer is always right. So why is service bad? Not all waiters are doing the job because they're aspiring actors. Some of us do it because we love it, and we take pride in serving good food and good wine with good manners. These particular waiters might have a bad day - under the suit we're all human. It's an unfortunate event when that happens. But there are also other kinds of waiters - to paraphrase this article written by a proud waitress - many waiters in trendy restaurants are hired for their good looks rather than their frontal lobes. I'm not going to attempt to write again what has been well-written once: go read The Waitressing Life: The Honor of a Second-Class Profession to find out just what might have made my day (or not) today.