Waiters Quotations

Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.

Portion control is a real problem. My husband and I always split one appetizer and one entree. I'm sure waiters hate us.

I experienced the effect firsthand on my return flight from London to Hong Kong last weekend. There were three passengers in my cabin -- a 10 percent occupancy rate at best. Hong Kong's restaurants are mostly empty. It is difficult to enjoy a meal with masked waiters tiptoeing around in silence. If you want to frighten people in Hong Kong, just sneeze.

I would not support a McDonald's, a Burger King or a Dunkin' Donuts at that site, but this is a restaurant, really. I wish they had waiters and waitresses so it would be a little easier for us to classify it, but for lack of a better term, they're calling it fast food.

We ask our waiters to get the ingredients ready as fast as they can as we don't want our customers to wait with empty stomachs in this chilly environment. But once you take one bite of the steaming delicacies, you would definitely forget the cold.

When chefs like Wolfgang Puck became household names, that became a compelling reason for an intelligent young person to go into the cooking profession. There have been no waiters who have turned into household names. The service and hospitality aspects have clearly lagged behind the kitchen.

Oh, absolutely. The first restaurant I worked at was this place Steak & Ale in Bradenton, Florida. It's been closed down... Hmm, I wonder why? And we played a game similar to that. The cooks and the waiters would play this game where they'd pull their b***s out right in the middle of a shift and they'd try and catch you when you weren't expecting it. I took the game and I sort of expanded upon it a little bit; made the rules more defined. But it is rooted in truth. We did play a version of the game. No question.

This 'man in the street' poll of barbers, taxi drivers and waiters offers some of the best clues to future Japanese consumer spending.

For me, good service is efficient and discreet; it's that critical balance. As soon as the client sits down, the communication flow has to start. Customers need to feel that the waiters are supervised - that there's a system in place.

Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses - it's progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.