Wife Gets Reality Check After She Sees Husband Compensating Servers For Her Rudeness

Certain situations in restaurants can get pretty frustrating for both the customer and the staff. For one, it’s typically unmet expectations, whether it’s food or the service; for the other, it’s often the client’s reaction to such unmet expectations.

Redditor u/Mental_Manager_4814 told the AITA community about his wife’s annoying habits when dining out. He said she tends to complain or send the food back, or make unnecessary requests, all of which he compensates the restaurant staff for. But making sure there’s no trouble with the staff eventually got him into trouble with the wife.

The OP understood that annoying customers can take a toll on restaurant staff and found a way to compensate them for it. Research suggests that dealing with entitled customers results in the waitstaff feeling numerous negative effects, from burnout to feelings of dehumanization.

Unsurprisingly, quite a few people working in hospitality have had to deal with an aggravating customer or two. (If you’ve ever worked in the industry yourself, you might even have a picture of one popping into your head as you’re reading this—a far from positive blast from the past.) Especially considering how impatient some of them can get.

Oracle’s 2021 survey revealed that over half of dine-in customers don’t feel like waiting more than 10 minutes to be served; roughly three-quarters have a bit more patience and are okay with waiting 15 minutes. However, UK and US data shows that as much as 74% continue to frequent restaurants at least once a month.

When they run out of patience, customers typically make sure the staff knows it; and while some find a way to do it politely, others tend to be far from pleasant. Consequently, it might make the workers lose their cool as well, and apparently—they often do.

Studies reveal that nearly 80% of restaurant employees make fun of annoying visitors. Other popular ways of dealing with aggravating customers, according to the study, include lying (78%), making the client wait longer than necessary (65%), ignoring them (61%), or acting rudely (52%). One-in-ten servers might even increase a tip without permission in order to teach them a lesson.

One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Lisa Penney, pointed out that, "Food service employees generally do their best to provide a positive experience for customers. However, they are human too, and the strain of dealing with extremely rude, demanding or difficult customers can manifest in ways that do not benefit customers."

Another co-author of the study, Dr. Emily M. Hunter, pointed out that, "The laborious emotional demands of these positions make it difficult for an employee to maintain positive emotions while managing any negative emotions they may experience on the job." This is especially true when waitstaff encounter customers who do not respect them or the job they do.

A professional chef, Angie Mar, told Food & Wine Magazine that some people in the US don’t consider working in the hospitality industry a “legitimate” job. "If you left more than a couple of euros as a tip at a nice dinner in Paris, they would be upset, because there, being a server is seen as a legitimate profession, an honorable profession," Mar pointed out. "The hospitality industry is something people dedicate their lives to around the world, but it's not seen that way here, even if we have dedicated our lives to it."

Food & Wine also emphasized that restaurant staff are typically paid at a subminimum wage, based on the idea that tips will cover the rest of their salaries. That makes them dependent on the customer’s willingness to tip, which is likely to be affected by their experience; and when it comes to entitled customers, they might be difficult—if at all possible—to please.

Knowing that his wife tends to be unhappy with quite a few things while dining out, the OP made sure to tip the staff well. And while quite a few redditors supported his actions of leaving a generous tip, some suggested that itemizing them in the way that he did was unnecessary.