Busboys vs Backwaiters

Midpack wrote:The details:

Service: Professional, knowledgeable, attentive but not stuffy – we like that. The waiters review of the menu was short and appropriate (Gibson’s and Morton’s are more excessive and unnecessarily showy IMHO). It is true that the busboys do pretty much everything other than taking orders, not a trend that I’m crazy about, but becoming more common all the time.

I don't mean to pick on Midpack but reading the above quote, coupled with the 2 waitperson thread, got me thinking a little. When I worked in restaurants, in the olden days, the nice places employed waiters, back waiters, and busboys. Waiters took orders and ran the table. Back waiters replaced silverware, served food, fetched stuff, and generally worked in tandem with a waiter. Busboys cleaned up and helped the back waiters. I am oversimplifing a bit but this is basically how it worked.

It was possible to have an entire meal and rarely see your waiter. This strikes me a similar to what is happening in more moderate restaurants today but what puzzles me is why everyone seems to complain about it. I guess I've been lucky enough not to experience too many downsides or I'm not too particular about who I ask to refill my drink or get more bread. I have to ask: Was it really busboys who did most of the work at Primehouse or were they back waiters?

It strikes me that perhaps we're seeing more an explosion of poorly trained wait staff in general and that most of the mentioned issues result from lack of overall training rather than stemming from an excess of staff.

I also believe that training suffers in all service industry jobs, not just restaurants, but as we all spend a lot of time in restaurants, we're more attuned to service issues here.

Food hawking is a training issue, for example, and not a "too many waiters" issue. If the restaurant would simply standardize how orders are taken, entered into the computer, and arranged for service then the back waiter/runner wouldn't have to auction plates at a table. I would caution all of us not to confuse a waiter's confirmation of an order with an auction, however, but I do recoginze that there is a huge difference. Confirmation is repeating an order as the plate is set in front of a patron, auctioning is holding up a plate and asking "Who had the?"

And I have one soapbox issue...memorizing an entire table's order isn't really all that difficult and any seasoned wait person should be able to accomplish it. Heck, I can still do it and usually remember what each of my dining companions ordered, no matter if there are two or twelve of them. This is without benefit of intimate knowledge of the menu. Work in one restaurant for any period of time and you'll see almost all possible permutations of the menu and similar special orders will occur. I rarely experience wait staff memorizing things and getting it wrong. In fact I'd say waiters who write down orders get it wrong at least as often and perhaps more so. I'd argue that waiters who write down every tiny detail are often new to the job and are prone to miss things.

An experienced wait person walks through a station and visits or views every table each time they pass it. This person brings items to multiple tables at once (like ketchup to all three tables that ordered burgers) rather than to one table at a time. It saves steps and keeps one from getting frantic. If a wait person can do this well, he/she can memorize your order and get it correct, too.

D.

Diannie wrote:I don't mean to pick on Midpack but reading the above quote, coupled with the 2 waitperson thread, got me thinking a little. When I worked in restaurants, in the olden days, the nice places employed waiters, back waiters, and busboys. Waiters took orders and ran the table. Back waiters replaced silverware, served food, fetched stuff, and generally worked in tandem with a waiter. Busboys cleaned up and helped the back waiters. I am oversimplifing a bit but this is basically how it worked.

It was possible to have an entire meal and rarely see your waiter. This strikes me a similar to what is happening in more moderate restaurants today but what puzzles me is why everyone seems to complain about it.

Diannie-

Maybe things have permutated over the years, maybe there was a time where service was service, meaning any person who attended to your table could serve your table. In recent years, however, except for the highest end restaurants which are served in a well-trained team style, you have one waitperson with whom you communicate, and the busboys and runners are kind of silent and unobtrusive workers who are generally not trained to wait on your table except to (hopefully) deliver dishes to the right persons and clean up your table. For instance, if I were to order a glass of wine from a busboy, the busboy is probably not trained on the computer ordering system, and not allowed in there anyway for security purposes. So, assuming he understood your order for a 2005 Hartford Fanucci-Wood Road Zinfandel, he would have to find someone else (presumably your server) to actually execute the order.

Maybe it's the reality of today's restaurant industry. The back of the house and most of the front of the house are staffed by Latino immigrants. While they are by and large hardworking individuals, many of them lack the basic language skills (or are perceived by their employers as lacking them) and are trained to attend to very discreet skills (such as running plates and cleaning dishes). The net result is a system where you generally have one server with whom you communicate and one or two "silent" workers who assist the server with discreet tasks. So when that symbiotic system is changed, that's where the complaining comes in. Now, instead of having one main server who was watching your order, you now have more than one, and the problem is that nobody is keeping track of your order and your table. So it seems that the system has altered from a team of servers who all could attend to your table -> to one main server who is attending to your table -> to numerous servers who are attending to your table but no one person is really on top of it. Maybe that's a server-training issue, but my sense is that it's a flawed system and that's why it hasn't been executed well in the instances I've experienced it.

As Helen Mirren's character stated in Gosford Park, the best server always anticipates the wishes of his master. Setting aside the antiquated lingo, what she means is that a good server will be so good that the person they are serving won't have to ask for anything -- it's already there. So with the nouveau multiple server model, nobody is anticipating anything because there are several servers who pay fleeting attention to your table, and what that means is that I have to ask several people for the same thing, and the busboys and runners (or "back waiters," as you say), are trained not to give a damn. Under this model, no one person is paying attention-- which means alternate tables are skipped bread service, a glass of wine that's been asked for doesn't show up, the beef ordered medium comes rare, and the runner placing it there is none the aware, and the server following him didn't take your order so she doesn't know how it's supposed to be prepared. It's the opposite of the service model which at least gives the impression that you have someone who is keeping track of your table.

Clearly, all of these comments are geared toward the mid- to upper-middle price range restaurants. If I go to a diner, the level of service I expect is adjusted accordingly. Same with if I go to Alinea, I expect better service than at a mid-priced restaurant.

So if there is complaining about multiple servers, I guess it stems from the feeling -- at least the feeling I had -- which is that there is no one person who is in charge of my table.