inspired.entrepreneur.com — Sometimes when I look over my business experience, I kind of wonder how I got here. I have no fancy MBA, I?ve never held a job for someone else, and my college degree is in Holistic Psychology. In fact, when I started my first business, I had little experience to lean on other than working as a waitress. Hear are 6 lessons I learned waiting tables.
Oct 8, 2007 View in Crawl 4
spikitoOct 9, 2007
You know you've been a restaurant server when:1. You know that in the weeds is not a camping term.2. You cant decide who you hate more: kids, old people, teenagers, or foreigners.3. Youre pissed if you got a $10 tip on a $60 check.4. You can figure out 20% like nobodys business.5. You heavily debate putting on a gratuity for a big party. And may call in a second opinion to evaluate the table.6. Youre familiar with the signature c**ktail: water with lemon.7. You don't have any idea what the special is and could care less.8. When you go out to eat, you over analyze everything your server does. And even if they screw up you still tip at least 20%.9. You hang out at the server table.10. You know about all your co-workers sex lives and drug habits. And you participate in one or the other; or both!11. You know what the most dreaded side work is and how to avoid getting stuck with it.12. Same goes for the death section.13. You understand the importance of booths.14. You know that an over cooked steak is the worst re-cook ever.15. You want to kill the kitchen when they have 30 minute ticket times.16. You will take the long way around just to avoid your table.17. You hate making desserts.18. You get weeded waiting forever for the bar to pour you a freakin beer.19. You live out of your car.20. You always have cash on you, yet youre always broke.21. Your cash is usually still in your book days after you worked.22. You know who sells the good drugs.23. You never know what happened to the wine key.24. You become a nocturnal creature.25. Everybody on a Sunday AM shift has a hangover.26. The busser is never around when you need him.27. Getting cut does not equal getting out.28. You need a manager card to wipe your ass!29. A screw up is always appreciated by the starving servers.30. And youre all like a bunch of vultures when it happens!31. When in doubt-you go with medium.32. You use the term 86 in regular conversation. Yet you have no idea where it came from
cultist667Oct 9, 2007
More crap that managed to reach the front page.
st0n3Oct 9, 2007
well, i "here" you don't know much about the english language, Mr. entrepreneur
goobernutzOct 9, 2007
I waited tables for 4 years and all it did was reinforce every politically incorrect racial, religious, and social stereotype out there! Life is much easier now.
sacherjjOct 9, 2007
The law states that if tips don't make your wage up to minimum wage, you are required to be "made whole" by your employer. The catch is that if you do that, you will find yourself without a job. Many wait staff go home with less than minimum wage. Although, I find it strange to be sharing tips with cooks and dishwashers. Bussers I understand. But cooks and dishwashers should be on a straight pay scale.
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teleburstJul 16, 2009
Soken like someone who has never waited tables. Spoken as someone who makes generalizations based on limited experience, i.e. judging waiting tables in a single country based on a fairly uninformed idea of what a waiter experiences For instance, I wouldn't characterize how you've characterized the job in Australia since I've never waited tables in Australia. Perhaps the job there is exactly as you describe it, but I doubt it.I'm a 54 year old waiter who's been doing it for 15 continuous years (having done other things in my life as well). So, it's not necessarily a job between jobs or a job for "university students".You write: "To be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to manipulate people into thinking that purchasing the product is their idea and you are only the vehicle". I do that all of the time. Not with every guest (because it's not nesseary to do that with every purchasing decision, just as an entrepreneur doesn't have to always embody that idea), but with more than you would suspect. "Waiting tables does not teach you anything about human behaviour. You just do not have enough time to analyse the person to find out how they tick".You absolutely do. More so than an entrepeneur who usually has little direct contact with the consumers of his or her product. I have gained insight on closing sales and directed selling with each of the ~25,000 guests that I have waited on over the years. A good waiter can read a table's intent and suggestibilities within the first two minutes of contact, and they reinforce and modify these impressions during the 1 to 3 hours that they will spend with the guest..They do this through body language, verbal inflections, facial expressions, dress and direct communication. Are we 100% correct? Of course not. But entrepreneurs are never 100% correct either. In fact, most entrepreneurs fail at least once, and many times several times in their careers. The mark of a good waiter or entrepreneur is to use the lessons learned from that failure and build on it to be successuful the next time. While being an entrepreneur most times requires a "macro" outlook, a waiter relies on a "micro" outlook, which then expands into a "macro" view because each direct selling experience is filed away into an internal database of consumer preferences and behaviors."There are two fundamental business truths in the world: 1: ?dream, but keep your day job?. 2: ?beware of Greeks bearing gifts?.I would advise everyone reading your comments to take the second part of your statement quite literally. However, you're quite true in your comments about managing money. But that's important in any career and isn't unique to the art of being an entrepreneur.