(Thinkstock)
We can all agree that folks who make it a habit to be rude to waitstaff are generally, well, rude.
That said, we’ve all probably gotten irked at a waiter or waitress at some point. Well, a paper recently published in the journal Human Performance (via Science of Us) might provide you with some serious impetus to be extra nice to your server the next time you’re in a restaurant.
According to paper’s press release, the below is an eye-opening breakdown of what the 438 food service employees polled admitted to doing when a customer pissed them off:
- Making fun of the customers behind their backs (79 percent)
- Lying (78 percent)
- Purposefully making them wait longer for their order (65 percent)
- Ignoring them (61 percent)
- Being rude right back to the customer (52 percent)
- Arguing (43 percent)
- Flatly refusing a perfectly reasonable customer request (25 percent)
- Confronting a customer about a crappy tip (19 percent)
- Insulting the customer to his face (14 percent)
- Secretly increasing the tip (as in, on a credit-card payment) (11 percent)
- Doing something gross to the food (6 percent)
- Threatening the customer (5 percent)
To be fair, only 6 percent of respondents admitted to the cliché of spitting (or doing something more unsavory) to your food, but odds are, if you’re inconsiderate to your server, you’ll probably get verbally skewered behind your back, or at least be given the pasta that’s not gluten-free.
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