GRIPES! : <i> A Harried Waitress Turns the Tables on the Dining Public </i>

I am a waitress. Wait, let me amend that. No one in Los Angeles is merely a waitress. I am a writer earning her living by waiting tables.

Did you ever try to wait on someone who was so obnoxious that even his dining companions were embarrassed? You say you don’t like the table you were given? As hard as it is to sit there, it’s even harder for your waiter to get to, loaded as he is with steaming platters of food and forced to navigate his way through the obstacle course of crowded tables and recumbent diners.

By now, I have worn down enough pairs of Reeboks in the hash-slinging trade and swapped horror stories with enough fellow victims to have compiled a list of a few of the most annoying proclivities of the dining public. Here are six of the items my colleagues and I moan over the most:

Gripe No. 1--Coffee. The most common question heard by waiters in the course of one shift is, “Do you have decaf? Is it brewed ?” Now, I recognize this as a perfectly legitimate question. There is nothing worse than being served a cup of tepid water with a little orange packet of something that purports to be coffee but which merely turns your tepid water brown. Just try to imagine, however, answering that question 50 or 60 times a day. Imagine the venom with which some customers grill you on the authenticity of your decaf coffee, and the suspicion, nay, the disbelief that greets you when you bring them their cup--”Is that the decaf? Are you sure ? If I’m up all night, someone around here will be hearing from my lawyer.” Honestly, waiters are not conspiring to give you sleepless nights, even if in some cases we may wish them upon you.

This brings us to the coffee accompaniments. Those on diets will invariably ask for milk instead of cream and accept your offering with the same distrust as decaf drinkers. I actually once had a table where two women left the restaurant--their coffee untouched, their sensibilities outraged-- because we didn’t have the brand of artificial sweetener they wanted. Life had temporarily lost meaning for them.

Then there are the usual complaints about coffee that is too hot or too cold, or “tastes funny--what’s in this stuff, cinnamon?” You get the idea. Some people are pickier about their coffee than about the food they eat. So it goes.

Gripe No. 2--The Wishy-Washy Diner. This creature invariably appears only when the restaurant is full to bursting and there’s an hour wait for a table. Then he rears his hungry head and begins his native ritual. This is the animal who wants to have a meaningful dialogue with you, his guide, his mentor, his guru. He wants to commune with you about the menu. He wants to display his knowledge of grammar and syntax (“I don’t know if you realize this, but there is only one k in shiitake mushrooms”).

That settled, he wants you to tell him about the food--thoroughly. With bedlam all around, you patiently recite the tiniest ingredient of each dish, taking longer to describe the food than it does to cook it. The Wishy-Washy Diner hems and haws. If you dare to suggest that perhaps he would like a few more minutes to decide, he becomes angry, hurt, resentful, like a neglected child. So you speed up the descriptions-- “The

nesaucegarnishedwithcapersandgrapes-andservedwithyourchoiceofsoupor-salad. . . .”

All the while, your eyes are desperately scanning the room, seeing your entire station fill up with impatient, starving patrons. Meanwhile, out in back, the chef is loading his shotgun with a shell that has your name on it, because your order for Table 5 has been languishing under the heat lamps for the last 10 minutes and is rapidly congealing into an amorphous glob.

Gripe No. 3--The Comic. Be advised, all you budding Bob Hopes out there, hardly a “witty” remark exists that your waiter has not heard a thousand times before. When you enter an almost-empty restaurant, do not be deceived by the hearty guffaw that greets your remark, “Gee, do you think you could squeeze us in?” Nor should you take to heart the appreciative giggle that comes when your waitress asks you to write your phone number on your charge slip and you respond with something like, “If my wife answers, hang up” or “Do you promise to call?” or (my personal favorite) “I’ll give you mine if you give me yours.” Remember, we are trained professionals who know what is expected of us. And a good many of us are consummate actors.

Gripe No. 4--The Regular. This is the customer who frequents the restaurant on what he considers to be a regular basis. No matter if it’s been a year since he was last there, he is instantly dropping the owner’s name or an approximation thereof (“Is Danny here tonight? Right, I meant Manny . Tell him I’m here.”)

This is also the customer who is looking for freebies. His usual line is something like, “C’mon, sweetie, just for me--throw a little extra something in there--no one has to know-- I’ll make it worth your while. “ For me, that line alone has sealed his fate. We may work for tips, buddy, but we ain’t for sale.

Gripe No. 5--The Dieter. Of course, losing weight is a difficult venture, and I am the first person to applaud someone’s willpower. But why do so many obviously miserable dieters insist that you share their painful ordeal?

It’s not so bad when a dieter asks for the salad with no dressing, just lemon wedges, vinegar etc. Or even when he asks that one or two ingredients be eliminated from the dish--no cheese, no sauce, no butter on the vegetables. But when he wants to rewrite the whole damn menu, that’s when I throw in my white towel.

“I’ll have the sauteed chicken Dijon, please.” OK, thank you ma’am, and for you sir? “Just a minute there. I’d like the chicken without skin please. Or breading.” Fine. And for you sir? “Oh, I forgot, I’d like the Dijon sauce made with olive oil instead of butter--cholesterol, you know. And make sure that it’s on the side. Oh, and instead of sauteeing the chicken, I’d like it grilled. And no potatoes; sliced tomatoes instead. And please take away this bread basket.”

Really, after a point, why bother? Has malnutrition created the delusion in the dieter’s mind that he or she is in his own kitchen? “Ah,” you may say, “but the business of the restaurant is to satisfy any whim of the customer’s. Yes, but there are limits. What the dieter doesn’t take into account is what happens when you, the waiter, go back to the kitchen. When you hand this order to the chef--this desecration of his chef d’oeuvre --who is he going to throw a pot at? Who is he going to call horrendously obscene names in a language you can’t even understand?

Next time someone wants to rewrite the menu, I am not going to get upset. I am going to tell them they can have anything they want, as long as they deliver the order into the kitchen. If they come out alive, they get to eat their creation.

Gripe No. 6--The Hidden Miser. These are not the customers who are wisely watching their pennies. These are your basic Scrooges. They order one meal for two or more. Something to drink? “Just water, please. Does bread come with our food?” They will gobble that up faster than you can keep their basket full. And believe me, they will want it kept full.

When they have finished their meal, only one diner will order coffee. You do, however, know something’s up when they ask for eight refills in the space of 10 minutes. And every time you come to the table, the coffee cup is in front of a different person. They become huffy if they find out there’s a charge for sharing a plate but secretly they are delighted, because having raised a stink and displayed their moral outrage they are now going to feel perfectly justified in leaving you a lousy tip.

Because, as with almost every aspect of restaurant-going, everything from the flower arrangements to the charge for valet parking, from the noise level in the dining room to the brand of soap used in the bathroom, the customer needs someone to blame. But what he doesn’t realize is, so does the chef. So does the owner and so does the hostess. So does the parking attendant, for that matter. And guess who is the most visible, and therefore the likeliest target for everyone’s complaints? Right.

I’m afraid the outraged customer is just going to have to get in line.