WAITING: Waiters’ True Tales of Crazed Customers,...

WAITING: Waiters’ True Tales of Crazed Customers, Murderous Chefs and Tableside Disasters by Bruce Griffin Henderson (Plume: $9.95; 255 pp., paperback original). These “true tales” may alter the way the reader experiences dining out. Drawing on personal experience and interviews with servers around the country, Henderson shows that there’s more to being a waiter than slapping down a plate of pasta with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Many of the problems he describes arise from a simple lack of courtesy: It’s rude to whistle for a waiter or to touch one; parents shouldn’t let kids run around restaurants, etc. Unfortunately, the narrative breaks down in the final chapter, when the servers reveal they’re really writers and actors: One even declares that in Los Angeles, a waiter is “an appendage of the entertainment industry.”