03-13-2024, 01:36 PM
(03-13-2024, 11:01 AM)Shannon Wrote: It means something when she remembers and starts using your name.
Here's a little tip for all you guys, if you didn't already know it.
Names are important to women. If you remember her name, and use it, she will feel like she is important to you enough that you remember her name. It makes her feel valued.
This is extremely important when you're dealing with servers, staff members and anyone you want to have a good relationship with. A small detail, but it matters.
I make a point of asking for a specific server, if s/he is available and when/where where that makes sense to do, and I use their name while we are interacting. Not all the time, and not rarely. But conversationally. Enough to make sure they know I know their name, and that I consider them a person, not just some random server to be ignored otherwise.
I choose to ask for servers who I know do a good job and who I get along with. This ensures that I always get better than average service, which is improved upon by me being pleasant with them and making their job easier by always ordering the same thing, so eventually they just remember it and it saves them some time and hassle. I also tip well when they do a good job, and when and where that makes sense, which is usually since they know and like me also as a result.
The result is that whenever I show up at a given restaurant, the entire staff usually recognizes me (because I am one of those rare customers who makes their job easy and serving me isn't a hassle) and they almost all like me. I get better service, and they have an easier time and save time because my order doesn't take much time. They have less stress and we usually have pleasant conversation. Over time, I have noted that doing this also results in two specific additional benefits:
1. I get special treatment that other customers don't get, and I am offered special options and deals. For example, one restaurant I go to offered me a "gold membership" a couple months ago. The owner himself offered this to me because we are regulars and among their most pleasant to serve customers. Only people who are regulars and who they like are even made aware that this exists, and offered a chance to buy in. A gold membership is $300, but it gets you 50% off all food orders there for life. I bought one for myself and one for my girlfriend, and now whenever we go there we eat for the price of one person, not two. We eat there on average maybe 1.5 times a week, so that times 52 means spending that $600 saves me about $1,404 per year, every year I stay in the area. Not a bad deal, and I would never have known it was even an option if I wasn't being polite and considerate as a customer. Furthermore, they only have a small number of these memberships, and once they're sold, they are gone. Not that this will happen at every place you go to, it's probably pretty rare, but the point is, being a good, polite, considerate customer gets you places.
2. The female servers tend to start forming relationships with us. There is one restaurant we go to where the lead server always serves us, and she considers us "her" customers. She will even pull rank to get us, and has been known to stay and serve us even though she's been cut already. She knows our order (even though mine is ridiculously complex and specific at that restaurant) and she will not tolerate mistakes from the kitchen staff. We have seen her actually yell at them when they got GF's eggs wrong twice in a row. She also spends more time with us than other customers, and seems to consider us family. And this isn't the only restaurant where this has happened. At another restaurant, we have three servers and a manager who do this, while at yet a different one, we have another four who do it, and two of the managers will go out of their way to talk to us there.
This latter point matters because if I wasn't taken, this would open me up to the option of dating at least four or five of these servers if I was so inclined, and some of them are definitely high quality wife material.
So consider things from the server's/staff's point of view: they're people just like you, and they have to deal with the public all the time. usually people who are crabby and impossible to please and don't tip well or treat them as people, never mind being nice. Be polite, considerate, thoughtful, bus your table, make their lives easier, be kind and where tipping is appropriate, tip well if they did a good job. It's not an overnight thing, but it comes back in spades.
@Shannon
I agree with all of this.
Tipping well when appropriate and treating the servers well has always been something I do.
Morgan and Maddy will bring my drink to me and make sure I'm having the usual before getting the food.
Morgan and Maddy are both exceptional servers.
I think Morgan has claimed me cus as I said Maddy hasn't been coming to my table and talking lately.
The other girls see me and get Morgan and tell her I'm there.
Morgan gives me discounts that I didn't know about and she'll Write water on the bill even though I always get coke.
Maddy, on the rare occasion she is my server, she fixes it where I pay very little.
It's good she is calling me by name. She just used it a lot today and She hadn't done that before that I can recall.
I wasn't sure what she was trying to convey she said my name so much.
She also kinda does some sorta opera singing sometimes when she bring me another coke.
She's definitely getting more comfortable with me.
