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 | Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter
Author: The Waiter
Publisher: Ecco
Binding: Hardcover
Released: 2008-08-01
Sales Rank: 144
ISBN: 0061256684
Edition:
Cover
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 2008-08-15 - Check, Please.
I fully expected to race through this book, skimming and stopping now and then to read about an interesting encounter, an odd tidbit, the occasional amuse-bouche. But The Waiter seated me in his section and refused to let go until I had consumed the entire 22 course meal plus epilogue.
I'm still trying to figure out how he did it. Waiting tables isn't all that intriguing, and nothing terribly unusual happens in the book. And yet I found Waiter Rant irresistible. The writing is very good and The Waiter presents himself in a sympathetic way. That sounds easy, but I have read enough memoirs to know that people can inadvertently portray themselves as total jerks or unbelievable saints. The Waiter manages to be a likeable guy with a believable array of faults.
Waiter Rant's publicity wants to compare The Waiter to Anthony Bourdain. I can see why, but it isn't a very accurate comparison. Bourdain goes for the shocking and the extreme, often stepping right out of the realm of believablity. And he always seems to be overcompensating with his tales of uber-hetero behavior. The Waiter is easier to take, letting the other characters in his stories play the kitchen-crazed kooks.
Even though this is no Kitchen Confidential (thank goodness), Waiter Rant has its moments. There are the obnoxious customers, the medical emergencies, the nights when everything goes wrong. There's even the time The Waiter violated the Rule of Discretion regarding celebrity customers, and received a well-deserved death stare from Russell Crowe.
I even learned something practical from Waiter Rant. He recommends tipping 15-20%, 25% for excellent service and any more than that is just a pathetic attempt to impress or be the waiter's best friend. So no more 30% tips from me.
 2008-08-14 - Disappointing Service
I was hoping for `Kitchen Confidential' from a waiter's perspective. I got a narcissistic diatribe on the restaurant business and customers.
The book contained no real insights, suggestions or revelations.
 2008-08-13 - Just got stiffed
At waiterrant.net an anonymous waiter blogs-up a menu of cathartic bytes from the restaurant business. In Waiter Rant, the blogger turns author - "virtual streams to paper reams" - in order to novelize his ordeals. This regular of the former has newly found reservations about the latter.
The book lacks the charm, the immediacy, and the insight that is so compelling about the web site. Instead, hopelessness abounds and the story becomes dark, vengeful and sanctimonious. The restaurant business is far from immune from the vagaries of society and economy. There are successes and failures, generosity and pettiness, inspiration and desperation. The author rather dwells on the negatives in order to sell books rather than focusing on the dramas and enlightenment that punctuate his distinguished online columns. So we are guided into the restaurant inferno, stare into the abyss but cannot find redemption.
Rivet Head is the best of this genre. A surprisingly wonderful read. That is the book this novel should have and could have been. The material is all there, in the waiterrant.net archives, just a little digging could have pieced together a grand delight. No seconds for me.
 2008-08-12 - Defensive Dining
"Waiter Rant" is one of those books I could not put down, but I started to wonder after a while if that was more because the book irritated me every few pages than because I was actually enjoying it. Steve Dublanica, who wrote this book anonymously as "The Waiter," has produced one of those books that might have unintended consequences because I doubt that I will be the only reader who comes away from it at least somewhat offended by the way that restaurant customers are presented in it as little more than gullible, vulgar, easily fooled, interchangeable cash cows (but then maybe I'm just naive about things like that). According to "The Waiter," customers are fair game and tricking them into buying the most expensive meal and squeezing them for the largest possible tip is just part of being a good waiter, something to brag about to the other boys and girls over drinks after closing time.
Dublanica never intended to be a waiter and only became one out of desperation to earn rent money and put food on his table when he found himself cut loose from a corporate job. He spent time studying toward the Catholic priesthood, and holds a degree in psychology, but struggled to find his niche in the corporate world and never imagined that he would spend so many years waiting tables in an upscale New York City restaurant. He was also a blogger - one of the lucky ones who attracted thousands of regular readers - and his ranting on that blog about life as a waiter led directly to the book deal that produced "Waiter Rant."
The book is filled with revelations and claims involving aspects of the restaurant business that had never crossed my mind and, in addition, it addressed some of the fears I have always had about restaurant kitchen staff and food servers. Is there anyone who has not heard stories about waiters spitting in the food of irritating customers or picking food off the floor and placing it back on a plate? Dublanica covers both those fears and what he has to say about them will do little to quell rumors of that type of behavior.
"Waiter Rant" has the feel of an honestly written memoir in the sense that no one is exactly covered in glory by its end, especially the author himself. The restaurant's customers are shown as the uncaring, egotistical beings that many of them are, the waiters are exposed as drug and alcohol abusing slackers, and the restaurant owner as perhaps the biggest fool of the lot. Hopefully, what "The Waiter" has to say about "The Bistro" environment and work ethic is more the exception than the rule despite his assertion that it is typical of the industry.
Adding insult to an already insulted customer base, at the end of the book there is a list of "40 Tips on How to Be a Good Customer" (five of the forty suggestions involve the art of tipping your waiter). The list got me to thinking about a list of my own: "12 Tips on How to Be a Better Waiter and Actually Earn the Big Tip You Expect." I won't include that list as part of my review comments, but I did rather easily come up with a dozen things that many waiters do so poorly that they lower the percentage tip they receive at the end of the meal.
"Waiter Rant" is a thought provoking account of one waiter's experiences in the business but, if its goal is to make the reader into a more sympathetic diner in future, it is a failure because so few of the waiters it describes are even remotely sympathetic characters. However, the book does serve as a good primer on "defensive dining" and those who eat out on a regular basis will do themselves a favor by arming themselves with the information on offer here.
2008-08-12 - The restaurant as a metaphor for life
If you're a regular viewer of Waiter Rant-the-blog, then odds are you've already purchased this book. Perhaps, like me, you pre-ordered it back when it was first announced.
If you're here on a recommendation or because you've been intrigued by the other positive reviews, you'll find a collection of stories that just about everyone can relate to. Although The Waiter is not as developed a writer as is Bourdain, for instance, you'll be stunned that this is his first book since the writing at once draws you in, makes you angry, causes you to laugh and even get misty upstairs.
Most of your time will be spent in a fine dining restaurant, though you'll come to look at it as an expression of the human condition itself - the easily transmutable distinction between server and patron, and the hell on earth that is one's recognition of the passage of time.
Like Kitchen Confidential before it, there are the laughs, the stories of back-of-the-house horseplay and little secrets that we all (maybe didn't) want to know.
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