6. Be vegan.
7. Be gluten-free.
8. Allow an extremely minor detail to ruin your meal/evening/entire vacation.
9. Say everything is fine when we check on you. Finish your meal. Then tell us everything was wrong and ask what we’re going to do about it.
10. Fail to consolidate your demands into one single request and make us run back and forth for ketchup, then more bread, then more ketchup.
11. Ask for our number so you can give it to your nephew in Tucson.
12. Request that the chef visit your table so you can chat with them.
13. Leave your entire order up to us — even though we don’t know you and have no idea what you enjoy eating.
14. Finish your meal, give a detailed critique of it, then request that we pass all of it on to the kitchen.
15. Assume our chef/manager/owner is male.
16. Seat yourself.
17. Seat yourself at a dirty and un-bussed table.
18. Accuse us of lying when we tell you that our espresso machine is broken.
19. Unload your dirty plate on the clean table next to you.
20. Interrupt us when we’re talking to another table.
21. Wave, snap, or whistle at any point in time.
22. Talk to us about how busy we are, when we are extremely busy.
23. Stop us to strike up a vague, wandering conversation about nothing when we are carrying a gigantic stack of plates.
24. Hide your dirty tissues under your plate.
25. Demand that we sit down and share your meal with you, as if we actually can stop working, pull up a chair, and slurp some of your soup.
26. Order something that is not, and has never been, on our menu.
27. Ask for the specials then continue your conversation while we recite them for you.
28. Attempt to give your order to our host, busser, or an entirely different server.
29. Linger over your last drop of tea on a Tuesday night at 10pm in a snowstorm.
30. “We hated it!”
31. Incorporate us into your lame-ass joke somehow.
32. Fail to know what medium rare means.
33. Order anything well done.
34. Think that spitting in food is actually a thing. No self-respecting food service worker would ever actually do that.
35. Verbally tip.
36. Jesus tip.
37. Monopolize all of my attention at 7:30pm on a Saturday.
38. Take both credit card receipts.
39. Forget your take-out container that we spent careful, tender time preparing for you.
40. Come out to eat for the sole reason of being served, by a servant.
41. Ask me to give you another server’s number.
42. Take my friendliness as something other than friendliness, and wait for me after my shift.
43. Ask what our real job is. 