My current and future waiters, I know this entire experience at the Le Château de Featur can be quite overwhelming, but we are depending on all of you. We need you to be in prime waiting condition because, frankly, our food tastes like doo-doo, and I’m pretty sure more than half of it is considered illegal according to state health requirements. But besides that, we need to keep up with our competition, all those restaurants like Applebee’s, Chili’s and Andre’s that are somewhere in between fast food chains and legitimate restaurants. The 99 Restaurant may have 99 reasons to always come back for more, but Features Restaurant has 100. Number one is to file a lawsuit for the severed hand found in the pasta, but two through ninety-nine are all for our outstanding wait service. But I’ve wasted too much time already. Let’s begin. The first rule to being successful as a Le Château waiter is that you’ve tried everything on the menu, and every dish is your favorite. So if someone asks you how the steak is, you reply: “That’s a great choice. I’ve had that multiple times, and I must say it’s my favorite thing on the menu.” And when the person next to them asks about the pasta, you can say: “Wow! That’s another one of my favorites.” If a customer asks you which of two meals is better, always choose the one that costs more money. But remember to say that you didn’t choose the more expensive meal because of the cost, it’s just your favorite thing on the menu. Another important trick is to always use very sophisticated words when describing the meals, as it makes the customer feel more important and gives him the impression that he is eating in an elegant restaurant instead of a fancy McDonald’s. Describe how much “character” the smoked salmon has, and how “savory” the grilled chicken tastes. And who wouldn’t want to sink their teeth into the “delectable” prime rib. Don’t forget to use other words and phrases such as “juicy,” “tender,” “melts in your mouth,” “light as a cloud” and “cures the common cold.” As a Le Château waiter, you must always in some way relate to the customer. If you can get into a lengthy conversation with someone, it gives them the impression that you gave them some special attention and that your service was much better than it actually was. If you overhear a customer talking about raising children, tell them some funny story about your own children. Whether you have kids or not doesn’t really matter. Just tell them some story about how you were so busy balancing your time between your seven jobs that you left your child in preschool for twelve years or something. This should draw some uncomfortable laughs and a big tip.
