My first "real" job was at a restaurant in Dallas. I started my senior year of high school and continued to work there while I was in the city during breaks from college. I started out as a host but later became a server. While there were very nice customers who understood the difficulty of working at a restaurant, there was often many people who came in and were rude to the host and servers. So here are a couple things you can do to change if you are one of those people who believe the world revolves around you.
1. Can't tip? Don't eat out.
Listen, many servers don't get paid the federal minimum wage. They get paid the tipping minimum wage, which means that instead of getting $7.25, they get at least $2.13. Servers literally live off tips, not their wage. So if you can only tip 3 bucks (and I'm being generous here, I've had teens and adults tipping less), then you shouldn't even be eating out. If you only drank a cup of coffee and aren't planning on getting anything else, $3 is fine. Otherwise, if you literally have a meal while you have people serving you then your tip should definitely be at least $5, or 15% of your bill (before any coupons are added to the total).
2. Don't get pissy with the staff when you don't like how your food looks.
If you told your server not to put onions in your omelette and for whatever reason there are onions in your darn omelette, please tell your server. They'll take it back and make you another and it's no problem. Don't make a huge fuss and call them "incompetent" or whatever other name you want to call them. They will literally go back and make sure that it's done correctly. Now if you ordered meal Y when you wanted meal X and your server brings you meal Y, you've got a couple options. Either you: eat meal Y because you ordered it, order meal X and pay for both Y and X, or take meal Y home (after you pay for it) and give it to your dog.
If you ordered meal Y because it sounds like something you ate at a different restaurant, don't be a jerk when it doesn't look or taste the same. Read the description or ask your server questions about it to make sure it's what you want. Don't return it after your server gives it to you, it is literally what you asked for.
Also, don't eat your meal and then tell your server you didn't like it and therefore, can't bill you. First of all, if you didn't like it then why did you eat it? Second of all, you ate it so you can pay for it.
3. Got a problem? Tell the server, manager or owner.
If the customer didn't like meal X because of reason Y and Z, we always ask if they want to talk to the owner (because he was usually at the restaurant). They either said, "no," because they didn't "want to make a fuss" which is code for "my complaint is pure bullshit but I want to mess with you (server/host)", or they said "yes," because they want to comment on the food and make sure that it either gets fixed or improved. The owner takes complaints seriously, when they are constructive, and our menu and service changed depending on what customers want. At my restaurant, when the owner wasn't in the restaurant we wrote down the complaint/comment and told him whenever he came in. You can tell when a complaint is nonsense or can be used to improve the service.
We're not mind readers. If you've got a complaint about another guest, tell your server or host. If you want ketchup but your server didn't bring you any, tell your server or host and they'll bring you ketchup. I once had a customer make a negative review because they didn't like the Caesar dressing we served. They told me, wrote a shitty review online about the dressing, and never gave me a chance to tell the owner/manager. We didn't change the dressing, because there was no reason to since only one customer didn't like it, but it still didn't mean the review was needed. A simple mistake, flaw, or overlooked detail does not need a negative review online because it could easily be fixed.
4. If it's busy, don't hog the table.
Restaurants gets busy. If you've been at a table for a long time and haven't eaten or ordered anything for the past 20 minutes, leave (especially if you've already paid your bill and won't be ordering anymore). There are people waiting in line to have that table and it sucks to have them waiting while you're hogging a table for no good reason. Also, if you're host puts you in a 2-top, and you're eating by yourself, please take the table. Bigger parties need the big tables and you hogging a table meant for 4 or more is such a waste.
5. 30 minutes before the restaurant closes? Don't come in.
I can't tell you how many times I've had customers come in 30 minutes (sometimes even 5 minutes!) before the restaurant closes. These people have been working for many hours, even all day, and you've literally just put shot hopes down when they thought their work day was ending. They want to leave and rest after a long day, they've already started closing down and most likely are just waiting for the kitchen staff to finish cleaning and to turn off the "open" sign. Please, do not do this. Yeah, we'll serve you (definitely not if it's 20 minutes or less before closing time) but you better be tipping well especially if you stay later than the designated closing time.
6. Say "Thank you".
Your server is trying their best to make your experience worthwhile. You're literally paying for service. However, it doesn't hurt to say "thank you". In fact, it actually proves you're a nice human being who appreciates the amount of work that is needed to succeed in customer service.
There you have it folks! I want to make it clear: this applies to restaurants in the US and not every restaurant is the same, my experiences are my own. However, many hosts and servers have to go through (many) shitty people.
