Ask George: How long should you wait for initial service in a restaurant, and what’s the best way to advise management if you’re dissatisfied?

Ask George: How long should you wait for initial service in a restaurant, and what’s the best way to advise management if you’re dissatisfied? —Kevin R, St. Louis

The short answer: not long. 

If I enter a restaurant famished, the several minutes I might have to wait to get noticed might seem like an eternity; if I’m not hungry or hanging out with friends, then that time passes in an instant. Most restaurant training manuals say that a guest is to be acknowledged by a server “immediately, if possible,” even if no service can be rendered at the time. Regardless, an order for beverages should be taken within five minutes. After 10 minutes, I think the average person attempts to make eye contact…with someone.

If service is slow from the outset, then take a visual survey. If you see more necks craning than people eating, you might want to bail before there’s any commitment. The astute diner can determine when a restaurant is in the weeds. At that point, you have to weigh the opportunity cost of whether to stay or to go. If it’s the former, call a manager over, and register your concern. At that point, service usually dramatically improves.

If you’ve reached the wine/cocktails stage and sense poor pacing, then dinner could become an all-night affair, so either ask for the manager or implement an exit strategy: Ask to pay for the drinks and leave, or leave adequate cash on the table and move along.

There are options when problems with food occur as well. My rule of thumb is that if the grievance is minor and can be corrected quickly (for instance, cold soup or warm salad), so be it. If the offense is more serious and time-consuming, such as an overcooked steak, then weigh what I call “the hassle factor.” Determine the worth of calling attention to the problem (shifting the table’s attention to a discussion about your food and away from otherwise pleasant conversation) or temporarily letting it go in the interest of not breaking up the party.

I say ‘temporarily’ because many restaurant managers get miffed when they hear of dissatisfaction after the fact, preferring to rectify the infraction at the time that it occurred, not realizing that cooking a new steak for one person requires 10 minutes of extra time and commitment for the entire table time (and many times the redo comes out undercooked). My rule here is that, especially when dining in a group, unless the offense is so grievous that it must be rectified immediately and/or time is not an issue, then let it go until the next day, at which point you can notify the restaurant.

As a restaurant manager and a customer, I’ve long felt that addressing the issue the day after–and by telephone–is the best policy. Using email or social media for such purposes just opens the door for misinterpretation. Plus, sleep—and sobriety—bring clarity.

The next day, the manager/owner will usually overcompensate (which would have been done the night before anyway), and the customer can gauge the manager’s sincerity and demeanor. Some managers are warm and genuine—people whose establishments you’d willingly patronize again—while others are defensive and arrogant and either won’t or don’t care to rectify the problem, at which point you calmly end the phone call and decide to never return.