Ask George: Have you ever had a server abandon your table mid-meal and not return?

Have you ever had a server abandon your table mid-meal and not return?  —Karla A. St. Louis

What may seem to be an odd question appeared less so, considering it’s happened to me…twice.

The questioner explained that twice, in two weeks, at different establishments—one at a bar and grill, the other at a newer upscale restaurant—”the server disappeared halfway through service. No ‘thank you, but my shift is up,’ no “I’m not feeling well and have to go home,’ no communication whatsoever. More disturbingly, other waitstaff seemed surprised that we were upset and requested that someone pick up the slack. In the latter case, we saw the server walk out the front door. In both cases we were informed, without elaboration, that our server ‘left.’” She added that neither restaurant was busy, and it wasn’t late in the evening.  

The questioner said several of her friends reported having the same experience, which prompted her to ask what is happening and whether this was some sort of a trend.

Here’s my take:

It’s not uncommon for restaurant staffers (in both the front and back of house) to “walk” in the middle of the shift, but the occurrence is largely confined to just-opened establishments, where new (and often inexperienced) employees couldn’t handle the clatter, clamor, and pressure of a busy restaurant and kitchen. But that wasn’t the case here.

So I asked two multi-unit restaurant owners if they could explain the situation. Both began by stating the obvious: that the offense should never have happened. One mentioned that since the pandemic, the quality of restaurant labor has ratcheted down and that a lot of the better servers who were furloughed (“those who would never even dream of walking out”) never returned to the industry. Consequently, the “standards are lower now,” which is why some service staffs now work as a team (as opposed to having a server and a busser assigned to certain tables), which helps accommodate for weaker links. “Maybe the person thought the team would just cover for them,” the restaurant owner postulated, “which still is no excuse.”

Another anonymous owner noted that the “walkout” situation is more common than people think. “I’ve experienced servers walking out mid-shift, saying ‘I don’t like my section,’ and dishwashers arriving to a full dish station at 4 o’clock and refusing to wash the dishes that weren’t from his shift. ‘You’re here to wash dishes, dude, I told him. It doesn’t matter where they came from.”

He added that “rage quitting” (a post-COVID term explaining why people walk off the job in anger, giving little to no notice) has definitely affected the restaurant industry and that “the entitleds know they can walk out of a restaurant one day and get hired ‘almost anywhere’ the next.”

In any case, back to the original issue. I can’t help but wonder why, if you must leave early, what’s so hard about simply passing the service baton off to someone else? 

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