Things We Hate: Servers not writing down orders

The other day, I was eating at the new Blanc Burgers + Bottles on the Country Club Plaza and saw a waiter commit one of the most foolish follies in the service business. Two men were sitting at a deuce, and the server didn’t write down their appetizer order. And when he brought out their starter, it wasn’t the Peppadew Poppers that they had ordered but the fried cheese curds instead.

There was a moment of awkward silence as the two young men stared at the basket of cheese curds and then — to save further embarrassment — begrudgingly agreed to eat the wrong starter. The server seemed relieved, although he did, to his credit, offer to replace the dish with what they had actually ordered.

Hey, as a waiter I made a half dozen variations on that same mistake myself — until I finally learned the invaluable lesson: Always write down every order. And to this day, I’m wary of servers who don’t write down everything. Invariably something goes wrong, like the time a vegetarian friend was served a dish that she hadn’t ordered and, of course, contained meat. She sat without food for 30 minutes while the rest of us ate before our dinners got cold.

Such mistakes are so easy to avoid — that’s what makes them so unforgivable.