Regardless of the day, time, meal at hand…the person in charge of taking your order and bringing your food is your best buddy. There’s no exceptions here – being rude to wait staff only gets you a wad of spit in your food…if you don’t believe me, take this example to heart.

On Sunday we met some folks for brunch at a pretty popular Toronto brunch establishment. They don’t take reservations, you’ll have to wait in line…and people do. Slush, snow, rain, wind – doesn’t matter. We’re lined up around the block with phantom tastes of bacon and eggs keeping us warm.

With five people in our party, we weren’t surprised when it took a bit of time for a table to open up. Not a problem – we’re good. Bright and cheery blonde guy (we’ll name him Carl for now) makes his way over with a pile of menus and starts to guide us over to our table…but wait…people are sitting there…uh-oh – this is gonna get awkward.

Carl tries to reason with the Dad and his group of young’uns. We kept our distance, but could get the gist of the conversation enough to deduce that Dad decided the table by the window was better than the table he had previously been seated at. When a lady heading up the table next door of even more kiddies scurried over to support the o-so-not-budging and increasingly indigent Dad, the rest of the situation became clear – Mom and Pop decided carting six kids to a predictably jam packed establishment on the busiest day of the week would be a stellar idea…then got their panties in a bunch when there was a partition between them. THE HORROR.

Our hero, Carl, continued to try to reason with the Dad, but to no avail. He’s not moving and Carl finally sets his jaw and mutters “Well, enjoy your breakfast.” before walking back to us to apologize and let us know it was going to be another couple of minutes while they cleaned up another table for us…the exact table our self important party of four had sullied before trapsing over to what was supposed to be our table.

No big deal…we’re easy going folk and this was so clearly not Carl’s fault.

Soon we’re seated and Carl comes back to take our drink order. We joked about sending Daddy-O a “special” cup of  coffee…which got us more than a smirk.

“Don’t worry – it’s being taken care of.”

Outstanding. What else can we uncover… 

Our drinks arrive, delivered by…let’s say her name is Cathy…and Adam makes a joke about another wait staff prank, right out of Waiting (great movie – you’ve got to see it). Cathy’s smile and input?

“Yeah…too bad not everyone’s seen that movie.”

So there you go. Why would you mess with these people???

The moral of this story: if you can’t be nice to your server because it’s the freakin’ right thing to do…be nice to your server because it’s good for your health.