do you think the "waitress test" as a good guide on how decent a person is?

[CarrieInAnotherBabi]

not sure where i rea about this, but it basically said you can tell what someones true personality is like by seeing how they treat waitresses.

ie, if they are pleasant, friendly polite they are decent.

if they act they thewaitress doesn't exisit or are rude or dissmissive that are an arse?

squeaky sorry you have rude friends but that says more about people you engage with than Americans in gerneral. I find it hilarious here how over the top we are polite after living in the UK and continental Europe for so long.

Noseriously.. I have not personally insulted YOU, so there is no need for you to be so rude to me. Point proven there really.

I am not just referring to my friends, I have worked in the USA too, and the people I worked with and hotel guests staying at the same hotels as me were also just as ignorant.

They look down their noses at waiting staff. Even in American films you often see people ordering food or drink by saying "I'll have a beer", and rarely will you hear them say that little word "please". Manners are definately lacking.

Shop assistants in the USA are extremely polite, I will not disagree there, and I have never met miserable waiting staff in the USA either, probably because their wages are so reliant on tips, but that does not mean customers can not say please or thankyou to them.

But Squeakytoy, saying 'please' in reply to the question 'what do you want to drink' is an English habit. Certainly I have heard it a lot less in other countries and languages. This isnt manners, it is etiquette which differs from culture to culture.

I agree that you can be absolutely polite without actually using the words "please" or "thank you".

If someone is vile to a total stranger, such as a waitress or cashier in a shop, I reserve the right to think they are an utter iredeemable arse. And I don;t care if they are Mother Fucking Theresa in the domestic sphere. So there.

Now argue with that!

It's only a one-way test, as others have said. If I went out with someone and they were rude to staff, I wouldn't see them again. If they were nice to staff, it just means I don't yet know whether they've got ishoos with certain people.

Same as the one about how he treats his mother.

gnome and trills

Civil yes, but it is still more polite to use good manners, and saying please and thankyou is good manners. I travel regularly to many european countries and have never noticed it to be lacking there either.

i think there's a lot going on with waiting and being waited on... i'm surprised to hear people say that american's are abrupt with waiting staff because my experiene with american waiting staff is they talk far far far too much. i would never be rude to a waitress (have been one) but i do not go out to dinner to chat to the waiting staff, i want to talk to the person i'm with. i like polite but discreet service and little chatting. this is quite european i think.

Generally it's a good indicator of personality unless the person is in a bad mood and being off with everyone just for that day.

I love being served by american staff though, as they are almost always cheerful, yes a bit exuberant and flamboyant at times. I went to a fairly "posh" restaurant once, where the server did a very OTT display of the specials, which included flourishing a bowl of very pretty raw broccolli, carrots and cauliflower to demonstrate the veg of the day, and a lovely raw slab of steak was then shown, finally follwed by a very much alive lobsters that was not looking too happy! (I had the steak, as I did not want to be party to a death on the premises!!).

it does my head in a bit when you are trying to catch up with friends/colleagues you don't see much as they're in the US and you're only visiting and you get:
'hi, i'm amanda and i'll take you to your seat.. brad will be your server today... where are you guys from... chat chat chat'
'hi, i'm brad and i'll be your server today and the specials are... basically reads the whole menu'..
followed by
'hi i'm lucy would you like some water' and 'hi i'm steve can i get you some bread'... etc. etc. etc.
then 'hi, brad here - are you guys ready to order yet, i can paricularly recommend the....'

arrrghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Surely there must be other clues to someone's behaviour before you even get as far as going out for dinner?

If you haven't picked up something before then it's pretty dire.

Treating service industry staff poorly is the behaviour of complete dick heads - and I find it hard to believe that this was not apparant from the minute you met/talked to them.

If a man treated any service staff badly I'd leave- whether in the middle of dinner a shop or whatever- but I don't think i'd have even got that far anyway in the first place.

I didn't take the relationship further with a guy I dated once who threw the bill book on the floor for a cocktail waitress to charge. I don't know who he thought he was. He couldn't maintain an errection, just remembered that....