Self-Entitled Regulars!!

A good staff is the heart and soul of any great restaurant. We keep the place flowing smoothly, keep the blood pumping. That being said, a great group of regulars can be the muscle of a great restaurant and have a lot of influence on the success or failure of a business.

We rely on regulars to keep steady money coming in, and we take great care of regulars (and they take great care of us in return). It's an extremely functional relationship and sounds pretty simple, of course it's not. You can't have the yin without the yang, you can't have feast without famine and you certainly cannot have good regular customers without bad ones.

The bad regulars are the self-entitled ones. They're under the delusion that since they come in at least once a week they keep the place on the map, they feel the business could not survive without them.

A good example of this is from a place I worked at years ago. A couple would come in once a week to dine where they could be seen (on the patio of course) and demand that since we didn't have cream in our establisment that whomever served them run over to the coffee shop on the corner and get them a cup of cream for their coffee. Some servers actually did this for the 20% these people left them. I'm sorry, but if I'm running errands for you, you tip accordingly!

Another couple would come in once a week, look at the floor plan and choose whose section they sat in (they didn't like newbies). They liked everyone to know their names and when you were sat with them you were to come over with their drinks immediately (you were supposed to already know what they drink). They enjoyed tying up a lot of your time by keeping you at the table chit-chatting. They also enjoyed ordering dishes off of the menu, but modifying them to the point where it incredibly slowed down food service as the cooks had to read each and every line: Ceasare salad, no dressing, no parmesan, add chopped tomatoes, add olives, add crumbled bleu cheese, add cucumbers, add a burger patty cooked medium rare etc. etc. (it would go on and on).

If the entrees came out wrong (whether it was your mistake or not) they snapped at you and would make jokes about how they chose the wrong server and should choose differently next time. It was truly obnoxious and I truly loathed them every time I saw them as I smiled and said hello to them by name. At the end of the meal they always presented a discount coupon and tipped a "generous" $5 on a $25 check. Once again yes it's 20%, but you're doing a fuck of a lot more than 20% worth of work on a very inexpensive check.

Fortunately these types of regulars are a rarity and it really depends on where you're working if the management encourages or discourages this kind of behavior. It really seems as if some places bend over backwards to honor outrageous requests, and it just makes these people worse and worse and worse.

I was talking with a bartender friend of mine yesterday who told me a story where a bar regular actually told him to give her her comped drink! I don't care how "regular" you are, you don't ever tell someone to give you your "free" drink.. ever! That's obnoxious!

There are ways to tell if you are loved as a regular, and we definitely let those who are know it. We might not come out and say it (how could you really say it?) but they definitely know.

As I said before, we take great care of regulars and they take great care of us, but take advantage and abuse us and all those smiles you see will be fake!