The customer is often wrong
“I can’t sit outside! I am wearing Gucci,” whines a would-be restaurant patron in a new Food and Wine piece on that old chestnut “the customer is always right.” Diners acted entitled long before the pandemic, but Covid-19 has made everything worse, Khushbu Shah reports. People are refusing to wear masks, tipping poorly, and demanding privileges that violate restaurants’ Covid protocol. Shah argues that eliminating tips would go a long way in empowering servers to refuse unreasonable requests. In the long term, though, owners will also need to participate in shifting the culture of hospitality. That starts with allowing their servers to simply say “no.”
