
Dinner and Deception – Serving meals to the super-rich left me feeling empty - JSnake
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/dinner-and-deception.html
======
roymurdock
From the comments section:

 _This article is absurd in that this type of work is neither as good or as
bad as anything remotely described here. Being a waiter, myself for 24 years
including 3 star Michelin (NYC), was a practical, enjoyable professional job
in which I dealt with the public. Guests were almost always friendly people
looking to have an enjoyable time. This type of writing is bombastic and
provocative but lacks any true substance. Every industry deals with the cult
of personality. I 'm sorry to say it but there's nothing to see here. It's
just not that big a deal._ \- Chad Murdock

I have to agree...there are a couple of anecdotes of "inflammatory 1%
behavior" and the overall style of the writing was nice, it just seems like
the author is making a big deal out of basically nothing so that the NYTimes
can stoke the anti-1% flames and generate more views.

~~~
lvs
It is common for two people working, even side-by-side, not to view their job
the same way. I'm certain we've all experienced that. Your response to the
piece, and that of the commenter you cite, is more indicative of your own
mindset about the world rather than the motives of the author.

~~~
roymurdock
Yeah, it was my _opinion_. I'm glad my comment conveyed my mindset about the
world. That means I was successful in expressing said opinion :)

Now, I alone can't say whether or not my opinion is _right_ \- that's why
these lovely forums exist so that we can bounce ideas/anecdotes/opinions off
each other!

\---

For the people who are downvoting this comment: why don't you contribute your
opinion so we can have a discussion? A Socratic dialectic? A good old
knowledge swap? Spin me a yarn!

This intense, insecure need to be statistically, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt
RIGHT (whatever that means) all of the time is killing/derailing countless
discussions around HN.

The rules of the forum are simple: have an opinion, don't be a dick. Leave a
comment so we can learn from each other.

------
A_COMPUTER
I love the commenters describing it as being like a scene from Bonfire of the
Vanities or serving Egyptian pharaohs. Speaking from experience, there are
plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude to service
staff as rich people, often times even worse. And corporate restaurants/stores
mimic the same patterns as shown here, you just get paid less and treated
worse.

~~~
icanhackit
_there are plenty of poor people that are at least as aloof, entitled and rude
to service staff as rich people_

We need a reverse Yelp that reviews humans rather than businesses. So many
people fail to follow the Golden Rule in simple, everyday interactions for no
discernible advantage to themselves at the cost of dignity, respect and
efficiency.

Some customers you _don 't_ want. And the customer is not _always_ right. A
sort of trade embargo in response to poor behavior would be interesting.

~~~
quesera
> We need a reverse Yelp that reviews humans rather than businesses.

I'd like that for _drivers_. My vehicle should be aware of the vehicles nearby
and the likely drivers thereof, and present me with a HUD showing the poorly-
reviewed in red.

~~~
wpietri
I have often imagined a dashcam that does license plate recognition and lets
you know when shitty drivers are nearby. And of course, it would have voice
response so you could give nearby cars compliments and public grumbles.
Presumably you'd also want it to be geosensitive and real time, so that it
could say, "Hey, there's a lunatic coming up behind you."

Seems like it would be easy to put together a dash stand, some OpenCV magic,
and a little glue logic to get a prototype together.

~~~
msie
No no no! Hopefully you guys are joking. This is another case of geeks
thinking technology and public shaming will cure us all of bad human
behaviour. Cynically I think you'll get funding.

~~~
hueving
It worked with Uber rating drivers and riders. Care to elaborate on why this
wouldn't work?

~~~
bmelton
A big, obvious concern would be having a system that alerted you to drivers
previously seen exhibiting bad behavior, and the social justice network taking
that as an opportunity to avenge the bad behavior and inadvertently causing
danger to themselves, their "adversaries" or other drivers on the road.

On top of that, everybody drives poorly at some point, and for some reason. A
roommate of mine wrecked his car once like, one block from our house. I
couldn't stop laughing at him long enough for him to explain that while he was
driving, a spider was crawling out of his ear, and it justifiably freaked him
out enough to hit a telephone pole.

If I was a random passerby that didn't get to stick around for the
explanation, I would have flagged him as a clear danger to other motorists,
which would have been undeserved. To boot, I think he reacted as well as he
could have, and probably better than most, given the circumstance.

~~~
wpietri
Isn't this roughly equivalent to the concern that sometimes people give
unfairly bad reviews on Yelp? Sure, it happens, but it seems like the solution
isn't less data, but more. If you have 100 or 1000 data points on every
driver, then it seems like it would be pretty easy to extract the people who
are actually problematic versus just normal drivers.

~~~
bmelton
It is very possibly an over-concern.

------
emmett
It's interesting how much it really is a problem of alienation, not of the
work itself.

Stage magicians who obsessively practice the same motion over and over own
their work, own their output, and feel empowered by the hard work and the
success it brings.

Waiters who do the same thing because a larger machine they do not identify
with dictates it feel disconnected.

The work itself is a distraction from the real problem, which is that the
employee does not believe that what they are doing is important or valuable
and that they don't feel ownership over their own actions.

~~~
beloch
In high-school I worked in a restaurant. Not high-end, but decent enough that
some customers expected a lot. Most customers were respectable human beings,
but there were a few sad and pathetic misanthropes who acted as though paying
money gave them absolute power over you. Those customers were enough to make
the job feel a bit like prostitution. At a high end restaurant I'd imagine
this effect is intensified, both by the amount of dollars changing hands and
the discipline of the staff.

It's a shame that it would never work in today's world, but the ancient Roman
holiday of Saturnalia is something direly needed today. If the ultra-rich
spent one day a year in service to wage-slaves who normally serve them, it
might make the rest of the year feel a little less empty for people like the
author of this article.

~~~
smtucker
You "imagine" the effect is intensified but you don't actually have any
evidence to support it. I've also worked at a restaurant as a waiter. Despite
it being a very low end buffet where the food was cheap and wages low I
identify completely with the article (except nobody had a stroke while I was
working). The only real difference was that the author and his co-workers were
much better at their jobs than me and my own co-workers.

Wealth is a big red herring in this story, but I guess its a story no one
would be interested in without.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Wealth is a big red herring in this story, but I guess its a story no one
would be interested in without.

Well of course. Nobody's interested in stories about poor people: they're too
common.

------
logicallee
It wasn't a hard routine to master. You showed up. You read the article. Then
you clicked on the text box, and you write one of a few thoughts: "I love how
this exposes the vacuousness of the fine dining experience". Or: "The story
about the Chinese businessman confirms something I have long suspected, that
paying more for a meal is no an evidence of a soul." With a little practice,
you can almost pass it off as original. You act surprised. You act indignant.
You act informed.

Then you click _add comment_. That's it. Simple. Mechanical. Of course,
beneath the mechanical gestures lurks an ugly truth. It was something you
didn't talk about. You just did your job - occasionally, you would get some
karma for it. That soon wore off. I wondered: is this what it feels like to be
one of the liberated intelligentsia? Would Engels have strained his
relationship with his mother so that he could defend my right to "take it
easy"? Is this what we have fought for?

To be sure, I was a glorious member of a liberated proletariat: nobody got
"surplus value" from my comment. The karma was mine.

But sometimes, for just a glimmer of a moment, in those seconds after I
clicked "add comment" I was left facing the ugly truth, there in black and
white. It was because there was no value there at all.

-

 _(I am satirizing this awful article)_

------
bbanyc
The article doesn't name the restaurant, but the author's LinkedIn profile
says he worked at Eleven Madison Park. This makes some of the details seem
more believable. Felix Salmon: "they’re IN THE CREDIT SUISSE building
ferchrissakes of COURSE there were douchebankers at the bar"

[http://gothamist.com/2015/08/23/eat_the_rich.php](http://gothamist.com/2015/08/23/eat_the_rich.php)

------
unabridged
The ending reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Brazil:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec)

------
xg
Fun dialogue between Pete Wells (former Editor of NY Times Dining) and Helen
Rosner (features editor for Eater):

[https://twitter.com/pete_wells/status/635499327918612481](https://twitter.com/pete_wells/status/635499327918612481)

------
mathattack
The joys of LinkedIn. The author [0] was captain at Eleven Madison Park [1].
I've never been there, but back when I had an expense account job, the few
similar spots I'd been to in NYC were mostly old fogies quietly eating dinner
with their spouses. Occasionally you'll have folks on dates amusing themselves
on their iPhones.

[0]
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardframe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardframe)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven_Madison_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven_Madison_Park)

------
everyone
My main feeling reading about this is that in a well designed society there is
no logical reason that such opulence should exist.

~~~
unchocked
You make an excellent argument for why no one should design societies.
Inadvertently, I presume.

~~~
everyone
Also we design out societies incrementally all the time, in all sorts of ways.
Introducing new legislation and repealing old ones being one small example.
Also some societies work markedly better than others and theres huge amounts
of data to support that. As a very crude indication you could compare
countries quality of life vs GDP. Countries with a higher quality of life /
GDP are using their resources more efficiently to improve their citizena
quality of life.

------
omonra
It sounds to me that the author is simply not a good fit for the job.

It would appear that someone who is a graduate student in literature doesn't
think that they were put on this earth to serve food to others. Hence he's
just projecting his dissatisfaction with poor career choice on the people he
is supposed to serve.

------
WalterBright
That article left me feeling empty.

------
wpietri
For those who love the stories of people behind the scenes, it's worth digging
around in the Wayback Machine for Bitter Waitress's archives. E.g.:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080917050640/http://www.bitterw...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080917050640/http://www.bitterwaitress.com/std/index.php?method=showhtmllist&list=classifiedscategory&rollid=13&fromfromlist=classifiedscategory&fromfrommethod=showhtmllist&clearoff=1)

And my favorite San Francisco story in this vein is "Ice Balls":

[http://the-tusk.com/2015/01/09/ice-balls/](http://the-
tusk.com/2015/01/09/ice-balls/)

~~~
brookside
I enjoyed "Ice Balls". Thank you.

~~~
roymurdock
Same, "Ice Balls" was a fantastic piece of writing. Thanks for sharing.

