You are sitting with three other people at a nice restaurant engaged in deep conversation about your work, your families, the meaning of your lives. You get to this emotional story about your dying father’s advice,
“So, dad looked up at me and with his dying breath, he said, ‘Susan, promise me this…'”
Just then here comes our waiter,
“Hi folks, I’m Reggie. How is everyone today? Let me tell you about the specials.”
While you want to appreciate this attention (perhaps done to increase the tip), you also feel like telling Reggie to go straight to hell. (Reggie needs a course in body language.)
When I go out for a meal with friends, I want to talk undisturbed by “customer service” chatter. So I have designed a table sign measuring 10 inches across:
It fits in this handy sign holder:
You can imagine this creates some awkwardness at first, but the lunch or dinner is blissfully undisturbed by “helpful” waiter interventions after the sign goes up.
Less service = bigger tip
I suggest removing the profanity. In most cases the wait-staff’s behavior is based on instructions from the restaurant’s management. Otherwise I’m in total sympathy with the message, and posting it should prevent any problems between the waiter and management. (As a sidenote, when I ate at Chez Panisse, the waiter was careful to avoid any unnecessary intrusions, and even held off from approaching our table when we were conversing.)