Getting Deliberately Bad Service in Restaurants

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Agreed. I guess it's only "rude" if you have creepy-looking eyes or unassertive body language. Because the deliberately bad service completely stopped when I reached my late 20's. Whatever I'm doing differently, I'm glad I'm doing it.

I remember eating alone in a Waffle House in Florida (a relatively aspie-unfriendly state, combined with the one-two punch of being by myself), after walking there in 90-degree heat from my hotel. The waitress, a 40-something woman, was super-friendly, and even made small talk about my cruise next day, including telling me to "get lucky" on the ship. There's no way that'd happen in a million years if I were 22 instead of 29.

Ooops, my husband has gotten the waiter's/waitresses's attention by asking them nicely about what we want and they are always polite. We understand if they are busy and if there are lot of people there, we wait longer and not get their attention because we assume they will get to us when they are finished with their other customers. But if there are barely any people there and we need something, of course we will tell them when we see them. I think just as long as you are polite about it, then it's not rude. But if you are raising your voice and being nasty about it or scolding them, then that might be rude.

One of my big "breakthroughs" in life was when I was took a server's job at a local pub. I got into it. And moved up to better restaurants, and eventually served at a fancy place just a couple of blocks from the White House. Then I started a little business catering to restaurants... and served 80, mostly upscale, restaurants in Washington and Baltimore. I've been served in countless restaurants, thousands of times. I have never known, or heard of, a server intentionally being rude, or even purposely ignoring a patron. But many patrons believe that it is their job to see if the server deserves a good tip or not. And some go over the top in their evaluations. I mean you are remembering perceived slights from a waitress years ago. No restaurant wants to keep out "socially awkward" patrons. It just doesn't happen. Relax, be patient. Smile. Ask what is nice or special today. Tip 15%. Don't analyze how you were treated.

Quite true. Getting their attention and asking politely is hardly rude.

Throwing a tantrum about it would be rude.

I appreciate that everyone has differing norms, but I'm going to stick with my stance that hailing a server is intrinsically rude. If your server is not meeting your expectations, then go to a different restaurant. Once you start calling over someone to get something for you, you've crossed into the realm of behaving like a child.
If you need to pay the bill, go up to the register. Someone will cash you out.

Behaving like a child would be something like throwing a tantrum. If you really think that the only way to call a waiter or waitress over is to throw a tantrum, then no wonder you think it is rude.

Fittingly enough, bullies usually act like you're a little kid throwing a tantrum if you complain to them or try unsuccessfully to defend yourself.

Well, it happened in seven years then. A million years is too many years!

Behaving like a child includes more than just tantrums. Obviously if an adult threw a tantrum at a restaurant that would be embarrassing for everyone.
When I say "acting like a child" I am referring to a child's habit of expecting attention and mothering. The server is not your mother. He is aware of his customers and will get to you when he can.

One night in Houston in the early 1980s, I went to one 24 hour diner I used to go to pretty often. That night I had a new waiter.

I order my usual hamburger, fries, and iced tea.

When I got the bill, it was just under $10. It turned out that the waiter had just moved to Houston from Canada and thought that it was proper to charge for every refill of iced tea.

I argued with him about the bill for about ten to minutes and he refused to budge. I finally told him that if he called the manger over and the manager agreed with him, then I would pay it (I didn't mention that I would never go back again). So he called the manager over. The manager was rather surprised and explained that you don't charge for refills of iced tea in Texas.

As it turned out, I saw the waiter in there pretty often after that and he turned out to be a pretty good waiter. He just needed a little Texas education to start doing it right.

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That reminds me of another restaurant about two blocks from that one. The food was inexpensive and okay, but the waiters and waitresses were ridiculously inept. If you needed anything at all after they brought out the food, you would never get it if you didn't call them over. They were all too busy standing around the cash register talking.

So you would agree, then, that if there is no waiter/waitress around, the adult thing to do is to get up and go get your own water, iced tea, desert, ...?

In the early 1970s, the restaurant next door to my office had a waitress who would not wait on high school kids unless they were with their parents.

If you were a high school kid and went in there to eat, you would go get an order pad, write down your order, and take it to the kitchen window. when it is ready, you would go get it yourself. and for any kind of drink, you went behind the counter and handled that yourself.

Haha ... in my younger days I actually did that sort of thing. Once I got up and refilled my own coffee. But anyway ... the adult thing to do is to wait for your server to offer you dessert.

And did you tip?

It was quite popular with the town kids. Because I was hardly ever in town except during school hours, I never went there when I was in high school or for several years after that.

So that would be a no I guess because you didn't eat there in high school or for several years after that.

Right.

I rode the school bus to and from school so when school was out, I was on my way back out to the farm. In the summer time, it was quite rare for me to go to that town even once between the last day of one school year and the first day of the next school year.

When I went to town in the summertime, it was nearly always to another town.