Not sure what all of us are doing, but I certainly didn't do that. I was just making the point that saying something was a "cultural difference" isn't a free pass.
And I disagree that there's one answer for all situations on whether cultural differences are acceptable. I think the philosophical term is "soft universalism," the idea that certain fundamental values are universal (i.e. that "cultural differences" doesn't cut it as an excuse for human rights violations), but that beyond those fundamentals there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree, and we should respect cultural differences in those areas (i.e. the acceptable wait time for a beer.)
It's not just a question of whether it's preferable to be greeted before you've even looked at the menu, to get the check while you're eating, or to have your plate cleared as soon as you're done if your companions are still finishing their food. It's more a question of what lengths we're prepared to go to in order to avoid anyone having to wait longer than they would like.
I was a server and bartender for ten years in various American establishments. Among other things I was trained to do a "two minute/two bite" check on every table after delivering the food, and we were also given strict time limits for the initial greeting and frequency with which we had to check in. The companies I worked for hired secret shoppers to make sure we weren't slipping. Business fluctuated unpredictably, which made it difficult to properly staff the restaurant. When we were full and on a wait list, it was simple--all hands on deck. But when it was slow, managers were reluctant to send people home, because things could pick up any minute, and then the speed of service might suffer. I can't tell you how many times I was forced to hang around for hours without customers, doing sidework for $2.63 an hour (many U.S. states have a lower minimum wage for employees who traditionally receive tips.)
It wasn't just the servers who felt the stress of the unyielding expectations. A cook came in once for his shift with an oil burn that covered his entire forearm, sustained during the shift he'd just finished at his other job. He had been afraid of losing his job if he left work or complained; his family in Columbia depended on the money he sent them. We were otherwise fully staffed that day--no call-outs--so our manager let him take the day off. Legally, they weren't required to; restaurant workers were not entitled to any sick leave, even unpaid, and I wonder what they would have done if we really couldn't spare someone that day without it affecting speed of service. One time at that same job, I cut my hand pretty badly when slicing limes for the bar before we opened. My first thought was to cover the wound before I got any blood on my uniform. My second thought was whether there was anyone scheduled that day who had been trained to work the bar. There wasn't. I bandaged my hand and covered it with a latex glove and spent the rest of my shift cheerfully mixing drinks and making lame Michael Jackson jokes to anyone who asked about the glove. My manager asked if I was OK. I could tell she didn't believe me when I said yes. But I also knew she knew she had no one else who knew the drink recipes, and no one could get them out fast enough if they had to look up each one. So she pretended to believe me, and then suggested, after my shift, that I see a doctor about getting some stitches and a tetanus shot. She reassured me that worker's comp would pay for it and that I wouldn't be penalized for using it. She was better than most. At a different job, I once asked to leave an hour early so that I could get to Urgent Care before they closed to get antibiotics for a urinary tract infection (which I probably got from going entire shifts without using the bathroom, because I never stopped running around at this job.) My co-worker was willing to cover my tables, but obviously they would have to wait a little longer, as would her tables. My boss said no. I couldn't sleep that night because I was in so much pain. I could have gone to the ER, but I didn't have health insurance and I was afraid of how much it would cost; I knew the cash price at Urgent Care was only $300. I lay awake crying and watching the clock until half an hour before Urgent Care was open, then headed over. And then, with pills in hand and the first dose swallowed, still shaking from the pain, I went to my next shift.
I got fired from that job two weeks later. Apparently one of my tables complained about the service not being fast enough. They were at that table for four hours and never saw the bottom of their glasses; I strongly suspect they complained just to get their check comped. But it didn't matter; management wasn't interested in my side of the story. A year earlier I had taken in a co-worker at my second job who was fired for the same reason, but he had nothing else to fall back on and would have been homeless, in Boston, in the winter. I let him sleep on my couch until he found another job. But when his new restaurant went out of business, I lost touch with him. I heard through the grapevine that he'd fallen back into meth, something he'd kicked seven years before. I never saw him again. I think about him sometimes and wonder if he's still alive, and if I could have and should have done more to try to save him. But I saw countless fellow restaurant workers lose their livelihoods over a customer complaint about slow service. My couch wasn't big enough for all of them.
I would be drifting off to sleep sometimes, every bone in my twenty-two-year-old body aching after a double shift, and suddenly remember that I never brought that ketchup to table 47 they asked for 12 hours ago. I would lie awake trying to remember--did they leave a good tip anyway? Did they fill out a comment card? Did they take their receipt with the survey link? Did they maybe forget too, or forgive the oversight, or flag down another server? Or was I going to be called into the manager's office for a closed-door conversation the next day? I would have nightmares in which I'd be taking orders for a table, and I'd see another table getting seated behind them, and another behind them, and on and on in a section that stretched to infinity. And instead of me being naked or my teeth falling out, I would see them all calling the manager over to complain about the wait.
This is the human cost of a system designed to ensure you never have to wait 20 minutes for your beer. In a culture that runs on "island time," a restaurant manager can observe that one server is usually enough on a Tuesday afternoon, and decide to just schedule one server. And then, if a few more customers show up than expected, those people can have a seat, enjoy the sunshine, and wait. Or they can get mad and go to the restaurant across the street, but there will probably be equal numbers of customers who come to them from across the street because they got tired of waiting there. This, to me, seems like the kind of difference a reasonable person could learn to live with on vacation, unlike human rights abuses. That was the point I apparently failed to convey to your understanding in my previous one-sentence post.
Incidentally, I finally hit my breaking point in the restaurant biz about ten years ago and decided to go to law school. Not exactly the most Namaste career choice, I know. And now I represent parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children, many of them struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse, so I'm dealing with people who are only slightly more pleasant than someone who's had to wait 20 minutes for their beer. But at least I get paid sick leave and vacation time, and I'm actually allowed to use it. I usually can tell that the stress is getting to me and it's time for a mental health day when I start having those waitressing dreams again.
(ordered before we could put down our coats) Cheers
