Let's hear it for servers

     Just for giggles, keep track of how often you've just shoved a forkful of food into your mouth when the server comes up on your blind side and asks, "How is your meal?"
     My wife says it happens to me more than others because I hardly give it a rest between shovels. Maybe, but I think it's a conspiracy among a group of people who absolutely must have a great sense of humor to do what they do, day in and day out.
     So I'm not here to make fun of servers, but to give them due credit for a generally great job.
     Get giddy over celebrities, if you will, and pore over the tabloids to see who's who on TV or in the movies. Get choked up over the fiery rhetoric of your favorite politician, but to me, those who serve us our meals in our restaurants are among the finest examples of solid, hard-working Americans you can find.
     Kitchen help is spotty these days; hard to get people back there who can manage to show up on time and stay for a whole shift -- admittedly a long shift and hard work. Don't want to take anything away from the best of them, but the fact is, they prep and plate and kiss it goodbye.
     It's the waitress or waiter -- I defend the honor in those job descriptions -- who takes the plate to the customer and will bear the consequences of the timeliness and quality of the food on arrival.
     The store manager will make the obligatory rounds to ask customers how is their experience. I've been known to say the service is great and will remain so if management doesn't screw it up.
     Indeed, in every restaurant I can think of, if there is a problem, it originates with or goes back to management: Lack of discipline in the kitchen reflects on the server, but shouldn't. It's a manager who won't deal with it.
     I once got up and walked out of a restaurant after a loud argument broke out between two kitchen helpers in back who were yelling insults at two waitresses out front. The manager weighed in but didn't stop it -- she should have set those cooks straight right there.
     Good cooks get my respect. Good servers even more, because they're on the front lines. Managers get credit when they manage, as opposed to enabling unreliable and unprofessional behavior.
     How much support the store manager gets depends often on the real culprits in chain operations, the district managers, who are like those politicians who think that serving the public is all about making numbers add up.
    Take care of the wants and expectations of customers and the needs of the people who serve them, and management gets easier.