Working as a waiter is an excellent option for additional income for students, as it allows them to earn extra money in their free time. However, as in any other profession, there are difficulties here.
Requirements for candidates
At first glance, the only thing that is required of the waiter is to take an order from a guest of a restaurant or cafe, pass it to the kitchen, and then serve ready-made meals. But not all people can be truly good waiters. It's not just physical requirements, although they are important, because waiters spend their working day (or night, if they work in a nightclub) in constant motion, as a result, you have to walk several kilometers per shift, and half with heavy trays. Good memory, stress resistance, and charm are among the essential qualities.
While most waiters are temporary, some view this position as a start to a career in the restaurant business.
Almost all guests of the establishment pay attention to the quality of service. Therefore, the waiter should be polite, helpful, but at the same time unobtrusive. During the internship, the waiters study the restaurant's menu no worse than the chefs, because it is their visitors who ask how and from what a particular dish is prepared. In prestigious restaurants, the service staff must, in addition, be guided by the wine list, well versed in the intricacies of making cocktails. In addition, the order of serving food and drinks plays an important role, and this requires not only knowledge of the standards of table etiquette, but also constant communication with the chefs in the kitchen.
Communication with guests
The visitors themselves often only add stress to the waiter. Usually, each waiter serves several tables and is forced to keep track of the time of serving each dish, trying not to confuse orders. For all the mistakes of the cooks and the visitors themselves, the waiter also pays, who has to apologize for the flaws in the kitchen and look for compromise solutions if the guest ordered the wrong dish.
"Tipping" can be up to half of a waiter's total income, since the official salary is quite low.
Finally, a waiter's job is working with people who can behave in different ways. Any restaurant is trying to win the loyalty of regular customers who leave generous tips, and at the same time do not demand the impossible. However, most of the guests of the establishment initially position themselves so much higher than the service personnel that communicating with them gives a lot of unpleasant sensations that in no case should be demonstrated. In addition, there are frequent cases of inappropriate behavior of guests, attempts at conflicts and scandals. The waiter should be able to avoid such situations, and if they have already arisen - to settle it as quickly as possible and invisibly to other visitors, so as not to spoil the reputation of the institution.
