I come from a culture where being wait staff isn't a casual thing; it's a profession and an ownership and in many ways performance art. Wait staff call you "Ma'am" or "Miss" or "Honey" or "Baby" or "Child" and strike up flirtatious conversations, and there's a tacit agreement that you're involved in a game designed to create a short, familiar relationship that will give you a little more than just something to eat, and them a bigger tip for having played with you a little. And there's an undercurrent that we're all in this together, we like one another, and the world is a place to enjoy a good meal and to be taken care of a little.

Now, the drink spiking thing could have been off-putting, to be sure, but she drank it so she wasn't really afraid, just caught up in a fantasy of fear and unable to wag a finger in his face and say "You be good or I'm going to have to tell your boss you're wasting his good tequila," and flicked him like a bottle fly. If he had actually gone any further and not gotten the idea she could have dropped the game and said "What you're doing makes me nervous. I know you don't want to do that. Let's do this a different way."

If you go all the way to rape and gun violence when you're called "princessa," you're going to be on alert forever and you're going to miss out on a whole lot of nice.

Wait staff is to call customers Sir or Ma'am or nothing at all - being overly familiar and using first names or pet names assigned by the server, etc is rude.

Being called names like "princessa" "mamacita" and other inappropriate things by men who are not only strangers but who are employed to be in service to customers is one of the many indignities women are supposed to just shrug off and not fuss about. I'm pretty sure this server doesn't call his male customers "Your Grace" or "Big Daddy."

One of the most charming, sweet waiters I ever had called me "miha" and I was the envy of the table. He wasn't leering, he was polite and adorable.

I'm old and come from a culture of manners too. It's considered rude not to be appropriate to the circumstances. If I was in a black tie affair then Sir or Ma'am would be fine. If I was eating chicken tenders and a diet coke then "princessa" or "Darlin'", uttered in the right tone of voice, is just comfortable familiarity. I do think suspicion is sad if it's not warranted. But, as I said, the way things are said tells volumes.

No one at the table was called hon, sweetie, darlin', princessa, etc. Instead, we received friendly, courteous service.

Creepy, condescending and rude.

Any server around here who pulled this crap would get fired. At least I hope so.

i tend to agree mostly. but one person's comfort is another's creepy. it is kind of sad.

the waiter he was making her nervous and annoying her.

Maybe she just wanted a burger without having to think about how to manage his behavior toward her.

Maybe she just wanted a burger.

If I felt like hell and didn't want attention I don't see anything wrong with saying that. But she didn't. She wrote an "open letter" not to him but to everyone, expecting them to be sure not to upset her, whatever form that might take.

Maybe she's shy in person. Maybe she was having a bad day and didn't need one more altercation. Maybe a million things. HE was the one who stepped over a boundary. And yet this discussion makes it her fault that she didn't stop him from making her feel uncomfortable.

I understand what you are saying. I would have said something. But why do we ALWAYS have to? Sometimes people just want to have a burger.

Why is this a problem?

Women are supposed to enjoy being condescended to by being called "princessa" and if they don't, well, they need to keep quiet for fear they hurt someone's feelings.

I wish this were sarcasm.

I very much dislike this trend of over-familiarity that some businesses are trying out, such as having cashiers thank customers by first name for spending money and CSRs using first names instead of Title Lastname. I think women have always gotten more of this; ask women middle aged and older how many times they've been addressed as "young lady" and ask any woman how many times service workers have used an inappropriate diminutive to address her.

Do you have any idea what kind of crap goes into making that shit? Talk about putting your life in your hands.

There is a middle ground between "too nice" and "rude" - but it requires that you open your mouth and speak.

You could have said, "I am not comfortable with this level of joking and familiarity and would prefer not to be addressed with a pet name." Say it with a smile if it seems too harsh - but say something. Saying nothing is certainly not the answer - and complaining after the fact suggests that you are incapable of addressing these things without help.

Fear of being thought "a bitch" or "a tease" is hardly relevant. Why would you be "scared" of what a server in a restaurant thinks of you? You complain that the server's "attitude" toward you perpetuates a violent culture - but your inability to even suggest he dial it back a notch certainly doesn't help address that attitude.

Yes, I'm a crotchety middle-aged woman who believes that women need to take a little more responsibility for their own feelings of security. Telling the world about your terrifying experience didn't do anything to stop it, did it? Maybe speaking to the server would have . . .

by your waiter?

I have read a book by a waiter in which he hilariously (in his opinion) describes what really goes on back in the kitchen. I don't blame this writer for not wanting to alienate the person who is bringing her the food she will eat. She doesn't know him. She doesn't know if her saying something will help him to learn how to behave -- or it if will mean her burger gets dropped on the floor before it's brought to her -- or worse.

worry that expressing myself politely but firmly will result in retribution.

Your experiences and choices may differ - and if you feel that your server will do something nasty to your food, then you should probably suffer their attitude in silence.

I won't - and I won't recommend that any young woman should adopt such passivity.

I think that young woman is properly cautious.

It's rather . . . liberating.

Then you inform the mgmt and leave a note on the credit card slip. The credit card slip will definitely get to the manager or you won't get charged and it can't be altered.

If you live in unreasonable fear (and honestly, this sounds unreasonable to me) and then complain from safety as if entreating the world to resolve your fear by this level of muzzling (and no, "princessa" is not equivalent to obscene mutterings and threats, though I can't believe I have to even say that to try to avoid being attacked on this forum) then you're just being passive aggressive. Calmly asking for what you want and advocating for yourself seems like a far, far better way to interact with the world to me.

...

Women wait staff flirt all the time, with the hopes of a bigger tip.

Implying he might spike her drink is a problem.

I don't think the situation she described would have made me frightened, but I'm not going to judge her for it. I have no idea what life experiences may be informing her outlook on life.

I do think both male and female waiters flirt to try to get bigger tips and that's probably what he was attempting to do. Some people (myself included) are just really bad at flirting and it can be off-putting.

Perhaps it's best--for all--to keep it professional.

But if the waiter's behavior was making Meagan uncomfortable, she should not be afraid to trust her instincts and call him on it. She's not his "princessa" or his anything else. And threatening to spike her drink? What planet does this guy come from where that is funny? I disagree with Meagan about one thing, though: It sounds to me as though a certain amount of low-level aggression on his part was involved here.

I can't really judge. But it does sound like there is a little overreaction going on. The customer is in charge in the server/customer relationship, and there were a number of options available, the least being if you think your server is not appropriate, ask to be seated somewhere else so the establishment knows there is something wrong and other customers don't have the same experience. The "spike your drink" line was epically stupid, kidding or not, but the "hasty refills" are something I applaud when I am eating out.

That said, I have no doubt this "confrontation" really did worry the writer, warranted or not, and I find it terribly sad that we have done this to women in our society. Friday last week a woman at my job who arranges transportation for us got me a van ride to a hotel, when the van showed up it was one of those big cargo vans. She casually mentioned that she hates the big vans as she always has to worry that it is a "rape van". It really struck me how easy I had it, worrying about whether or not the driver will get lost, instead of having to worry that they would find my body in a fucking ditch somewhere.

I will say, I worked in restaurants through high school and college.

Wait staff spitting or worse in your beverage is more common than you think. I always order clear beverages.

I never once considered that wait staff might do something nasty to either my food or drink anywhere I ever dined. I was always unfailingly polite to waitstaff and tipped well. It's grueling work, and underpaid. and, although it was decades back, when I worked as a busboy/dishwasher at a restaurant, I can't recall ever seeing anyone in the back ever deliberately do anything nasty to anyone's food. If that sort of thing is common, I'm glad I don't eat out a lot any more.

If so, your complicity in that behavior is just as, if not more, objectionable. Shame on you.

This waiter isn't the first guy to have given the author unwanted attention. Most, if not all women have had to suffer through it, many, many times. Mostly on the street, but elsewhere too.

1. Experience has taught us that if we do nothing, if we ignore it, maybe 25% of the time, they'll stop there, and the rest of the times will escalate, often to ugly language, and accusations, but confrontations nonetheless.

2. If we say something, we are pretty much guaranteed ugly language and accusations. "I was just being nice, bitch!" "You shouldn't think I'd be interested in you anyway, you fat, frigid bitch." "Come on, don't be so mean. I was just trying to be nice."

Just because they were in a restaurant, a place where the guy presumably couldn't get aggressive either verbally or physically if he was told to stop, many in this thread seems to think the author should put aside a life-time's worth of conditioning, and initiate a confrontation with him. I say that not only are these posters victim-blaming, they are also part of the reason it continues.

saying something is some kind of verbal or covert retaliation. That's just what happens in too many cases. Like I said above: sometimes you just don't want to deal with it. Sometimes you just want a frickin' burger.

It's sad to see those kind of responses here. I notice many men chiming in to agree with them though.

That was really quite a stretch tying all of that together.

I would've suffered through such an uncomfortable restaurant experience, but now wouldn't hesitate to immediately stand up and announce "It's just that we have to go, I'm having a rather heavy period." My dining companion would interject "And we have to catch a train" and I'd say, "Oh yes, yes, of course, we have a train to catch and I don't want to start bleeding all over the seats!" Done, gone.

They might have even offered you a free meal for the inconvenience. I can understand the fear that is the result of living in this society of so many murderers, violent sex offenders - and pure idiots. Has it gotten so bad that a waiter can't flirt (well, flirt POORLY) without a woman wondering if he's a dangerous lunatic? Being a man, maybe I just can't understand these things.

Still, that comment might have made me a bit nervous too. Spike the diet coke with tequila? I'm sorry, what? Uhm, manager?

Seems to me that this guy was either poorly trained, or is socially awkward, or maybe just really awful at flirting. Then again, for all I know, he could be a lunatic with a gun. He could be a violent sex offender waiting to happen. I get that terms of endearment like Princessa/dear/honey/sweetie/whatever can be looked at as condescending. I think it's usually meant in a friendly or slightly flirtatious manner as opposed to something deliberately insulting or condescending... but, hell, I don't know.

I guess the primary difference is that a Waitress can pretty much call me whatever the heck she wants to, and it doesn't really make me nervous. I know she's almost certainly not going to be stalking me at night, spiking my drink, or planning to beat the crap out of me (unless it's my sister, she might do those things - except for the stalking)

It's depressing that we live in such a culture of fear. While that's the case though... I think professionalism is pretty much the way to go.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html

Men were surprised by #YesAllWomen because men don’t see what women experience.

By Amanda Hess

<snip>

Another rude awakening played out on social media this weekend as news of Rodger’s attack spread around the world. When women took to Twitter to share their own everyday experiences with men who had reduced them to sexual conquests and threatened them with violence for failing to comply—filing their anecdotes under the hashtag #YesAllWomen—some men joined in to express surprise at these revelations, which amassed more quickly than observers could digest. How can some men manage to appear polite, kind, even “wonderful” in public while perpetuating sexism under the radar of other men’s notice? And how could this dynamic be so obvious to so many women, yet completely foreign to the men in their lives? Some #YesAllWomen contributors suggested that men simply aren’t paying attention to misogyny. Others claimed that they deliberately ignore it. There could also be a performative aspect to this public outpouring of male shock—a man who expresses his own lack of awareness of sexism implicitly absolves himself of his own contributions to it.

<snip>

The night after the murders, I was at a backyard party in New York, talking with a female friend, when a drunk man stepped right between us. “I was thinking the exact same thing,” he said. As we had been discussing pay discrepancies between male and female journalists, we informed him that this was unlikely. But we politely endured him as he dominated our conversation, insisted on hugging me, and talked too long about his obsession with my friend’s hair. I escaped inside, and my friend followed a few minutes later. The guy had asked for her phone number, and she had declined, informing him that she was married and, by the way, her husband was at the party. “Why did I say that? I wouldn’t have been interested in him even if I weren’t married,” she told me. “Being married was, like, the sixth most pressing reason you weren’t into him,” I said. We agreed that she had said this because aggressive men are more likely to defer to another man’s domain than to accept a woman’s autonomous rejection of him.

<snip>

These are forms of male aggression that only women see. But even when men are afforded a front seat to harassment, they don’t always have the correct vantage point for recognizing the subtlety of its operation. Four years before the murders, I was sitting in a bar in Washington, D.C. with a male friend. Another young woman was alone at the bar when an older man scooted next to her. He was aggressive, wasted, and sitting too close, but she smiled curtly at his ramblings and laughed softly at his jokes as she patiently downed her drink. “Why is she humoring him?” my friend asked me. “You would never do that.” I was too embarrassed to say: “Because he looks scary” and “I do it all the time.”

Women who have experienced this can recognize that placating these men is a rational choice, a form of self-defense to protect against setting off an aggressor. But to male bystanders, it often looks like a warm welcome, and that helps to shift blame in the public eye from the harasser and onto his target, who’s failed to respond with the type of masculine bravado that men more easily recognize. Two weeks before the murders, Louis C.K.—who has always recognized pervasive male violence against women in his stand-up—spelled out how this works in an episode of Louie, where he recalls watching a man and a woman walking together on a date. “He goes to kiss her, and she does an amazing thing that women somehow learn how to do—she hugged him very warmly. Men think this is affection, but what this is is a boxing maneuver.” Women “are better at rejecting us than we are,” C.K. said. “They have the skills to reject men in the way that we can then not kill them.”

..more..