Miss Manners: Restaurants and Birthdays

[cereta]

Dear Miss Manners: My wife and I went to a restaurant on my birthday. A sign at the door advertised a special reward when paying the bill if you were dining on your birthday. So, I mentioned to the waitress that it was my birthday, in anticipation of the reward.

When it came time to order dessert, the waitress brought a large dessert of the restaurant's choosing to my table with a showy sparkler stuck into it.

I was appalled. This was not a dessert that I could share with my wife, as she didn't like it, and I was hugely embarrassed as I do not make a big deal out of my birthday. Now everybody in the restaurant knew it was my birthday.

I didn't want to hurt the feelings of the waitress, so I feigned delight and ate the dessert. I really wanted to share a dessert with my wife, but because of the actions of the waitress, I was cheated out of this opportunity and I'm not very happy about it.

How should I have handled the situation better? Should I have sent the unexpected dessert back and ordered what we really wanted? And why do people do stuff like this on birthdays without asking the celebrant first if it's what they really want?

Miss Manners: People generally do not do things like this, but companies do. And no matter how many times the restaurant assures you that they are all about people, or people are their business, or people come first — what they are doing is running a business.

Miss Manners does not object to this; in fact, she is sympathetic. She mentions it to explain her lack of surprise that a restaurant that no doubt prides itself on “tailoring their service to your every need” in fact establishes rigid policies for their employees that do not always fit a given situation.

Someone in the head office thought it would be nice to do something special for the birthday boy or girl. They told someone, who told someone, who told the staff. You ordered the special reward, and out it came. A more astute waitperson would indeed have noticed that you had not ordered your dinner from the children’s menu, and may have been able to adjust the reward accordingly. But as it was free, Miss Manners agrees with your accepting it with reasonable grace — and not asking about the free pony ride.

Comments

[cereta]

And I'm posting this because I can't quite wrap my head around there being two adults (LW and whoever writes Miss Manners these days) who have apparently never sat in a restaurant while the waitstaff serenaded a patron with some song that was definitely not "Happy Birthday," because that would get the Intellectual Property cops on them. LW! No one "did this" to you! If a friend or loved one had told the restaurant, knowing that you didn't want this kind of attention (although people knowing it's your birthday is one of two things I can't understand you getting bunched about), I would sympathize, but you told them! What did you think the "reward" would be? A subscription to The Wall Street Journal?

The second thing, btw, was sharing a dessert with their wife. Is there a reason wife couldn't have just gotten her own dessert? I'm assuming the dessert from the restaurant was free. Was there some emotional significance to sharing cheesecake that I'm missing?

[jamoche]

I can sympathize with wanting to share because restaurant dessert portions are generally huge. But that's the only part that makes any sense at all. Desserts are allergen landmines; you'd think the restaurant would offer a choice.

[cereta]

Well, and nothing says they have to eat the whole thing, especially if one is gratis. If LW had been looking forward to a particular dessert, I might understand, but the way they phrase it ("cheated out of this opportunity ") seems to place significance on the act of sharing, which is just not something I've encountered.

[castiron]

Yes, depending on what the dessert was, LW could've said "how lovely! could you box this up for me to enjoy later, while my wife orders something for us to eat now?" Obviously this wouldn't work if the special dessert was a giant ice cream sundae, but if it was a huge slice of cheesecake or carrot cake, that'd easily go home.

[rymenhild]

Incidentally, "Happy Birthday" is no longer under copyright, thanks to doctor and musician Rupa Marya.

[cereta]

Dan Rydell will be pleased!

[ashbet]

I am baffled as to what “reward” they were expecting!

[ambyr]

I am baffled by the "children's menu" comment. I mean, okay, maybe the restaurant could have skipped the sparkler when serving two apparently stuffy older adults, but many adults do enjoy chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, or whatever Basic Dessert the restaurant served. And if you are not an adult who enjoys a wide range of standard desserts . . . why on earth would you deliberately request one as a surprise without politely inquiring what was going to be provided?

[laurajv]

I think Miss Manners was being delicately mean in pointing out that the LW is acting like a spoiled child for reacting the way he did.

[sathari]

LW should have asked what the "birthday reward" was before telling the waitress it was their birthday. I say this because I share LW's DNW feelings about restaurant "birthday rewards".

[cereta]

I mostly do, too, which is why I don't tell them it's my birthday. I still just can't fathom what LW was expecting.

[ethelmay]

The way they phrased it I got the impression they expected to get a discount on their meal.

[cimorene]

But have they just got basically NO knowledge and experience of restaurants then? I mean, maybe, we don't know, but it seems clueless enough to strain credulity. It's not some rare, esoteric practice we're discussing here!

[cereta]

What compounds it is that Miss Manners (or again, whoever wrote the column) apparently doesn't know this. I started her response waiting for a smackdown, and got...nothing.

[laurajv]

fwiw I absolutely read it as her calling the LW a spoiled brat in a very polite way.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I saw the shade, but it was too mild to really land, IMO. She shouldn't have included the line about waiters "may have adjusted", which gives way too much credulity to the LW's bizarrely blaming "the actions of the waitress" (!) and undercuts her earlier implication that the staff are unlikely to get any say.

[castiron]

If the restaurant said "birthday reward when paying the bill", I could see that as possibly meaning a discount -- by time you pay the bill, surely you've ordered dessert already if you'd wanted it? But yes, my accumulated restaurant experience says "probably a generic dessert, possibly brought out loudly by the staff".

(It now occurs to me, though, that at least one of my kids may never have seen the big fuss dessert practice, at least when at an age to remember it, and at the rate things are going with Covid and inflation, they might not see it until they're an adult.)

[akamarykate]

I can't stop giggling at the mental image of LW downing the entire dessert and thinking, "Oh! What a hero I am for eating this whole thing! I am taking one for the team!"

Also, reading (probably too) closely: while LW says they couldn't share dessert w/their wife, they don't say the wife *didn't* order her own preferred dessert. Could LW be upset that they had to eat something they didn't want and the wife got a whole portion of something she preferred? (I mean, probably not, LW sounds like the kind of person who would nobly eat the not-preferred dessert while the wife watched, dessert-less, and wouldn't think of ordering a dessert for the wife. But the letter doesn't specifically say that's what happened, unless I'm missing something.)

[cereta]

That whole thing is just weird. "Cheated out of this opportunity," like splitting a brownie with ice cream is something rare and precious. Again, I could see it if they meant "cheated out of my favorite dessert that I only get once a year because we can't afford this place except as a rare treat," but that is really not the impression the words gave me.

[sathari]

I have to stick up just a little for LW here, in that in my experience for some people there are really important Food Rituals around the Sharing of Food With Loved Ones, especially on Special Occasions. That sharing a dessert with their wife on their birthday was an important part of Birthdaying for them--- maybe a version of "sharing a birthday cake" kind of thing?

...which is why you freaking ask what the "birthday reward" is, as we agreed above.

[shirou]

It frustrates me how much blame LW is putting on the waitress rather than on the restaurant managers. The waitress was just doing her job. The managers—whether local or corporate, depending on the restaurant—are the ones who established the policy of delivering a surprise dessert instead of allowing the customer to select one. I agree the policy is not a great one, and LW certainly could have handled it better, but nowhere in this letter were "the actions of the waitress" a problem.

[minoanmiss]

THIS. Why on Earth is the LW blaming the waitress? And martyredly stuffing down a dessert they don't want? I do not understand.

[conuly]

FFS. If you want a particular dessert, ask.

[torachan]

Everything about both the letter and the response is weird, but I'm really hung up on the advice columnist's assumption that a birthday dessert is a kids' thing.