Spotted by Gretchen in the resort town of Mount Maunganui, New Zealand:
related: A clue that your whole “half-caf, extra hot, non-fat dressing-on-the-side” thing might be a bit much
FILED UNDER: "polite notice" · most popular notes of 2012 · New Zealand · p.s. · restaurant
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162 responses so far ↓
#1
kathtea
While I don’t object to the nature of the note, I do believe they downloaded its template from http://www.wedontgiveashithowlongyouwaitforyourfood.com
Oct 11, 2012 at 12:16 am rating: 90
#2
DNH
In case you were wondering, http://www.dontbesuchamiserablesod.com redirected me right back to http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com. Fitting.
Oct 11, 2012 at 12:20 am rating: 90
#3
lucy
Much respect for getting http://www.dontbesuchamiserablesod.com to point here : )
Oct 11, 2012 at 1:01 am rating: 90
#4
QoS
Hands up if you’ve tried http://www.dontbesuchamiserablesod.com
Oct 11, 2012 at 1:27 am rating: 90
#5
makfan
There are many adjectives for this notice, but polite is not one that comes to mind.
Oct 11, 2012 at 1:31 am rating: 90
#6
beks
dontbesuchamiserablesod.com redirects back to this post.
I appreciate how much thought has been put in to this.
Oct 11, 2012 at 1:42 am rating: 90
#7
origimi
If I saw this on the wall of a restaurant, I’d walk right the fuck back out, joke or no.
Oct 11, 2012 at 2:01 am rating: 90
#8
Da Boss
Oi you, wot’s a grot doin’ noticin’ zog all on my watch?
Oct 11, 2012 at 2:14 am rating: 90
#9
Serenity
haha, I love it! I hate it when I’m in line somewhere, it’s obviously busy, and you have those few people that are acting like dicks. They do need to chill out. And if you can’t see the humor in the sign, then you are probably one of those people. Maybe not, but probably
Oct 11, 2012 at 2:21 am rating: 90
#10
StephM
I would never leave this restaurant.
Oct 11, 2012 at 2:39 am rating: 90
#11
Lauren
‘Go for a walk, then come back and enjoy your cold food!’
Oct 11, 2012 at 2:41 am rating: 90
#12
KC
I want to buy this restaurant ! First order of business is to order this as a permanent professionally done sign.
Oct 11, 2012 at 3:24 am rating: 90
#13
a-Arialist
I love this, it made me laugh and I bet I’d like the owners and the restaurant. I also love the miserable sod reactions it’s getting.
Oct 11, 2012 at 4:11 am rating: 90
#14
jellydonut
This could’ve been written much shorter.
‘Hello, this restaurant is staffed by laz.. sorry, ‘tired’ staff who provide slow service when they can be bothered.’
Way to not advertise your business, buddy.
Oct 11, 2012 at 5:56 am rating: 90
#15
Anonymous
I bet this restaurant is awesome. No sarcasm.
Oct 11, 2012 at 6:36 am rating: 90
#16
VoiceMail
I greatly enjoy that the provided web address redirected back to this site. xD
And I know exactly how those sorts of customers are, working in customer service.
Calm down, take a chill pill. Everyone else is waiting too and we’re stuck here working as hard as we can. ;D
Oct 11, 2012 at 7:02 am rating: 90
#17
havingfitz
A lot of people bothered by this have never worked in food service. I worked at a popular local bakery during college: on Fridays we would have a line out the door, waiting on people as fast as humanly possible, and every customer would feel the need tell us how ‘slow ‘ we were. (Expect the one woman who complained that I was waiting on people ‘too fast’ and she felt it was ‘intimidating’, which just proved to me that customers will NEVER be happy no matter what you do.)
Oct 11, 2012 at 8:02 am rating: 90
#18
Miles
This is awesome. People have been way too conditioned to believe “the customer is always right”, and they believe that includes cooking food faster than humanly possible. Your dinner is not more important than the person who ordered five minutes before you. No matter what your mother told you, you are not that special.
Oct 11, 2012 at 8:06 am rating: 90
#19
Lynz
I love this! I worked in food service for many years, people can be such dicks. They make an excellent point also, if you’re on vacation, RELAX!
Oct 11, 2012 at 8:24 am rating: 90
#20
Brian
I’ve worked customer service, and also waited tables, managed customer facing businesses.
I’d fire whomever wrote this note.
Yes, the people who stand there staring at you, acting incredulous that you don’t have the ability to hand them their food immediately are dickheads. But they have money, and as a business owner, I want them to give me their money.
Clearly the sign offended a number of people in this thread. This isn’t turning away a single, unrepentant asshat, who isn’t worth putting up with, it’s insulting a significant number of people.
Now maybe the food is so good that people will put up with a public anti-customer message, or maybe they’re the only game in town. But this sign is the kind of thing that tends to shut down restaurants.
For all the employees who love it, I get that. It’s saying all those things you wish you could. But it’s not the store/restaurant’s role to dictate the personality of their clients. It’s just a dumb move.
Oct 11, 2012 at 8:38 am rating: 90
#21
ewuqhwfenqjnvq
“I’m a fast cook I guess!”
Oct 11, 2012 at 8:51 am rating: 90
#22
MH
Great sign, but seriously, DON’T FEED SEAGULLS. EVER. Sure, it’s cute in May, when they timidly come up to you and eat a french fry that you hold out for them. In August, you can’t eat ANYTHING anywhere near the beach, they’ll steal it right out of your hand and attack you for it. And people food really isn’t good for them anyway.
Oct 11, 2012 at 9:07 am rating: 90
#23
Rene
If you can’t see the humor in this sign, then you are probably the kind of person it was made for. We in the customer service industry (most of us) do our best to make our customers happy, but we are only humans & the speed in which we can serve you is often hampered by the speed of technology, physics, how soon some foods take to reach the proper temperature that we are legally required to cook your food to, and possibly the customers that came before you. Customer service is getting worse because customers are getting worse.
Oct 11, 2012 at 9:22 am rating: 90
#24
Rattus
I see the humour in the sign, but I would also leave any restaurant I saw it displayed it. Not because I’m a dick (although I am indeed a dick), but because I won’t line up for anything unless I absolutely need to. There is no food on this planet worth the same distress I experience lining up at a government kiosk or for a public washroom.
Oct 11, 2012 at 10:22 am rating: 90
#25
AlfaCowboy
Anyone offended by this obvious bit of humor is a brittle twat with a sense of entitlement and no perspective. Go stand in line for bread for days in a third world country, then piss and cry about your custom-made vacation food taking more than 30 minutes to cook. First world problems.
Oct 11, 2012 at 10:53 am rating: 90
#26
redheadwglasses
THe sign clearly states that your food MIGHT take 30 minutes (or longer). Heck, that’s a standard minimum wait for many busy places on a typical Friday/Saturday night (which is why my boyfriend and I, ages 38 and 44, dine as if we were retired senior citizens and go at 5:30-6 p.m.).
If someone on *vacation* (or holiday, for you nonAmericans!) can’t chill and wait a half an hour for their food at a busy place, screw ‘em. They can go be self-entitled poopheads at another establishment.
Oct 11, 2012 at 11:27 am rating: 90
#27
Jordie
Brian’s reply campaign is growing an impressive mass. Yikes, man, did this post seriously offend you that much?
I’ve never worked in the food industry, but I DO work in a pharmacy – another high-stress environment where people assume their prescriptions will be ready five minutes after they leave their doctor’s office.
Particularly around the holidays, we’re packed as people hurry to get their prescriptions before they travel. The vast majority of our customers are wonderful and understanding about this… but it only takes two or three “miserable sods” to ruin my day.
Oct 11, 2012 at 12:50 pm rating: 90
#28
Ely North
Or, just read this note. By the time you’re done reading it, your food will be ready. Does anybody remember brevity?
Oct 11, 2012 at 3:11 pm rating: 90
#29
Joolz
As an employee at a counter-service coffee/sandwich shop that gets mega busy, I certainly appreciated the sentiment of this sign. I would love it if it were okay to tell every rude customer that we’re working as hard as we can, and if that isn’t enough for them they should make their own food. I’m a human with feelings though, and mean customers can ruin my day and that will continue to affect how I treat the next customer and so on. I do take things personally, and I find it next-to-impossible to respond with a smile to the guy who ordered his latte 3 seconds ago and is already asking where it is. Maybe Brian would say that I should get into another business, but I make a killer sandwich and I make it fast (I make a lot of sandwiches as fast as I can, and there’s still sometimes a wait!). I like signs like this because it shifts the sassiness from the employee, from whom it would be very rude, but it still gets out there.
I would love to hear about signage that’s actually helped restaurants deal with their customer issues. Our cafe used to have a very sassy sign directed towards customers who would continue cell-phone conversations while ordering, and now we have a much more mellow/polite version. I preferred the old version because on the off chance that a customer noticed the sign, they would laugh about it and apologize and, by contrast, I would get to be gracious and polite. Now that the new sign is polite, I just feel awkward when people notice it while committing the crime the note mentions.
Oct 11, 2012 at 5:14 pm rating: 90
#30
Gniz
Maybe it’s just me, but 30 minutes sounds like a really long time for over-the-counter service, like a McDonald’s fast food joint. There’s no way I’m waiting 30 minutes for “fast food”. I could see if this was a sit down restaurant or something, but by the description it just sounds like counter service. If they take that long, they need to re-think the organization of their kitchen or expand.
Oct 11, 2012 at 6:43 pm rating: 90
#31
Rachel
The people complaining about this note have obviously never worked in a take-out restaurant. People show up at the lunch rush and then act like dicks because it takes a while. We are busting our ass trying to get everything done and in our restaurant, you can see all the cooking being done. Nobody is slacking,there are just dozens of orders all at one time! Are we magically supposed to make the grill bigger so it can fit all the orders at the same time??? Yet customers still act like @ssholes. Even after we TOLD them how long it was going to take. And they do stand at the counter and glare at you,which makes our job oh so much easier! Plus we all get paid crap to put up with it and bust our asses! So I LOVE this sign!!
Oct 11, 2012 at 9:27 pm rating: 90
#32
Brian H
If it’s busy ,it’s busy. If I see people hustling around what can you say.
On the other hand if I have to wait because someone is too busy BS’ing or farting around then I get irritated.
Oct 11, 2012 at 11:38 pm rating: 90
#33
anon
Laughing at all the entitled customers in the comments. Good for you that you’ve never had to work a day in the service industry; if you had you’d be alittle more sympathetic to the humour in this note.
Oct 12, 2012 at 6:40 am rating: 90
#34
Fireseeker
I love that the website listed on the flyer redirects to PAnotes.com
Oct 12, 2012 at 8:45 am rating: 90
#35
Daniel
I think the greatest thing about this note is that it suggests that the manager respects their workers and has a sense of perspective, rather than just accepting that customer abuse is justified in pursuit of business.
Oct 12, 2012 at 10:41 am rating: 90
#36
Amy In Toronto
My favourite thing in this note is the suggestion to go chat with the “boaties” as they bring in their catch. I’m surprised no one has even mentioned the boaties yet, or their reaction to this sign. For example, I wonder if the fishermen/fushermen (that is exactly how NZ’ers would say it!) are curious as to why they suddenly saw a spike in the number of people chatting with them as they bring in their bounty, since this sign went up. Or maybe they don’t want to chat with hungry tourists and/or locals who are distracting themselves while they wait for food.
Why hasn’t anyone thought of the boaties?!
I love the sign for that word alone.
Boaties.
Oct 12, 2012 at 11:06 am rating: 90
#37
Ali Longworth
I think some of the angst here is based on regional differences. This is a sign that, as I and others have mentioned, fits the beach town ethos – slow down & sip some rum. It wouldn’t work everywhere. Just as I don’t mind if a dinner waitress calls me “Hon,” “plunks” the food down in front of me, and gives me a plastic ketchup bottle, I wouldn’t like it if I got the same service at a a fine dining establishment. You adjust your expectations to your location (and enjoy the differences) or you’ll be pissed off a lot.
Oct 12, 2012 at 12:38 pm rating: 90
#38
The Elf
I’m getting all stressed out reading this PAN. I need to go to a resort in New Zealand to relax. I’ve heard Mount Maunganui is nice.
Oct 12, 2012 at 1:49 pm rating: 90
#39
Kat Machina
The sandwich shop I work at has similar signs: “We serve GOOD food, not FAST food.” and “When it’s gone, it’s gone!”
They take the pressure off the server when we’re crowded (as a 5-man business, it’s pretty hectic sometimes) when we’re busy or sell out of the special or soup or something and someone feels the need to whine about it.
Oct 12, 2012 at 3:21 pm rating: 90
#40
Brittani
I love the sign. When I was a box office clerk at the local theatre (the only one on my island and therefore INSANELY BUSY), my boss would put me on alone because I was so quick, and I’d have a line-up of (literally) 900 people, out the door and down the block, I’d still fly through them at super-human speed. For every person that said, “WOW. YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE TWO PEOPLE ON, YOU KNOW”, as if I had REQUESTED to work alone, as if my 18-years-old (at the time) self had any say in the matter, made me frustrated beyond belief. I kept a smile on my face. I kept working faster than humanly possible. But oh, to have been able to have a sign like this.
It doesn’t make a retail employee “entitled” to think they deserve to be treated like a human being, not as a sounding box for complaints that, if valid at all, need to be directed at someone in charge.
On the other hand, as a customer – nothing bothers me more than someone who complains and acts like a jerk at places like the bank, the grocery store, Wal-Mart, etc. – anywhere with a line. It doesn’t matter if I’ve never worked there, have been waiting there just as long as they have, or am just as frustrated (no one enjoys as line up) – there is NO NEED to act like a jerk. It won’t help matters, and generally, one knows what they’re getting into, depending on the establishment – just go somewhere else if you really need to make a scene like a tantrum-throwing child about it. So, even as a consumer and NOT an employee, I’m grinning at the note. I don’t find it rude, just straightforward (and obvious to anyone sensible).
Oct 12, 2012 at 5:31 pm rating: 90
#41
Queenie
I am lucky enough to have a batch (aka beach house) in this area – If this is the takeaway place I think it is, it does get manic crazy uber busy in the peak of summer. The food is great though, and really, in beach towns everything is pretty chill ( more than usual anyway!)
Oct 13, 2012 at 4:21 am rating: 90
#42
Amemait
Seconding the Fish & Chips shop theory. Which means that:
1) It’s probably very good. Good enough that they can get away with this, because it won’t offend the locals (and it’s got a prime spot beside the beach, so of course they’d go to it).
2) Food is probably fresh. From-the-local-boats fresh*. Which means no reheating from frozen stuff, it means more time being spent, and no time to prepare it the night before. Assume it’s like highly-specialised restaurant-food. You’d wait 30 minutes in a restaurant for your food, or longer. But the problem with doing that in a fish and chips shop is;
3) The waiting-for-food area is probably pretty small. The best fish & chips shops have had, in my experience, two things in common. The first is a large menu board with easy-to-read text, and the second is a very small amount of room for customers to stand around in and wait for (or rarely, there might be bar stools, but not many, and crammed in there). The advice to go for a half hour walk sounds like a good plan to me, it’s certainly what we used to do in high school.
*Which is not to say that the very best of the fish and chips shops are always of the from-the-boats fresh kind. There were two of those in one village I lived in, and one was very very good, and the other was a total dive. Meanwhile in deepest darkest Karori, where the fish truck came once a week to deliver to this tiny shop, the fish and chips there were literally award-winning, and had the trophies to prove it.
Oct 13, 2012 at 7:05 am rating: 90
#43
Trish
*chuckles*
Personally, I LOVE this note.
It seems to be a holiday-crunch, and actually, I would love to be reminded of just taking a deeeep breath and calm down when things go crazy around me.
Yes, we always seem to be under time-pressure… so, actually getting a reminder to just chill out for half an hour seems great ^^.
Oct 13, 2012 at 8:37 am rating: 90
#44
Kiwi
Judging by the amount of complaints about this note, I’d say that this is a fairly good example of the differences between Kiwi lifestyle/humour and American lifestyle/humour
Oct 14, 2012 at 3:19 pm rating: 90
#45
Jami
I don’t know about anyone else, but all the comments about New Zealand in regards to this sign makes me wish I had the money to go visit there.
Oct 14, 2012 at 5:24 pm rating: 90
#46
Nope
If they are so busy, why don’t they just hire more people? If they don’t have space, get a bigger restaurant. If they don’t have the money, take out a loan. If they can’t afford the payments, get out of the restaurant business. See? Simple solution to the problem. People will always be assholes, a sign won’t prevent them from being assholes.
Oct 15, 2012 at 11:09 am rating: 90
#47
Holly
If you think this sign is to be taken too seriously you obviously don’t get Kiwi humour. Chill bro
Oct 16, 2012 at 1:20 am rating: 90
#48
TurnOffTheDarnLights
This place would regularly get my business on principle alone.
As someone that’s worked various customer service jobs over the years, I want to hug the person that wrote this up and give them money for a nice dinner of their choosing.
Oct 16, 2012 at 11:20 am rating: 90
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