In the many years that Nina and Tim Zagat have run their famous restaurant surveys, complaints about service have dominated in an overwhelming majority (70% of criticisms). In a recent post on the Atlantic Magazine’s Food Channel, the Zagats suggest that “we create front-of-the-house divisions at every culinary school in the country, which would elevate the quality of service in the hospitality industry.”

The Zagats see the potential for such training not just being beneficial for restaurants but also for other service industries as well. As for restaurants, they say they would be able to control the enormous cost of training wait staff from scratch and reduce high employee turnover rates.

Among the more interesting reader comments were the following:

“While restaurants must always strive to improve their service, I’d have to disagree with the premise of the post and suggest that the ‘service issue’ is not so much a systemic problem for the restaurant industry as it is a question of our dining culture. I am not ‘in the industry,’ but I witness far more ‘diner fouls’ than I do ‘service fouls.’

“To get right to the core of it, I believe our dining culture in America to be one of entitlement, mismanaged perceptions and disconnection from our food. Dining attitudes are far too transactional, ‘I’m paying my hard earned money, I deserve the best.’ Before, only the professional critic had a voice that carried. Now, individual diner opinions have been amplified by the internet, and we often develop a false confidence in our own expectations of the dining experience. While there are a significant minority of diners who eat out not to ‘play critic’, but to get to know a restaurant and staff and enjoy what they do, there’s little incentive for the diner to put in any effort into the experience.

“Over time, the diner gains more power over the restaurant. Whether it be our ‘merit-based’ gratuity system, the rise of message boards, food blogs, and aggregated, rated reviews…it seems that there is little recourse for restaurants. And the more we, as diners, squeeze them to our increasingly unreasonable whims, the less restaurants are able to provide their vision of a dining experience.

“If we only considered ourselves ‘guests’ at restaurants and conducted ourselves as such, I think we’d see a significant improvement in the service that we receive.”

The Selective Echo asked a business owner in the hospitality industry and a food industry writer for their reactions to these comments. I share them without further commentary because they encapsulate the issue dynamics so well.

First, the business owner:

“I agree in part with the comment. The first part is spot on, I don’t believe the problem with the dining experience is often in the service itself, but in the food. One will overlook service mishaps or will realize that honestly, it really isn’t anything to fuss over, if the food or beverage is spectacular. A good example is Takashi. There’s a big difference between table service, and bar service, and their servers do not always match the level of service.

“I also agree … that too many Americans have a sense of entitlement, but I don’t agree with the last part of the comment which basically says, ‘customers bitch and eventually get what they want.’ And that if people were more civil everything would be dandy.

“The root of the problem is a combination of entitlement of the customer and fear from the chef/owner. Owners or chefs who fear a backlash from a segment of customers often have service issues as well. If you don’t have total confidence in your product and your ability to make it, how does that translate to your staff? How does that translate to the customer in terms of service?

“Confidence in quality of product and the skills in presenting that quality product register throughout the organization. Confidence breeds better service because the attention is on the details of the most important part, what they are eating and drinking. Those who spend too much time trying to capture the customer with flashy surroundings or phallic-looking concoctions are trying to obscure the customer from noticing what they are putting in their mouth. Perhaps these same places would rather take a hit on the perception of their service rather than the food, but in the end it is the poor food that makes the average customer really take notice of every mistake in service.

“The expectation of great service should start with the food. Will complaining about the food bring better results? Probably not. Those who realize there is always improvement to be made will always be making improvements. Everyone else is oblivious.”

And, now, the food writer:

“I agree that there are some right shitty attitudes plaguing some diners. Most of us don’t know how to be guests or any sort of etiquette. Dining itself is a lost art. We’ve been inundated with contrived gimmicky dining spaces and concept restaurants that we forget that servers make a living and for whatever you’re not liking the service there are other ways of going about expressing disdain.

“The fault is equal on both sides. There are hardly any career servers and there’s an abundance of cretins who can’t grasp why a menu is a certain way or that asparagus should be part of a dish.

“My biggest beef though — parents who bring kids who aren’t familiar with how to act in a restaurant. There are plenty of young ones with manners and an idea of why we go out to eat. Then there are the demons who I wouldn’t mind exorcising or slapping around. Their parents should buy me another cocktail.”