I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this in another post, but I was in Paris one afternoon and stopped off at one of the Hard Rock Cafes - I like the memorabilia, and rather than buy fridge magnets from my travels, I try and get a Hard Rock Cafe shirt. Anyway...

The waiter comes up, and I'm battling through in basic French, trying to be careful and not be another tourist that made an arse of it, and generally doing my absolute best to not annihilate the beautiful language I was trying to converse in.

I ended one of the sentences with "je suis desole, mon Français est vraiment mauvais", a crude bit of self-awareness and a nod to an understanding that it wasn't perfect.

The waiter says in accented English "yes, your French is a bit shit"

I laughed and appreciated the honesty; he laughed because he got to rip the piss out of a Brit; and we all lived happily ever... except for my bank account, because fuck me drinks in the city centre were pricey.

Anyway, I like staff who are direct and don't fuck about.

We had that once in Germany, the restaurant was right besides an old piece of the former wall between east and west Germany. The waitress, an elderly women, was not just incredibly kind but when we were eating our second course she asked us if we cared to know more about East Germany and how it was like living there. In the end we were drinking our coffee besides multiple old books full of pictures from this region. Absolutely amazing experience.

You had me until the history bit, I don't want some minimum wage worker doing their best to give me the corporate spiel. If you're gonna sit at my table while im eating and talk, tell me something about yourself.

unless there's already four at the table and he wants them to scooch over to take the order

I've legitimately seen it. Takes charisma. And the right setting and mood.

The what ?

Excuse me, but I think your time machine is parked in my bicycle spot.

What's hooters?

Edit. I just searched it. It seems... ... offensive

Edit 2. Offensive, as in, taking advantage of these women. I couldn't care less about their dress code

I went to a Hooters once where our waitress kept almost sitting down at our table.

Like one of the stools was empty, and she would move as if she was going to sit in it, which isn't much since the stools were tall. But then she wouldn't actually sit down.

It was confounding, but I'm sure she did it on purpose.

Same at Dick's Last Resort

I get fucked by it every time, where I live service is kinda sub-par, you're lucky if they say hello to you and if by some misfortune you're not ready to order when they come over for it, you'll see them again in 3 to 5 business days. So when I go to Canada (fuck going to the US, I used to for work but thankfully that's not needed anymore), the servers are being so nice etc because they want the tips, and my dumbass just falls for it every time, I'm amazed by the service and leave way too much tip, I only start adjusting by the end of the trip and by then I'm already resenting the whole thing because it's obviously all just fake as fuck.

Because a waiter sat at the table?

Then don't

After a long time i still feel impolite waving down a server. I used to work in an American restaurant and getting waved down was awful, like fuuuu... you were one more table in the rotation. But I'm slowly getting used to it. Because servers aren't doing constant rounds they have more free time to handle these things.