Mumbai mistreats her waiters!. I am not talking ‘marginal’ rudeness – a relatively significant degree of misbehavior as compare to other megacities. Surprisingly, not a single post has been written about this issue in the entire internet except some discussion on Reddit. Looks like, not many are batting for waiter community.

why do people in India treat waiters/servers in restaurants like shit? from india

Okay, let me put my case. A couple of years back, I had an opportunity to travel to Mumbai and to stay there for a month. It was for a business trip, hence obviously, my staple meals were at Mumbai’s restaurants. My experience started on the same evening I landed in Mumbai. The gentleman who was waiting on me was literally peed his pants for getting my order wrong. I had to beg him to calm down. He thanked me for not abusing his female blood-relatives, which he says, is a general trend for the crime of getting an order wrong!!

After this, such a situation was Baader-Meinhof [2] experience for me!

Over the next four weeks, I experienced at least 3 such instances where waiters sweating for ridiculous things such as serving spoons for noodles and forks for biriyanis. Apparently, Mumbai focuses her (maybe his) days of frustration on the last person they meet before they retire for the night – a waiter.

I have seen a customer pouring his drinks on the floor just because it had an extra ice cube in it. It apparently diluted his otherwise perfect drink!! (There is a scene in Movie Satya which is very much relatable)

About a year later, I happen to dine with an acquaintance who dropped by from Mumbai. I confronted him with this observation, just after his yelling session (at waiter) related to some watermarks on his plate. Unsurprisingly, he denied the trend and said he did not observe any such a thing.!

This post might have come as a generalization on Mumbaikars, I wish I could make it more specific. The only fact I can confirm is that the yellers were never women. Women just sat next there uncomfortably and embarrassed while their heroes ran their mouth.

Appendix

1. Having stayed in all megacities including Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and Bangalore. I have seen many such instances across, but Mumbai seems to have it at a higher degree of occurrence.
2. Baader-Meinhof is a frequency phenomenon. Once you observe something interesting, suddenly you will start following them everywhere. For example, suppose you are watching the news and Arnab says something with a new word-usage; say… ‘Categorically’. Then you switch channels; Rahul Gandhi interview ‘… I categorically, oppose….’; Switch to DD for Ramayana “Matoshri… I categorically agree…”. Then Switch to Sports Pakistani wins the match “… Boys categorically Played well…”. This is an oversimplification, but you get the point.