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Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I'm genuinely cu

Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I'm genuinely curious what you think the factors are in their difference because when I live in Denmark (as I do now) it feels like the waiter could give less of a s** whether the service is good or not whereas when I live in LA or NYC I feel like I am the golden child of their day. The mind first reaches to "it must be tips" but I am genuinely curious what you think the primary factor of this yawning gap in service is if not tips. I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef (he had just opened a new restaurant in NYC at the time) and the American staff he employed there was just leagues beyond anything I had ever seen in DK.

abandonliberty 6y ago
It's cultural. You can get amazing service in other countries with little or no tipping culture. Sure, tipping may be an incentive as well, but most people I know won't go below 10% even if the service is terrible.
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  Which other countries with little to no tipping culture do you receive amazing service? Again, I am curious, not combative, so please take care if applying disdain to my comments.
  - tomp 6y ago
    Japan. Really awkward as well. Basically the whole staff was waving at us until we went around the corner and they couldn’t see us any more. Didn’t know what to do - ignore, acknowledge, turn back and keep eye contact while still walking forward, smile, stop, wave ... This was a high-end restaurant though.
  - drewwwwww 6y ago
    japan
  - pelliphant 6y ago
    In my opinion, I get amazing service in Denmark. I would guess that what I consider to be amazing service isn't the same thing as what you would consider to be amazing service.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Japan. Phenomenal service every single place I went and some was so good we tried tipping only to be chased into the street to have the “mistake” fixed.
  - abandonliberty 6y ago
    Taiwan as well Outside of that it's on an establishment by establishment basis. I know an amazing restaurant in a less touristic Paris arrondissement that will provide stellar service no matter who I show up with or how terrible my French is. Their menus are only in French. If I'm not fast enough the staff notices I'm using a translation app and starts translating it into English. This in the city of famously terrible service.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
  The service you get in the US is very annoying to people not used to it. Fake-smiling at me especially.
nmca 6y ago
An entire section of society so precariously clings to financial stability that they'll smile at at any customer's joke...
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Yup. "The hostages are smiling at me, that must mean they like me!"
skocznymroczny 6y ago
I think it's a very cultural aspect. In the US you have the waiters coming up to you, asking if you liked your meal, would you like something else. In Nordic countries people prefer to be left alone, which might be interpreted as not caring. If you were to go to Greece, you could be getting the same experience, with the owner himself walking around the tables and asking what you thought of the meal.
oblio 6y ago
Expectations. In Europe we expect the waiter/etc to be a fellow person with good days and bad days and we don't expect hand holding. In the US you have cashiers bagging stuff for you and not being allowed to sit down (!!!).
- beckman466 6y ago
  Thank you. Can’t believe this has to be said.
beckman466 6y ago
> Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I’m curious why ‘good service‘ is important for you? Have you worked a service job yourself? It’s long gruelling hours.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  well I've worked long grueling hours - but good service is important because if you are paying money for something you don't want to be treated badly at the same time you are paying money - which has been my experience sometimes in Denmark, although I think the service level has improved in the last decade (maybe I just look more important with age)
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  I could tell you many stories of my near-death scrapes with cars and cabs on my hour long bike ride to and from a tiny upscale restaurant in Manhattan, the blistered feet my girlfriend at the time would lovingly restore after 8 hours on my feet, and barely making rent on my tiny Brooklyn apartment I shared with 5 others while narrowly avoiding all manner of attempted thefts of the few discretionary dollars I had left. When I choose to spend the money I have, I want a good experience. Service is a very big piece of that. My stepfather is a restaurant owner. He has always been the model of politeness. Articles have been written about the magic he'd pour out as maître d' in the early aughts. I learned from him the transformative impact good waitstaff can have on a dinner which is in many ways staged theater with you acting your best (honestly, dishonestly, you are still presenting a face of you) for your date you've held in enough esteem to offer this piece of your life to.
- dagw 6y ago
  I’m curious why ‘good service‘ is important for you? Because the whole point of going out to eat instead of cooking at home is to have an enjoyable and stress free experience. If it takes 20 minutes before someone asks what I want to drink, then 60 minutes to get food, you cannot answer any questions about what is on the menu and half the people get the wrong thing and then that completely ruins what should be an enjoyable experience.
xxs 6y ago
> Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? Not my experience, at least not in Copenhagen compared to New York and New Jersey. (speaking as tourist)
bildung 6y ago
Others have already said that this boils down to a mix of precarious living not existing to this degree in other countries, and cultural norms. To illustrate with a counterexample: I think I know what you have in mind as good service, but to me (who found the service culture in Denmark really great) this comes across as stalking/ not respecting the customer's privacy/ badly roleplayed friendliness/ thinly veiled upselling attempts. I can't stand it to a degree that I've actually stopped going to a local restaurant because they tried to enforce this service attitude with their employees. There's this anecdote of Walmart opening a store in Germany and people were horrified by the greeter an the entrance, to a degree that many reported them to the store because they thought he/she was some random weirdo from the street, not an employee of the store. Ditto for baggers, the very idea was appalling for the locals, and Walmarts expansion ultimately failed because of these US service culture imports. This boils down to the cultural norm: If the behaviour is endemic in the local culture, it comes across as natural. If not, it comes across as fake friendliness in one direction and baseless rudeness in the other.
gambiting 6y ago
>>Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? Absolutely not in my experience. Only visited America a few times but nearly universally the service was about as good as anywhere in Europe not any better or worse, but it was made infinitely worse by the fact that no matter what, the tips were expected. It left such an incredibly sour taste in my mouth - like, the service wasn't special in any way, the waiter came, took our order, the food arrived, we had it....and now I have to leave like $10 in tips? Like, literally, honestly.....wtf. I do leave tips in europe ocassionally but only when going to really fancy restaurants when the service is exceptional. Tipping everyone everywhere every time is just....crazy. >>I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef Funny, I know a Chef who actually worked at Noma, he now runs a restaurant in the UK and I'm somewhat familiar with the staffing woes. But in summary from everything he told me - it's like any other business. If you want good employees who are engaged and doing a good jobs....you need to pay well. Pay waiters above the bottom of the barel wage...and suddenly you can find people who give a shit about the job. Pay minimum wage and you get people who'd rather spend half their time outside on cigarette breaks.
dagw 6y ago
Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US I've been reflecting on my restaurant experiences in the US and Europe and I'm not sure, is it really "astronomically better"? On balance I've probably had people screw up my order and tab at least as often in the US as in Europe. Waitstaff in the US don't seem more knowledgeable about the menu or the wine list, in fact on the whole they tend to be less knowledgeable (probably due to high turnover and restaurants not investing as much in staff). Kitchen 'failures' and food not arriving on time isn't less common in the US and so on. Sure US waitstaff will be a lot chattier, smile a lot more, ask me more about my day and my meal many more times and say "I am SO sorry" a lot more when things go wrong. But on the whole they don't seem to handle the mechanics of making sure I have a smooth and stress free dining experience any better. One 'plus' I will give to the US which might account for some of it is that due to wait staff being basically free there are a lot more of them pr. customer which sometimes speeds up service.
madeofpalk 6y ago
Having lived in Australia and the UK, and travelled around Europe quite a bit, and to the US a few times, I could not say that service is astronomically better in the US. I've found it particularly fake and insincere. When I go to a restaurant, I want good food. I don't particuarly care about the service. That's not to say I want the wait staff to spit on me when I eat my delicious meal, but I'm not really looking for people to constantly suck up to me throughout the meal so they can afford rent. Mainly I think it is cultral differences in perception of quality. The very American "The Customer Is Always Right" attitude of service staff being there to serve the customer's every whim doesnt really translate as much overseas.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Much of the enjoyment of the meal is predicated on good service though. Were the dishes served appropriately together or was one person’s salad served 5 minutes after the others? Were the courses paced appropriately? Were the drinks continually available? Were the main dishes served hot and together? I don’t need a server asking me every three minutes if everything is okay, but I do need them looking things over and ensuring that the things that would negatively affect any diner’s enjoyment are being silently taken care of.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    These issues/questions you posed I have not experienced a noticeable difference in the aggregate across countries. There are good restaurants and bad restaurants in every country. I've found no correlation between what you've called service and tipping.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I wasn't drawing a connection to tipping. I was responding to your claim that you "want good food" but "don't particularly care about the service". It's impossible to entirely separate those in my opinion.
jet_32951 6y ago
Service might simply be seen as better because of cultural differences between your home country and one you visit. Example: in France Americans often perceive restaurant service as slow and indifferent, because the French service is not about feeding you and getting you the hell out of the restaurant. The word "restauration" in French implies a restoring (of not just your stomach, but your well-being) and that is what French restaurants are for. Allowing you to be seated and to look around you for a while, discussing rather than quickly selecting what is on offer for the meal, a leisurely consumption of what is served and a pressure-free interval for some digestion make a meal in France slow. I'm also told that the coyness of the server in bringing the check comes from the feeling of community a restaurant strives to foster: "we would rather you stayed here a bit". Getting pushy about turning a table over simply doesn't happen in France.
leetcrew 6y ago
first of all, some people seem to dislike what is considered "good service" in the US, so let's call it "high touch" instead. tips are definitely a factor, but I think it's mostly just the US service/retail culture. even people who don't work tipped jobs are quite likely to ask you if you need help finding something if they are not busy.
- djmips 6y ago
  You can get used to it however and when you go to even a neighbor country like Canada, the staff seems apathetic. I'm not saying they are but it takes an adjustment from the 'high touch' trained Americans.
Scea91 6y ago
Hard to find a better service than in Japan. No tips there.

abandonliberty 6y ago

It's cultural. You can get amazing service in other countries with little or no tipping culture. Sure, tipping may be an incentive as well, but most people I know won't go below 10% even if the service is terrible.

emptysongglass 6y ago
Which other countries with little to no tipping culture do you receive amazing service? Again, I am curious, not combative, so please take care if applying disdain to my comments.
- tomp 6y ago
  Japan. Really awkward as well. Basically the whole staff was waving at us until we went around the corner and they couldn’t see us any more. Didn’t know what to do - ignore, acknowledge, turn back and keep eye contact while still walking forward, smile, stop, wave ... This was a high-end restaurant though.
- drewwwwww 6y ago
  japan
- pelliphant 6y ago
  In my opinion, I get amazing service in Denmark. I would guess that what I consider to be amazing service isn't the same thing as what you would consider to be amazing service.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Japan. Phenomenal service every single place I went and some was so good we tried tipping only to be chased into the street to have the “mistake” fixed.
- abandonliberty 6y ago
  Taiwan as well Outside of that it's on an establishment by establishment basis. I know an amazing restaurant in a less touristic Paris arrondissement that will provide stellar service no matter who I show up with or how terrible my French is. Their menus are only in French. If I'm not fast enough the staff notices I'm using a translation app and starts translating it into English. This in the city of famously terrible service.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
The service you get in the US is very annoying to people not used to it. Fake-smiling at me especially.

nmca 6y ago

An entire section of society so precariously clings to financial stability that they'll smile at at any customer's joke...

ceejayoz 6y ago
Yup. "The hostages are smiling at me, that must mean they like me!"

skocznymroczny 6y ago

I think it's a very cultural aspect. In the US you have the waiters coming up to you, asking if you liked your meal, would you like something else. In Nordic countries people prefer to be left alone, which might be interpreted as not caring. If you were to go to Greece, you could be getting the same experience, with the owner himself walking around the tables and asking what you thought of the meal.

oblio 6y ago

Expectations. In Europe we expect the waiter/etc to be a fellow person with good days and bad days and we don't expect hand holding. In the US you have cashiers bagging stuff for you and not being allowed to sit down (!!!).

beckman466 6y ago
Thank you. Can’t believe this has to be said.

beckman466 6y ago

> Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? I’m curious why ‘good service‘ is important for you? Have you worked a service job yourself? It’s long gruelling hours.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
well I've worked long grueling hours - but good service is important because if you are paying money for something you don't want to be treated badly at the same time you are paying money - which has been my experience sometimes in Denmark, although I think the service level has improved in the last decade (maybe I just look more important with age)
emptysongglass 6y ago
I could tell you many stories of my near-death scrapes with cars and cabs on my hour long bike ride to and from a tiny upscale restaurant in Manhattan, the blistered feet my girlfriend at the time would lovingly restore after 8 hours on my feet, and barely making rent on my tiny Brooklyn apartment I shared with 5 others while narrowly avoiding all manner of attempted thefts of the few discretionary dollars I had left. When I choose to spend the money I have, I want a good experience. Service is a very big piece of that. My stepfather is a restaurant owner. He has always been the model of politeness. Articles have been written about the magic he'd pour out as maître d' in the early aughts. I learned from him the transformative impact good waitstaff can have on a dinner which is in many ways staged theater with you acting your best (honestly, dishonestly, you are still presenting a face of you) for your date you've held in enough esteem to offer this piece of your life to.
dagw 6y ago
I’m curious why ‘good service‘ is important for you? Because the whole point of going out to eat instead of cooking at home is to have an enjoyable and stress free experience. If it takes 20 minutes before someone asks what I want to drink, then 60 minutes to get food, you cannot answer any questions about what is on the menu and half the people get the wrong thing and then that completely ruins what should be an enjoyable experience.

xxs 6y ago

> Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? Not my experience, at least not in Copenhagen compared to New York and New Jersey. (speaking as tourist)

bildung 6y ago

Others have already said that this boils down to a mix of precarious living not existing to this degree in other countries, and cultural norms. To illustrate with a counterexample: I think I know what you have in mind as good service, but to me (who found the service culture in Denmark really great) this comes across as stalking/ not respecting the customer's privacy/ badly roleplayed friendliness/ thinly veiled upselling attempts. I can't stand it to a degree that I've actually stopped going to a local restaurant because they tried to enforce this service attitude with their employees. There's this anecdote of Walmart opening a store in Germany and people were horrified by the greeter an the entrance, to a degree that many reported them to the store because they thought he/she was some random weirdo from the street, not an employee of the store. Ditto for baggers, the very idea was appalling for the locals, and Walmarts expansion ultimately failed because of these US service culture imports. This boils down to the cultural norm: If the behaviour is endemic in the local culture, it comes across as natural. If not, it comes across as fake friendliness in one direction and baseless rudeness in the other.

gambiting 6y ago

>>Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US than countries with very high worker protections and base wages like Denmark? Absolutely not in my experience. Only visited America a few times but nearly universally the service was about as good as anywhere in Europe not any better or worse, but it was made infinitely worse by the fact that no matter what, the tips were expected. It left such an incredibly sour taste in my mouth - like, the service wasn't special in any way, the waiter came, took our order, the food arrived, we had it....and now I have to leave like $10 in tips? Like, literally, honestly.....wtf. I do leave tips in europe ocassionally but only when going to really fancy restaurants when the service is exceptional. Tipping everyone everywhere every time is just....crazy. >>I mean I even worked for a Danish guy who was Noma's head chef's former sous chef Funny, I know a Chef who actually worked at Noma, he now runs a restaurant in the UK and I'm somewhat familiar with the staffing woes. But in summary from everything he told me - it's like any other business. If you want good employees who are engaged and doing a good jobs....you need to pay well. Pay waiters above the bottom of the barel wage...and suddenly you can find people who give a shit about the job. Pay minimum wage and you get people who'd rather spend half their time outside on cigarette breaks.

dagw 6y ago

Can we talk about why service is astronomically better in the US I've been reflecting on my restaurant experiences in the US and Europe and I'm not sure, is it really "astronomically better"? On balance I've probably had people screw up my order and tab at least as often in the US as in Europe. Waitstaff in the US don't seem more knowledgeable about the menu or the wine list, in fact on the whole they tend to be less knowledgeable (probably due to high turnover and restaurants not investing as much in staff). Kitchen 'failures' and food not arriving on time isn't less common in the US and so on. Sure US waitstaff will be a lot chattier, smile a lot more, ask me more about my day and my meal many more times and say "I am SO sorry" a lot more when things go wrong. But on the whole they don't seem to handle the mechanics of making sure I have a smooth and stress free dining experience any better. One 'plus' I will give to the US which might account for some of it is that due to wait staff being basically free there are a lot more of them pr. customer which sometimes speeds up service.

madeofpalk 6y ago

Having lived in Australia and the UK, and travelled around Europe quite a bit, and to the US a few times, I could not say that service is astronomically better in the US. I've found it particularly fake and insincere. When I go to a restaurant, I want good food. I don't particuarly care about the service. That's not to say I want the wait staff to spit on me when I eat my delicious meal, but I'm not really looking for people to constantly suck up to me throughout the meal so they can afford rent. Mainly I think it is cultral differences in perception of quality. The very American "The Customer Is Always Right" attitude of service staff being there to serve the customer's every whim doesnt really translate as much overseas.

sokoloff 6y ago
Much of the enjoyment of the meal is predicated on good service though. Were the dishes served appropriately together or was one person’s salad served 5 minutes after the others? Were the courses paced appropriately? Were the drinks continually available? Were the main dishes served hot and together? I don’t need a server asking me every three minutes if everything is okay, but I do need them looking things over and ensuring that the things that would negatively affect any diner’s enjoyment are being silently taken care of.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  These issues/questions you posed I have not experienced a noticeable difference in the aggregate across countries. There are good restaurants and bad restaurants in every country. I've found no correlation between what you've called service and tipping.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I wasn't drawing a connection to tipping. I was responding to your claim that you "want good food" but "don't particularly care about the service". It's impossible to entirely separate those in my opinion.

jet_32951 6y ago

Service might simply be seen as better because of cultural differences between your home country and one you visit. Example: in France Americans often perceive restaurant service as slow and indifferent, because the French service is not about feeding you and getting you the hell out of the restaurant. The word "restauration" in French implies a restoring (of not just your stomach, but your well-being) and that is what French restaurants are for. Allowing you to be seated and to look around you for a while, discussing rather than quickly selecting what is on offer for the meal, a leisurely consumption of what is served and a pressure-free interval for some digestion make a meal in France slow. I'm also told that the coyness of the server in bringing the check comes from the feeling of community a restaurant strives to foster: "we would rather you stayed here a bit". Getting pushy about turning a table over simply doesn't happen in France.

leetcrew 6y ago

first of all, some people seem to dislike what is considered "good service" in the US, so let's call it "high touch" instead. tips are definitely a factor, but I think it's mostly just the US service/retail culture. even people who don't work tipped jobs are quite likely to ask you if you need help finding something if they are not busy.

djmips 6y ago
You can get used to it however and when you go to even a neighbor country like Canada, the staff seems apathetic. I'm not saying they are but it takes an adjustment from the 'high touch' trained Americans.

Scea91 6y ago

Hard to find a better service than in Japan. No tips there.