Who is better, restaurant waiters or banquet waiters?

Question

Most restaurant (a la carte) waiters think they are "real" waiters and the banquet staff are just 2nd rate. Who is best and why?

If you think banquet waiters are better, visit http://soyouwanttobeabanquetmanager.blogspot.com to see what a banquet manager thinks.

Answer 1

I'm going to answer this from the perspective of the person seated at the table.  I think both work hard, but have different challenges.

With banquet service, timing and speed is critical.  If you are serving a couple hundred guests, you want their courses delivered roughly at the same time.  That is why at a large banquet, the servers all look so harried to me.  It's got to be a hard job.

With a restaurant server, there is more interaction with the diner.  I have had some very pleasant conversations with restaurant servers and have sometimes returned to restaurants because I liked the servers.  In a banquet atmosphere, where timing is critical, the servers just aren't able to have any real interaction with the diners, which I think detracts from the experience.

So I won't say that one is better than the other.  They have pretty different jobs.

That's my thought on it.