ABSTRACT
A male customer is more likely to build intimacy into the service relationship if a waitress serves him rather than a waiter. Boundary-closed transactions make the waiter particularly vulnerable to criticism and complaints, especially about failures to observe social etiquette or service ‘protocol’. Many more examples could be cited to illustrate the point that food and drink transactions in restaurants are elaborate and varied, that they are a vital dimension of service and that, though service is individually negotiable, it operates within limits that are socially determined. The restaurant menu lies outside the ordinary daily round of food-taking and it must not be confused with menus from the family food system. Anthropologists have long recognised that in all societies’ food and drink are used to mark social relations and to celebrate big and small occasions. Waiters often learn names and identities classify people in terms of the specific social categories and perform their own role accordingly.
