Service Debates: When Are Requests Unreasonable?

Should six be enough? 

By James Mulcahy 

On our recent visit to New York's Monkey Bar, we came away impressed with the solid food and fantastic cocktails. But, a debate arose about the service. Our party of four settled into the dining room, and decided that we wanted to start with some oysters. The menu listed a half dozen for $20, but there were four of us - we didn't want to splurge for the entire (pricey!) dozen, but two bivalve lovers at the table were going to be left with only one oyster to gobble. So, the reasonable thing was to order eight. Or was it? Witness the exchange:

Diner: "We'd like eight oysters, four of the west coast and four of the east coast."
Server: "Oh, eight? Well, we can't really do that. But I can give you a dozen."
Diner: "No, we'd only like eight."
Server: "Well, there's not really a way to ring that into the system. We really can only do six or a dozen."
Other members of the table: "I guess I'll just have one. Just order six."



And six it was. Here's the question: Should this request have been granted or should the diners have gone with the system and ordered the full 12? On the one hand, it seemed like it would have been very easy to just shuck two more oysters, throw them down on the tray and enter an up charge. On the other, requests for changes like this can be annoying, especially if the server has no easy way to charge for the additional grub.

What do you think - was this a reasonable request being shut down, or a case of a customer being difficult? Let us know in the comments!