Restaurant: Rest or rush? by Megan Stevens

I remember when my friends and I went to our first restaurant in Spain. It was a fairly nice place located in the middle of city center of Seville. When we sat down, our waiter came over and took our drink order. A few minutes later he returned and asked what plate we'd each like to start with and we gave him our order. It all seemed pretty similar to visiting a typical American restaurant. That is, until we finished eating. We expected the waiter to come over with our check. We waited…and waited…and waited, but he never came over. We began to get irritated and wondered why he wasn’t doing his job by bringing the check over—we were obviously done eating. Finally, one of us got up and asked for the check—something that never happens in the United States.

Over the past few months, this restaurant experience has made more and more sense to me as I've learned more about the Spanish culture. My first thought at the restaurant was that the waiter didn't know how to properly do his job--I thought that he was lazy and forgetful. But no, the reason he behaved as he did--the reason he didn't bring over the check without being prompted--is because eating out in Spain is an activity that is separate from time. In fact, I've learned that any social activity in Spain isn't constrained by time. The purpose of socializing in Spain is to enjoy the time you have with one another without worrying where you're supposed to be or when you have to leave. That's why social activities-- like eating out--may take hours. Spaniards don't pay attention to how long it's been, and they don't worry about taking up table space even if they finished eating an hour before. The reason that this surprised me was because going out to eat at restaurants in the United States is a much different experience. The waiter or waitress is constantly checking up on the table--every ten minutes or so asking the customers questions like “Is everything all right?” or “Is there anything else I can get you?”.

And that's what we've come accept as good customer service. So when I first arrived in Spain it seemed like customer service was awful until I realized that good customer service in Spain is actually quite the opposite.