Tipping for service could help tip the work-life balance too

Until the robots finally get the whip-hand, restaurants are always going to need lots of living, breathing staff

Table for none: some restaurants are closing on set days to allow staff to have more – welldeserved – time off (Alamy)

To say I feel disappointed when I make the 500m journey from my door to the restaurants of London Fields and find them too full to seat me or, worse still, closed, is like saying Stalin was a little bit naughty. I often feel unthinkingly cross. Even if I don't show it to the person who is sending me packing. I am embarrassed when I think about it now. But when the blood sugar is going south and the wind is Baltic, rationality and all other Enlightenment virtues desert me. I am hungry and I am grumpy.

Now, until the robots finally get the whip-hand, restaurants are always going to need lots of living, breathing staff. Staff to take your coat, staff to offer you a drink, staff to bring you your steak and chips after some other member of staff has cooked it, along with staff to clean up after you. The whole operation requires commitments of time and energy that most of us would quail at. And quite often we overlook the people doing it entirely.

Confirmation of this arrived in an email on Monday. The Code Bulletin is a newsletter for people who work in restaurants and hotels and at the bottom of this week's mail-out, were two short pieces about two central London restaurants. Alexis Gauthier's eponymous Soho restaurant announced it would no longer be open for dinner on Mondays. They would, they said, only operate Tuesday-Saturday. The reason? To give staff a weekend. At Hibiscus, Claude Bosi's two-Michelin-starred joint across the way in Mayfair, they will no longer open for lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday and will only offer no-choice tasting menus in the evening. It is, they say, to improve the work-life balance of staff.

Most, I suspect, wouldn't have a first clue that a weekend – two clear days off – is a rare thing if you work in a restaurant. Still fewer probably care.

If you find yourself inwardly pooh-poohing, consider a friend of mine. She works as deputy manager of a posh central London restaurant. It is not unusual for her to work 18 days straight, constantly on her feet, and often on split shifts that start early in the morning and end at about 1am, with only a few hours off in the middle of the day. It may not be coal mining but it certainly ain't easy.

Service is largely invisible when done well. Good service is discreet and seldom gets any praise. And yet, I, like you and everyone else who is spending their money eating away from their own dining table, expect to be treated not just with respect but with indulgence.

We expect our whims to be catered for with a smile and if they are not we moan and we gripe and probably send an arsey tweet.

We expect instant gratification – the book that arrives at your door tomorrow, the film that appears on the telly at a click, the restaurant open whenever we want to eat. The thing is, while the other two come about through the never-ending advance of technology, the last comes about through more hard graft by other people. No one expects us to open our hearts to restaurant staff, but we certainly ought to open our wallets.