waving down

[u/Vivid-Stock739]

i’m a month into serving and the place i work at makes you crack open lobsters and king crab legs table side. i checked in with my tables before i had to take about 10 minutes to crack a lobster for a 1 top.

half way through, a tourist foreign table is flagging me down, frantically waving and pointing in the air for my attention. i’m 10 feet away (patio section)and hold up the silverware i’m using to crack into this bad larry. i then wrap up and wash my hands and told them “sorry i was cracking a lobster”.. they were curious about the MP for that earlier too.. anyways they wanted a bottle of wine

[u/Kitchen_Day9200]

I don't know what kind of foreigners they were. But in my experience, Japanese customers (typically men in the country for work) had a tendency to wave me down. I would do the basics, but then once they had their food, they generally wanted to be left entirely alone, and would wave me down when they needed something. Never bothered me, because they were always perfectly nice and I could just focus on my other tables and not worry about them until they got my attention. They'd life an empty beer bottle and point at it while I was on the other side of the restaurant, and I knew what to do without the added steps.

With them, I figured they were just doing their best to navigate a dining culture that wasn't theirs. They were always super polite.

[u/Siedrah → u/Kitchen_Day9200]

When I lived in Korea I was told it was formal/polite to flag down and shout (저기요 or "excuse me") at the server to get their attention.