I’m working from a restaurant today. It’s a beautiful day and most people are sitting on the patio, but the sun is unfriendly to laptop screens so I’m in the bar. Plus, I figured I might need to plug in. One problem upon entry: I didn’t see an outlet anywhere.
Good restaurants are some of my favorite places and good servers are some of my favorite people. How can you not love servers? They serve you, quite literally, by bringing you delicious food—something you need to survive, by the way. If the server is just a little bit friendly, we should interact with them joyfully. If they’re not friendly, we should assume they’re having a bad day—or year—and try and turn things around for them in our brief interactions… making the world a little bit better place.
Back to the laptop. No outlets in view, so I sat down at an out-of-the-way bar spot with my laptop in plain sight. Ryan, the server, came promptly and greeted me with a “what can I pour for you?”
“Hi Ryan,” I started. “I don’t want to be maintenance, but I don’t see any outlets around here and I might need to plug in soon. Do you know of any, ideally out of the way, so I don’t take up your prime real estate while I eat and work?”
That did a couple of things…
I communicated to Ryan that I had some work to do but I was also going to eat. I’m not free-loading your wifi.
Ryan now understood that I’m sensitive to taking up space that could be better suited for larger groups. I don’t want Ryan to lose money because of me.
Ryan took me to the one outlet in the bar. It was next to his largest round table—capable of seating five or six. “Sit here,” Ryan offered.
“Ok,” I responded. “I’ll charge my laptop and move if the bar starts to fill up.”
“No problem,” Ryan said, but I could tell it mattered to him. Like the rest of us, he’s trying to earn a living.
Here’s the point.
Ask for what you need. And when you do, also communicate to the person helping you that you care about what matters to them, too.
Some people sit silent without AC power and let their laptop die. That’s dumb. Others do whatever it takes to plug in, regardless of whether their server loses money or if their neighbor has a cord across their lap.
Ask for what you need. Care about what they need.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. Jesus said that.
Life is simple. Not easy… but simple.