Food poisoning, cockroaches and revenge on rude diners: 'Australia's worst waitress' confesses the six things restaurants wish you didn't know

If you've ever been at a restaurant and had your chair accidentally kicked, you probably didn't think twice about it.

Or perhaps you were at a work lunch and had your credit card declined, but you just brushed it off as a glitch at your bank.

There may be more to these restaurant mishaps than you realise, according to one of Australia's top restaurant critics Larissa Dubecki.

Ms Dubecki is lifting the lid on her decade working as a self-confessed 'awful' waitress in restaurants across Melbourne, and the tactics restaurant staff use to exact revenge on customers they don't like.

Ms Dubecki worked at nine Melbourne restaurants in the 1990s and early 2000s, from cheap suburban Italian eateries to some of Melbourne's most exclusive restaurants.

And while she now spends her days reviewing the food and performance of hospitality workers, she has written a new book titled Prick With A Fork to reflect on her time spent on the other side of the table.

Ms Dubecki also shares the secrets wait staff hope customers will never find out.

WAITERS WILL KICK YOUR CHAIR

Ms Dubecki said wait staff need to be careful when they are seeking revenge on rude customers, because being too obvious can get them fired.

Instead, they resort to more subtle acts of retaliation, such as kicking diners' chairs.

'Everybody I know kicks chairs, every waiter will kick a chair, that's the most popular move of all,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'It's just so effective if you just gently kick someone's chair every time you walk past them, it just adds up to this kind of Chinese water torture.

'These days if I feel a kick I'm paranoid thinking "Did they do that on purpose? What did I do wrong?"

'Because I was such a horrible waitress I think there must be malice or forethought behind it.'

THEY EMBARRASS DINERS ON PURPOSE

Ms Dubecki said people trying to impress clients or colleagues at business lunches can be some of the rudest customers – but they are also some of the easiest to get back at.

'It's really effective to try and humiliate people, if you've got a group of business diners they're usually so busy trying to show off,' she said.

'A good trick is to run their card through the machine and pretend it didn't go through, that's a really good way to embarrass people.'

Ms Dubecki said some waiters take their humiliation tactics to more revolting levels.

'I've heard of people deliberately farting near tables – the silent fart. Which I think is disgusting, it's so awful,' she said.

'There's also a high risk you're going to expose yourself.'

THEY MEANT TO FORGET YOUR ORDER

Ms Dubecki said customers are often also hit with a bout of waiter forgetfulness if they are impolite.

'It's very easy to forget a horrible person's drink order – "I'm so, so, so sorry - it's so busy!"' she said.

'If your order's forgotten quite a bit and you're thinking "Why does this keep happening to me?" it's probably your own fault.'

THEY HAVE A TRICK TO DEAL WITH FOOD POISONING COMPLAINTS

Ms Dubecki said she had received a food poisoning complaint at every restaurant she ever worked at - although she declined to name the establishments.

'Everywhere gets food poisoning complaints, even the top restaurants,' she said.

'The thing is you go home and start vomiting your guts up and you automatically blame the last thing you ate, even if medical science says it could have been anything you ate in the last 24 hours.

'So you get angry people ringing saying "I'm calling the health department, I want compensation."'

But she soon discovered a fool-proof method for making them go away.

'I learned this really good tip from a restaurateur in Melbourne, one of the top guys,' Ms Dubecki said.

'You have to be very, very polite and scientific almost – you can't laugh at all - and you have to go through a great rigmarole about collecting stool sample without contaminating it.

'You tell them to spread glad wrap over the toilet seat… and they have to put it in a small sterile jar.

'I've given that speech probably 10 times and every person has hung up before I finished.'

EVERY KITCHEN HAS COCKROACHES

Ms Dubecki said even the best kitchens get cockroaches, and a good restaurant will regularly get an exterminator in.

'Customers can never know, it has to be done out of hours under the cloak of darkness, it's all very mysterious,' she said.

'It doesn't mean it's unclean, it just means cockroaches really love commercial kitchens.

Ms Dubecki said there were some 'horror stories' about kitchens that were infested but in most cases a few cockroaches were just the reality of running a restaurant.

THEY SNEAKILY TRY TO UPSELL YOU

Ms Dubecki said the best waiters will upsell you without you even realising.

'I worked with one guy called Marcello and he was evil,' she said.

'He gave the impression he was giving you this stuff on the house, it would be "How about Marcello get you a garlic bread", "How about Marcello organise you a beautiful bruschetta."

'Then people are either too drunk or too embarrassed to bring it up when the bill comes.

'Really good upsellers work in that grey area of ambiguity where people aren't sure if it's meant for free and are too embarrassed to ask if that's on the house or if you have to pay for it.'

BUT NOT ALL WAITERS ARE AWFUL

Ms Dubecki concedes that her behaviour on the restaurant floor put her among the worst kinds of waiters and waitresses, and not all hospitality workers are like her.

'You do go out with the anticipation you'll be pampered, and it's not an entirely unreasonable expectation,' she said.

'My whole problem with waiting, now I've had time to reflect over many years, I think it stems from the whole master-servant thing.

'Not every customer is an a***hole, some are lovely, but I always had a chip on my shoulder that I was essentially being a servant.'

Ms Dubecki said the best wait staff were able to laugh off rude customers, but not everyone is suited to that task.

'There are just so many people that really shouldn't be waiting tables but unfortunately it's the most obvious job you can do when you're a student,' she said.

'Even though it does unleash on the restaurant floor a whole lot of people who really shouldn't be there.'

Larissa Dubecki is the former chief food critic at The Age and has appeared on Masterchef and Iron Chef Australia. Her book Prick With A Fork is available from August 26

Source: Daily Mail Australian, Sarah Michael, 23^rd August 2015
Originally published as: Food poisoning, cockroaches and revenge on rude diners: 'Australia's worst waitress' confesses the six things restaurants wish you didn't know