text: On Saturday night, for the first time in my life, I was kicked out of a restaurant — Restaurant Marc Forgione in TriBeCa. 
   
   It’s a good restaurant, with a great cocktail and a clever bread operation. 
   
   But that’s as far as I got into the meal. About ten minutes after my party of four sat down, we heard yelling — loud, sustained, top-of-lungs yelling — coming from the kitchen. Mr. Forgione was dressing down a member of the staff, in full view of many of the customers. The dining room quieted as patrons exchanged uncomfortable glances. 
   
   No one said a thing though. Soon the target of the chef’s harsh words delivered our amuse-bouche, and the poor guy was so rattled he could barely speak above a mumble. 
   
   A few minutes later, the chef was at it again. Fifteen seconds. Another fifteen. And without much forethought, I pushed back my chair and walked through the open doorway of the kitchen. 
   
   I don’t remember exactly what I said, though I did not raise my voice to the point beyond where people in the kitchen could hear it. I told the chef that his behavior was making me and others uncomfortable. I let him know that I thought it was mean. And I asked him to cut it out. I don’t remember exactly what he said in response, but whatever it was, I found it irritating enough that I reminded him that I was paying to eat there and told him again to stop berating his staff at that volume. 
   
   Maybe 20 seconds after I had returned to my seat, he approached the table. He apologized, barely, and then let me know that he thought it was incredibly rude of me to come into his kitchen and tell him how to do his job. I repeated the fact that he had been ruining my dinner. But his yelling was all in the interest of maintaining quality, he said. 
   
   “I think it’s time for you to go,” he said. 
   
   “Are you kicking me out?” I asked. 
   
   “Yes,” he replied. 
   
   I’m not naive about restaurants. People who work there sometimes yell, though usually out of earshot. And when I eat in a higher-end establishment like this, I try to respect the artistry of the proprietor. I ask to have the food cooked the way the chef thinks it’s best. I don’t ask for salt. I don’t ask for skim. (I do ask to have different gelato flavors in separate bowls, knowing full well that “They don’t do it that way in Italy!” They have it wrong in Italy, too, but I digress.) 
   
   In this particular instance, however, something didn’t feel right. I don’t know if Mr. Forgione had been watching too much Gordon Ramsay on television or had learned the wrong lessons from his mentors. Listening to him in action, however, conjured up the particular type of nausea that results from watching people yank their misbehaving kids around on the subway or seeing my own kid smash a defenseless insect. 
   
   When I called him on Monday to tell him I was writing this post about the evening, Mr. Forgione, in fact, said that I had scolded him like a child on Saturday night. “First and foremost, you came into my kitchen and spoke to me very disrespectfully in front of my cooks,” he said. “The kitchen is a sacred space.” He told me that my reply to his attempts to explain why he was yelling, while I was in the kitchen was, “We’re not interested.” That sounds about right, since we hadn’t come to the restaurant to listen to him yell repeatedly at his staff about whatever it was that he thought they were doing wrong. 
   
   That wasn’t what got us kicked out though, according to Mr. Forgione. He claimed that he didn’t decide to ask us to leave until he explained to us tableside that his yelling was all in the interest of making everything perfect. “Well you aren’t,” he remembers me saying. “And then,” he continued, “you waved a hand in my direction as if I was an annoying bug. Someone who acts like that in my restaurant, I would never serve.” 
   
   As with any confrontation, you always think of ways you could have handled it better in retrospect. It would have been more polite to ask for our friends’ endorsement before marching into the kitchen (Sorry Luke! Sorry Jen!). And as my better half noted later, my comments might have had more moral force had they not been a request at all. I could have simply told him that we weren’t going to sit there and listen to him abuse his employees and that we were leaving. Once I dressed him down in front of his staff, I imagine his manhood suffered enough that he had no choice but to kick us all out, lest he lose face. Perhaps a woman should have gone to talk with him instead, one on one. 
   
   So I could have handled myself better. But my comments hardly rose to the level of disturbance or nastiness that Mr. Forgione displayed. He now says that he was aware of the problem and was planning on making it up later to everyone within earshot by comping dessert and whatnot, even before I invaded his space. 
   
   Still, I’m not sorry I spoke up, and Mr. Forgione wasn’t interested in apologizing to me either. 
   
   Is either one of us right or wrong? What would you have done if you were me, or if you were Mr. Forgione? ||||| I was a waitress for two years. I’ve worked a variety of jobs over the years, from pasta-maker to college teacher, but waitressing was far and away the hardest job I ever had. The hours are grueling, the physical labor is brutal, and suffice to say you learn something of human nature when required to wait on people: People will treat you like crap because they can. 
   
   This is why I was so disgusted when I read New York Times‘ “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber’s self-indulgent, arrogant “Diner’s Journal” post on getting kicked out of Restaurant Marc Forgione in Tribeca, “Why I got Kicked Out of a Restaurant on Saturday Night.” 
   
   The short version of the story is that Forgione was yelling at a staff member in the kitchen. Apparently, this disturbed Lieber’s dining experience. So, Lieber walked into the kitchen and reprimanded the chef. Either you’ve worked in the restaurant business and get this, or you don’t. No one but the most self-entitled jerk of a customer walks into the kitchen. After some back and forth, Forgione asked Lieber to leave the restaurant. In other words, he kicked him out. 
   
   One problem with working in the restaurant business is that the customer seems particularly inclined to believe he is running the show, when, in fact, he is not. For some reason, that eating, the most intimate of activities, second only to sex, is involved leads people to engage in this type of boorish behavior. 
   
   Lieber’s whiny, unapologetic response, “I’m not sorry I spoke up,” only underscores his role as the classic jerk diner that servers hate. This is the same guy who whips out a pen and paper to calculate the tip, the same idiot who wants to know if he can take the rest of his wine home in a bag, the same fool who asks one too many questions about obscure ingredients on the menu to show off to his obviously bored-to-death date. 
   
   If you don’t want to be the next Lieber, loathed by your server and despised by the kitchen staff, here are a few easy steps to not being the idiot at table 5. 
   
   1. Eye contact. One of the most challenging things about being a waitress is how many people treat you as if you are invisible. They go the entire meal without looking at you once. The incidence of this was so widespread I began to wonder if there was some type of social meaning behind it. I could only guess that eating was intimate enough, it prompted people to feign an intimacy that wasn’t there, to shut out any intruder, especially one who’s hands were uncomfortably close to your food. Look your server in the eye. The goal of dining out is great service. Treating your server like a human being is one way to get it. 
   
   2. Respect the choreography. Assuming you are dining at something other than the International House of Pancakes, say, at a high-end restaurant where you’ll be served a series of courses, you may want to keep in mind that you are engaged in a certain type of dance here. Play your part. Order within a reasonable amount of time if you want to eat before midnight. Depending on how the house works, we often are guessing how long it’s going to take you to eat which course, and if you decide to wait until the last minute to finally order your main course, except to wait a long time for it. 
   
   3. Don’t make a mess. Don’t stick a napkin in a glass. Don’t create a teetering tower of dishes. Don’t pile a bunch of random weird scraps and papers and other gunk on your plate. You are not helping. You are sabotaging. If the server knows what he/she is doing, they are working to keep your table as cleared as possible and your weird rearrangements of random stuff on it is only making their job more difficult. Leave it. Let us get it. 
   
   4. If you don’t like something, say something. Servers want you to enjoy your meal for one reason and one reason only. It increases the likelihood you will leave a bigger tip. If you don’t like it, speak up! As soon as possible. Unless we’re a complete dumbass, we should get on that and give you something that you do like in as timely a fashion as possible. Waiting until you’re done to bellyache about how you really didn’t like this, that, or the other, or, worse yet, dinging the server, tip-wise, because you didn’t like something and never said anything about it, is a dining lose-lose. 
   
   5. The check. Here’s how to pay the check. When it comes, pick up the book, put your credit card or cash in it, and then slide it to the edge of the table, so we know it’s ready. Don’t pick it up, stare at it, and set it back down next to your plate. Don’t leave it sitting there for half an hour. When the book is returned to you, handle it. Sign the right slip. Retrieve your change. Then slide it back out again, so we now it’s done. Otherwise, we will hover, look at you inquisitively, pick it up, see it’s not ready, and put it back down again. 
   
   6. Tip 20 percent or GTFO. The majority of time I spent as a server was at a high-end restaurant. As was the case with fail diner Lieber. Seriously? If you dine at a nice spot, leave a 20-percent minimum tip or dine somewhere else. You’re getting a certain level of food, a certain quality of service, and you’re going to need to pay for that. We both know you know I’m making a few dollars an hour, and if I just spent several hours running around, making you happy, picking up your chewed up food-filled plates, and basically acting like your personal slave for the evening, I’d like to be reimbursed for it. 
   
   7. Stay out of the kitchen. That means you, Lieber. And the rest of you, too. That’s our domain. The chef is yelling at a member of the staff? Welcome to our world. Back here, you’re nothing but in our way. We’re working. If that’s not cool with you, let me come and sit on your desk while you’re writing your money column, randomly poking at your keyboard keys, and waving my hands in your face. In that case, I’m sure your column will come out great. 
   
   Update: Grub Street has more on the matter from Forgione’s point of view: “I wouldn’t take his money.”
target: – Dining out anytime soon? True/Slant blogger (and former waitress) Susannah Breslin has a little advice on how to treat your server. Check out the full list here. A sampling: Eye contact: Too many people treat servers like they’re invisible. Don't be one of them. “Look your server in the eye. The goal of dining out is great service. Treating your server like a human being is one way to get it.” Tip: At nice spots, it’s 20%, so deal with it. “If I just spent several hours running around … and basically acting like your personal slave for the evening, I’d like to be reimbursed for it.” Speak up: If you don't like something, say so. Competent servers will deal with it because it's in their interests to keep you happy. Don’t make a mess: You may think you’re helping by piling up your scraps and dishes. "You are not helping. You are sabotaging. ... Leave it. Let us get it.” Stay out of the kitchen: Self-explanatory. Don’t be like this guy, who Breslin thinks is both "self-indulgent" and "arrogant."