Exactly this . I ' ve had decent to good experiences , and cannot recall any actually terrible service off hand . I travel regularly London , NY , HK and the primary differentiator would seem to be more cultural . Portland has so many tremendously good food options . that happen to be run by normal people , at a comparably normalish prices and with normal , sincere service coupled with our widespread selfservice culture that the only way I would buy that complaint is if they ' re comparing it to their idea of obsequious and disengaged service . I would blame it on a culture where more people themselves have been servers or at least get it , and therefore there tends to be more social expectation to clean up after yourself self service or not and other general manners that you might find , for example eating at a friends house , than being served . Tldr attitude .