Great hospitality is about controlled magic, not contained mayhem. A team working in sync with a room full of strangers offers the illusion that the entire evening is seamless and effortless. When it works, guests feel looked after without noticing the mechanics behind it. The timing is right, the service unobtrusive, the energy warm. For a moment, they believe the universe revolves around their table and them.
But that illusion rests on an unspoken contract between restaurant and guest. Increasingly, that contract is breaking. Phones and selfies dominate the table. Children wander around the dining room unchecked. Meals are filmed more than they are eaten. Some guests treat restaurants as backdrops for content, others as stages for their own performance. This behaviour isn’t entirely new, but is becoming routine and ever harder to manage.
Once, experienced floor leaders absorbed the friction. A Maître D’ could redirect a situation with authority and charm. A senior server or bartender knew how to diffuse tension before it spread. Today, such professionals are rare, often stretched thin or pulled off the floor entirely. Without them, responsibility falls on less experienced staff who lack both the authority and the support to hold the room together.
The guest’s side of the contract has also shifted. Long before Covid, technology and consumer culture were reshaping expectations. Social media rewards the individual over the collective. The rise of customization, once a hallmark of service, has been warped into the idea that every order should bend entirely to one person’s preferences. After Covid, guests returned impatient, out of practice in social norms, and a lot more entitled. Meanwhile, restaurants returned with leaner teams and less seasoned leadership. The result is a service environment where staff face more disruption but with fewer tools to manage it.
This is where the old mantra, “the guest is always right,” begins to show its cracks. It was never true. Guests can be wrong, misinformed, or simply acting out. What great professionals know is how to make guests feel right without undermining the standards of the house. That requires what might be called benevolent authority, meaning assertiveness wrapped in warmth and professionalism. It’s the skill of setting boundaries with charm. But that skill is impossible to exercise if leadership doesn’t back the team.
Too often, teams are told to “just make them happy.” The default solution becomes comped desserts, apologies on repeat, and giving way to unreasonable demands. Short-term, it defuses the moment. Long term, it drains morale, drives turnover, and erodes the culture and standards. The hidden cost of endless appeasement is not the free dessert but the loss of talented people unwilling to work in a system where their dignity isn’t protected.
Hospitality is not and has never been about servitude, it’s about a skill and balance. A mutual exchange, where the restaurant delivers thoughtful service and the guest brings basic respect for the shared space. When that balance holds, the dining room thrives. When it breaks, staff feel unsupported, standards slip, and the atmosphere turns awkward. Every operator knows the difference between a room humming with conviviality and one that feels like a powder keg waiting for a spark.
For restaurant owners and managers, the path forward is not about doubling down on slogans or tightening rulebooks. It’s about investing in human leadership on the floor. That means training leaders to manage people as much as service flow. It means empowering staff to make judgment calls rather than forcing them into rigid scripts. And most importantly, it means creating a culture where dignity is valued on both sides of the table.
The guest is not always right. But handled properly, they should leave feeling as if they were, because the team was skilled, fully supported, and there confident enough to manage the situation without compromise.
That’s the standard the hospitality trade must recover. Not deference at all costs, but dignity for both guest and team.
Image Credit: https://churrascophuket.com
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Churrasco Phuket Steakhouse serves affordable Wagyu and Black Angus steaks and burgers. We are open daily from 12noon to 11pm at Jungceylon Shopping Center in Patong / Phuket.
We are family-friendly and offer free parking and Wi-Fi for guests. See our menus, reserve your table, find our location, and check all guest reviews here:
https://ChurrascoPhuket.com/
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