When Your Server Loses a Fight to a Houseplant

Last week, I went out for my birthday. Great restaurant. Amazing food. The kind of place where you expect the service to match the steak.

We had a larger group, so they pushed two tables together. No big deal… until we apparently disturbed the sacred geometry of the dining room floor plan. Because in doing so, one end of the table wound up next to a large, leafy plant—think: oversized, decorative shrub with delusions of grandeur.

Turns out, that was the side of the table the server usually works from. Emphasis on “usually,” because she made it painfully clear that change—even the mild inconvenience of walking around the table—wasn’t on her menu.

Instead of adapting, she spent the night audibly griping, huffing, and attempting to serve through the plant. Not around it. Not over it. Through it. She shoved it. She leaned over it. She acted like it personally offended her.

I watched glasses nearly topple, bread baskets graze leaves, and a cocktail almost get baptized in dirt. Meanwhile, the busboy and food runner (clearly the only people with a functioning GPS) simply walked to the other side of the table and did their jobs efficiently. No drama. No fern warfare.

Here's the punchline: this wasn’t a logistics problem. It was a habit problem.

The server was so entrenched in “how she always does it” that she couldn’t see the easy fix right in front of her. It wasn’t blocked by the plant. It was blocked by her mindset.

Business owners, listen up:

If your team can’t pivot—literally or figuratively—your customers will feel the friction. They won’t complain to you (unless they’re like me), but they will notice. And the next time they’re deciding where to spend their money, they’ll remember the leaf-in-the-soup experience.

Train your people to think, not just follow muscle memory.

Because if someone can’t figure out how to walk around a table, what are the chances they’ll solve a real problem when it actually matters?

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