What exactly is a server’s job: To make the guest comfortable and to deliver what is requested. Deciding how friendly to be and what to say and what constitutes a greeting is always critical in making dining out a positive experience, but sometimes the line gets blurred in such a dramatic fashion you wonder if you’re living a soap opera.

Dining alone last evening, I met the ultimate challenge: What I wanted to say; what I said. As I got comfortable in my chair, the server approached and brought a wonderfully chilled water. He asked if I wanted anything else to drink, and I responded I’d like to look at the wine-by-the-glass list. As he handed over the booklet, he asked, now be sitting down here and don’t be drinking: What is your last name? The conversation continued:

You want to know my last name? Yes. Why? I just like to have a better contact communication with my guests. I’m thinking to myself that something’s off here. He stands; he waits; he looks. I look back. I want quiet and no interference but he’s going nowhere. I quickly run through a long list of last names I might like to give him, and then I just tell him mine.

That little interchange was so bizarre and troubling. If he was trying to give off the friendly gene, he missed. Just for the record, he never addressed me by name, but he never went away either. Maybe he’s writing a book of last names. Beats me. Just inappropriate. He was a hoverer; someone who knew no bounds. That is an inappropriate question for a server to ask a diner unless they’re in the middle of a true conversation, or not. Sure I could have said a thousand things, but I let politeness rule. It was just weird; plain old weird.

There was no manager around. Really what would I have said: You have an intrusive waiter who is asking questions that have nothing to do with why I am here. No. That would not have solved his efforts at personalizing the experience.

So odd. So unsettling.

Sometimes too much attention is more disturbing than having to wave down a staff person.

Remember it’s the balance; the ability to read the guest.

My last name.

Seriously, it’s Rumpelstiltskin.