Servers Know the Wet Rag Is the Ultimate Power Move at Closing Time

My first food service job, the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, I worked the register at a Portillo’s, a beloved Chicagoland burger and hot dog chain. The two most popular menu items were the Italian Big Beef sandwich and the Italian Beef and Sausage Combo. The one thing that customers liked almost as much as ordering those sandwiches was making a little joke about their names. I got pretty sick of this quickly. 

Management also made me cover up my eyebrow ring with a Band-Aid every shift, so I was irritable to start with, and a lot of people liked to ask me “What happened to the other guy?” after they got off their sausage combo zingers. Once I said “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” to a customer after he made the joke, and my manager pulled me off the register to chew me out for 15 minutes. 

I learned where the line was pretty quickly after that – how to respond to somebody bugging you in a way that let off steam, yet with sufficient plausible deniability that they couldn’t get you in trouble for it, and ideally wouldn’t even consciously register as irritation. 

It was a good job, aside from the Band-Aids and the beef riffs. I got to eat a free cheeseburger every afternoon, plus a woman named Voola who worked at the Barnelli’s pasta bowl counter always saved me a free loaf of bread to take home with me, so I didn’t want to get fired for mouthing off. 

The stock phrase that means I want you to leave

This was the stock phrase that served me well: “Just so you know, we’re closing in 20 minutes.” 

If you have ever worked in the kind of restaurant where the kitchen closes an hour before the rest of the joint, then you have likely experienced the involuntary sundowning of your “helpful server” personality and the subsequent development of a Mr. Hyde-style replacement, who fears neither God nor man and lives only to see the restaurant empty of all signs of human existence. 

My next job after Portillo’s was at that kind of place. It was a local institution, an all-day cafe in Silicon Valley located right behind a train station, and it was almost always crowded. Between the hours of 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., I mostly liked waiting tables. I liked bustling around instead of being stuck behind a register, I liked seeing how many plates I could safely balance on each arm, I liked treating requests for hot sauce as a fun little favor I was pulling for my particular buddies despite “the man.” I liked talking to people, and I liked eating free french fries that people left behind. 

Once the kitchen closed, everything I valued changed. My job was no longer to talk to people and bring them food, but to sweep the restaurant clean of its natural enemies, namely customers. The catchphrase for this mental shift was “Just so you know, we’re closing in 20 minutes.” 

There is an art to the coded hint. Too explicit, and you risk losing a tip, or worse, having your manager talk to you afterwards. I almost never had managers who yelled, which I might have preferred; I always ended up with the kind who pull you aside to talk to you, very seriously and very gently and at eye-watering length about the importance of respect, courtesy, and taking things seriously, and how can we make sure this doesn’t happen again? The collaborative “we” was the worst part. In some ways getting chewed out was preferable because at least it was over with faster.

If I was warning a group of lingerers that I had previously liked, when I was still in my right mind, I might offer them the opportunity to order a last round of beer or dessert before I brought them the check, or phrase it as if I were letting them in an exciting secret: “Hey, I just wanted to let you guys know that we’re closing in 20,” the implication being, “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but I wanted you to hear about it before anybody else. We have to close. Yeah, it’s a real drag. I don’t want to. I wish you guys could stay forever. You know how it is. But if you want a slice of cake or something, I’ll steal it for you. I know how to do it without anyone noticing. I don’t care if I get in trouble. You’re worth it.” 

The nonverbal trick to getting customers to leave

Everyone else just got the announcement. If they didn’t take the hint right away, I’d come back and repeat myself in 10 minutes, this time wielding a wet rag and aggressively wiping down nearby tables: You’re still here? I need to wipe all the tables down with this wet rag! 

That always did the trick. The clean, wet rag is the universal sign of the server’s final authority, because it means you’re a cleaner now. I no longer live to serve; I live to wipe the crumbs away, and that includes customers. The cooks are all heading home. The busboys are long gone. Management is a distant memory. It’s just me and the rag now, friends.  

You hate to have to use it – it’s such an overpowered weapon in the table-waiting arsenal – but sometimes they drive you to it.