Of all the American vernacular for job titles, “server” is probably the one that makes my poor Aussie brain glitch most frequently. While you’re wondering why people are bringing you a meal in the office, I’m looking at the same sentence and wondering why diners are being forced to work as sysadmins over dinner.
Yeah, I tend to use “staff” or sometimes “waitstaff” to describe them, particularly in cafes, where the owner and/or manager might also be waiting tables. “Waiter” or “waitress” I’d mostly use when recounting something that happened while eating out, and I’m trying to specify who’s who in the story.
There’s nothing wrong with “server”, per se, other than that we already had an established set of words for that role, and a server was also an existing word for a piece of IT equipment prior to US vernacular shifting (somewhere between the 90s and the 2010s, I think - we’ve always had a lot of US media pumped into Australia, but the vocab used to align on this one when I was a kid, and then at some point it changed).
Not saying Americans should do things the way we do it (vive la difference), just that the linguistic shift still throws me off. It would probably confuse me less if you’d always called them servers.
We also use waiter/waitress, maître d’, and sometimes steward/stewardess (esp. on airplanes). There’s technically a difference:
waiter/waitress - brings food
server - person the customer interacts with (i.e. takes orders)
maître d’ (hotel) - head of wait staff
steward/stewardess - serving customers is usually a secondary duty
I think “server” has become more popular because it’s gender neutral, but “waiter/waitress” is still quite common and most don’t make the distinction between the two.
I personally like the overlap between computer server and restaurant server because both exist to provide things upon request. The term “wait” that “waiter” comes from is pretty archaic.
Of all the American vernacular for job titles, “server” is probably the one that makes my poor Aussie brain glitch most frequently. While you’re wondering why people are bringing you a meal in the office, I’m looking at the same sentence and wondering why diners are being forced to work as sysadmins over dinner.
What’s wrong with “server”? They serve you food, much like a computer server serves files.
I think it’s much better than “waiter” (which we also use) because I want them to bring food, not wait.
It makes me think of a machine, not a person. I prefer to just use “staff”
Yeah, I tend to use “staff” or sometimes “waitstaff” to describe them, particularly in cafes, where the owner and/or manager might also be waiting tables. “Waiter” or “waitress” I’d mostly use when recounting something that happened while eating out, and I’m trying to specify who’s who in the story.
Hmmm, well, the “wait” in waiter/waitress/waitstaff refers to the act of serving someone, usually in a restaurant or cafe. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/wait-on?topic=providing-and-serving-meals.) Like a lot of words in English, “wait” has more than one meaning.
There’s nothing wrong with “server”, per se, other than that we already had an established set of words for that role, and a server was also an existing word for a piece of IT equipment prior to US vernacular shifting (somewhere between the 90s and the 2010s, I think - we’ve always had a lot of US media pumped into Australia, but the vocab used to align on this one when I was a kid, and then at some point it changed).
Not saying Americans should do things the way we do it (vive la difference), just that the linguistic shift still throws me off. It would probably confuse me less if you’d always called them servers.
We also use waiter/waitress, maître d’, and sometimes steward/stewardess (esp. on airplanes). There’s technically a difference:
I think “server” has become more popular because it’s gender neutral, but “waiter/waitress” is still quite common and most don’t make the distinction between the two.
I personally like the overlap between computer server and restaurant server because both exist to provide things upon request. The term “wait” that “waiter” comes from is pretty archaic.