student by day, foodie by night

having worked in restaurant for the past 10 years, i know a thing or two about dining out, and not only that, i probably eat out 300 out of the 365 nights of the year. i have had my fair share of bad servers, which i expect, even though having worked in the biz for years, i still can't stiff a server no matter how bad it is, but the crazy/nutty server is a whole other beast. it's almost worse for me to have a server who gives too much information and wants to chat you up, than one who just plain sucks, it freaks me out. we went out not too long ago and had this server who would point out to us all the things she was doing wrong. she set down the plate on the side of the table and knocked something off and she said something along the lines of, "oh, i shouldn't have set that plate there" but it was more in depth, and you could see she was mentally thiking, "stupid, i'm so stupid!" anyways, we had a server tonight who was slammed at the dinner hour. no big deal. we walked in at the same time as like 50 other people and there was really no wait, so pretty much, everyone got sat at the same time. i realize this and don't get very bothered by it at all. who cares if the manager is the one getting us drinks and taking our orders, that's kinda what they're there for. fianlly, the server shows up, asks what we were having to drink so that she could get our refills, than apologizes profusely for the wait. i assure her, no big deal. then, every time she comes by our table, she keeps telling us how we're this amazingly forgiving table. look, we didn't do anything special, we were seated, we didn't even wait that long, but then she starts bad-mouthing the other tables and saying how the were all angry, and whenever she walks by, she keeps saying all this flaky weird stuff to us. you know, i come from fine dining here, i'm from the school where servers shouldn't be seen much less heard. now, i don't want an inattentive server, but one who refills the water and drinks without my asking or noticing. if i feel like having friendly banter, one who will reciprocate, but not tell me their life story. is that too much to ask? i mean, i'm having a family dinner here. i don't need to know tht all the other diners in the restaurant are having hissy fits about the wait. it was exhausting. the meal was good, and i was up in arms about what tip to leave, so i just left my standard 20%. oh well. tomorrow i'll go to a different restaurant.