Does it ever feel like we live in a world with no human interaction? At grocery stores we do self-checkout, we hardly ever set foot inside a bank anymore, and so much of our shopping in general is done online. Other than maybe the people we live with, much of our contact with others is through a screen. Even in my own home, I’ve been known to text my husband in the next room to ask him a question.

Whenever any of us calls a business, we’re greeted by a disembodied voice telling us what number we should press to get the information we need. “Press one for store hours, press two for our address.” There’s very seldom another person on the other end of the line. Pressing zero or screaming “Speak to a representative!” doesn’t even do the trick anymore. Even with our friends, most of our conversations are in a series of text messages. Occasionally, it’s a voicemail or even a voice text, but most of the time it’s words on a screen.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I miss speaking to people. At least in a restaurant, it’s still a tangible experience. We use our own voice to tell another human being what we’d like to order and then that very same person brings the food to us and asks if we need anything else. We can smell, taste, and touch the general restaurant experience. Yes, there are restaurants where you probably order your food from a screen at the table and then it arrives later conveyed by a robot, but for the most part, restaurants are still places where there is human-to-human contact. Maybe that’s part of the reason restaurants are so important in our lives and even more so in this digital age.

I remember once when I was serving a multigenerational family who were celebrating an occasion like an anniversary or a birthday. I could tell it was a really important meal for them and something inside me clicked that made me want to make it as special as possible for them. It was one of those times I imagined it was my own family that I was serving and it made it personal for me. I anticipated their needs, bantered with the kids, and when I wrapped up their food to go, I drew on the to-go boxes a picture of a cow for the leftover steak and a chicken for the leftover chicken tenders.

I don’t remember what they tipped me, but I do remember a man at the table, shaking my hand as he left, thanking me for everything I had done for them. It was a human-to-human moment that ended with a physical interaction and it was nice.

I’ve never been a huge fan of handshakes because it always feels like the other person is judging me based on the strength of my grip. My ninth grade tennis coach, Mr. Robinson, can confirm that my grip is that of a wet noodle. One waiter I worked with for several years always wanted to shake my hand each morning when I got to work. His grip was that of a vise and he seemed to enjoy inflicting pain on my delicate hand. I finally told him one day, “Pietro, you don’t need to squeeze my hand so hard every day. I literally saw you yesterday. It’s fine!”

Ever since the pandemic, handshakes seem even more unnecessary. Enter the fist bump: knuckle to knuckle, skin-to-skin contact without all the awkwardness of two palms pressing up against each other. While the fist bump does seem exceedingly “bro-like,” I think I like it better than the alternative. Surely we have fewer germs on our knuckles than our fingers, right?

A few months ago, someone I didn’t recognize in my neighborhood greeted me with a fist bump. “You used to be my waiter when I was a kid,” he said. It was a fully grown adult telling me this and I hadn’t worked at this neighborhood restaurant for almost five years. His fist bump told me I had left an impression on him sometime in the 10 years I had worked there. It was just a fist bump, but it felt meaningful.

The next time you eat in a restaurant, I want you to appreciate the humanness of it all. Your server will never ask you to press one for a refill or press two for dessert. They won’t send you a text message. There will be no FaceTime. And if you want to shake your server’s hand for a job well done, please remember they might prefer a fist bump. But I think we can all savor a tiny bit of human-to-human interaction just as much as we can savor the taste of a restaurant meal.

How to Get Better Service