When I was a teenager waiting tables in a series of Italian eateries of wavering quality, I would have leapt at the chance to replace myself with an iPad, as Applebee’s has recently rolled out. The meals I served back then were generally not “cooked” so much as they were “poured from a slit in a bag and reheated,” and the only thing that made me sadder than people ordering the food was people liking it. That flashing electronic device at each table may sound disheartening, but it’s less depressing than an actual human pretending she likes working at Applebee’s. But there is much to be learned in the service industry, and at 23, I finally got a job at a restaurant I adored and admired, a Madison, Wis., farm-to-table place named L’Etoile that was trumpeting its local sourcing about 30 years before everyone else except Alice Waters. Surely the guests at such a restaurant would be gracious, even blissful. Surely we would bond over the love of fine food that had brought u...