I've been burned enough times that I've had to build systems for evaluating people. The busser test is one of them. It's not original to me — lots of operators have a version of it. But the version I run is specific, and the principle behind it is load-bearing in how I think about loyalty, trust, and character.
What I'm actually watching for
When I'm at a business dinner with someone I'm evaluating, I pay attention to the whole interaction arc with the service staff. Not just the moment they order. The whole arc.
Eye contact. Does the person look at the server when they're ordering, or do they treat the server like a vending machine? The people who can't meet a server's eyes are telling you something about how they see people in transactional relationships.
Please and thank you. Simple words. Free to say. A shocking number of successful people skip them entirely when talking to service staff. Not all of them. But enough that when I notice it, I'm already halfway to a "no."
The water refill moment. When the busser comes to refill water mid-conversation, does the person pause, nod, and acknowledge the busser's existence? Or do they keep talking through the interaction as if the busser were a ghost? This is the single most revealing moment in the whole dinner.
The mistake recovery. Every restaurant has moments where something goes wrong. The wrong dish, the missing side, the spilled water. I'm watching how my dinner guest handles it. Grace under minor inconvenience is a better predictor of how they'll handle a crisis than 20 pages of due diligence.
I'm not looking for sainthood. I'm looking for the baseline respect that a fully formed adult extends to another adult who happens to be in a service role at that moment. If that baseline is missing, everything that comes next in our relationship is going to be colored by it, and I don't want to find out the hard way.
Why this matters more than pedigree
I've done deals with people with every credential you can name. Harvard MBAs. ex-McKinsey. Forbes 30 Under 30. Board members of nonprofits. Family wealth. And I can tell you, with a straight face, that the credentials predicted almost nothing about whether the deal would go well.
You know what did predict it? How they treated people who couldn't do anything for them. The ones who were gracious with the busser ended up being gracious with me when a deal went sideways. The ones who were short with the busser ended up being short with me when the pressure was on. It was that consistent. It was almost eerie how consistent it was.
There's a reason for this. Character under pressure is not a new personality. It's the old personality, under load. If someone can't extend basic respect when it costs them nothing, they definitely won't extend it when it costs them something.
You can fake a meeting. You can fake a pitch. You can fake a quarterly update. You can't fake how you treat the person refilling your water while you're busy impressing someone else.
The trust wound that taught me this
I'm not going to name names, but I had a business partner earlier in my career who I stayed in business with way too long. The warning signs were there. I missed them — or more accurately, I saw them and told myself they didn't matter. And the relationship eventually broke in a way that cost me a significant amount of money, and more importantly, a significant amount of trust in my own judgment about people.
Looking back, I can see every moment I should have acted differently. One of them — and I think about this one the most — was a business dinner where I watched this partner be dismissive to a server. Not aggressive. Just dismissive. The kind of dismissiveness that says "you don't fully exist to me." I remember noting it at the time and rationalizing it away, because the business opportunity was interesting and the partner was, by every other conventional measure, impressive.
That dismissiveness was not an isolated moment. It was a preview of how I would eventually be treated when the partner decided our interests had diverged. The character that showed up at the dinner was the same character that showed up in the financial dispute. I should have trusted the first data point and walked. I didn't. I paid for that decision for years.
Now I trust the first data point. Every time.
Why my altruism score is 13 (and why that's not coldness)
My motivators assessment puts my altruism at 13 out of 100. The US norm is about 44. On paper, that looks like a cold number. The coaching interpretation is that I'm pragmatic about trust — I require mutual benefit before I invest in a relationship.
Here's the real story behind that number. I am not cold. I am scar tissue. The 13 isn't a personality trait I was born with. It's the calibration of a man who has been burned enough times to know that unconditional trust is a luxury most operators can't afford. You guard trust because you've seen what happens when you don't. You grant it carefully, and when you grant it, you grant it fully. The people inside my trust circle get everything. The people outside get professionalism and nothing more.
The busser test is the gate. It's the cheapest, most honest way to evaluate whether a person is going to be inside or outside the circle. And it takes about 45 minutes over dinner to run.
Do what you say, say what you do
The other half of the loyalty code is simpler but harder to execute: do what you say, say what you do. It's a phrase I repeat to myself, to my team, and to anyone I work with. It is the operating principle that makes loyalty possible, because loyalty without reliability is just affection — and affection will not survive the first real pressure test.
Do what you say: if you commit to something, do it. Not 80% of it. Not a slightly different version that's easier. The actual thing you committed to, in the way you committed to it, by the time you committed to.
Say what you do: don't hide your work, your intentions, or your decisions from the people you're in relationship with. Say the thing you mean, even when it's awkward. Say the bad news before it becomes a surprise. Say the hard thing so the other person doesn't have to guess what you're thinking.
Cynthia Cooper at WorldCom and Sherron Watkins at Enron — I wrote about them elsewhere — did the corporate version of this. They said what they saw, when they saw it, to the people who needed to hear it. It cost them. But they told the truth while everyone around them was performing. That's the courage required to run the loyalty code at scale.
The challenge
What does the person you're most loyal to know about you that nobody else does?
If the answer is "nothing" — if even your most loyal relationship is curated — you're carrying your character at arm's length, even from the people closest to you. That's exhausting. And it means your loyalty is shallower than you think, because loyalty without vulnerability is just transaction dressed up.
The loyalty code is simple: treat bussers like humans, do what you say, say what you do, and let the people you're closest to actually see you. That's it. That's the whole thing. It sounds like a greeting card until you realize how few people actually run it, and how much of the game is won by the ones who do.
The potential of the human spirit shows up in how we treat the person with nothing to offer us. Everything else is downstream of that.