Kradek posted... Doesn't bother me at all. I love cheese and enjoy spreading its goodness.
The jokes do tend to get repetitive and stale, but nothing that would actually upset me.
I admittedly do that sometimes myself. When everybody except one person at a table gets cheese I'll unusually refer to them as "a rebel" because the vast majority of people definitely want cheese. The table tends to laugh at it and that's what matters, though at this point it's kind of reflexive and automatic on my part.
Some people get oddly invested into it on a very personal level, though.
This one elderly woman told me she was tipping me more specifically because I remembered she didn't want cheese for her soup refills.
Not complaining or anything, it just felt odd that that would be something that was worthy of an extra tip.
I also always make sure to bring a fresh block whenever I take the grater and question how my coworkers can just take random graters that look like they have basically no cheese left. I make it a point to never run out at a table and so far only 1 that I can remember came close to taking the entire block.
That's also a go-to joke when they bring up the cheese, usually asking if I made sure I have enough.
This particular waitress I overheard also stopped grating on her own, rather than "say when" so it definitely seemed like something she hated doing. And even though I'm the customer and have every right to, it would've felt rude to ask her to continue when she clearly didn't want to. So yeah maybe it's an isolated incident but I had to ask because I'm pretty sure the conversation of the cheese grater comes up at the table every time I've ever been at an Olive Garden lol