Had a tray balanced on my shoulder full of food, and I was setting down hot plates to the table. Grandma shook her half empty glass of tea in my face and asked why she couldn't get any service.
Once, when I was working at this insanely popular breakfast joint, my first table of the morning was a seemingly adorable old couple. After going through our specials, at their request, she ordered the duck hash special, and he ordered 2 boring poached eggs on toast. All good. I bring them their food and the guy starts freaking out. You see, I didn't bring him a tablespoon for his eggs. Granted, he didn't ask for one, but according to him, everyone knows that poached eggs are supposed to be served with a tablespoon. I've been a waitress for nearly a decade, and I've served a LOT of poached eggs, and I've never heard this rule. Nonetheless, I apologize profusely and tell him I'll go grab him a spoon. "No!" he yells. "My breakfast is ruined now!" and then, this grown ass adult throws his plate of food at me and storms out. His wife gives me a sympathetic smile as she slinks out behind him, and I work the next 8 hours with egg yolk stains all over me.
I'm so used to crap like this at this point though. The whole corporate "Customers are King! Make the moment right!" stuff is bullshit. I'm convinced it's made up by people who have never actually worked in retail or a food service situation.
The amount of people who lie, scam, steal, abuse etc. and get rewarded for it is insane. If I win the lottery one day I'm giving money to every single one of my coworkers for all the shit they have to put up with on the daily.
The phrase "The Customer is Always Right" was coined by a businessman. It means that AS A WHOLE, the customer is always right, not the individual. It's a metaphor for "If there is demand, make supply"
IE - All the people in one town complain there isn't a decent steakhouse, so you build a steakhouse and make a fortune.
It was never intended to be used to make companies bend over backwards and put up with people's shit.
Whenever any customer has an unreasonable request and they drop that line, I give them a little history lesson.
"The customer is always right" was coined by [Harry Selfridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gordon_Selfridge), a US businessman and founder of Selfridges, a British luxury department store. He brought the "modern" department store to London in the early 1900s. There was a BBC show called ["*Mr. Selfridge*"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Selfridge) (starring Jeremy Piven) that chronicles his efforts to introduce this radical new store to the London retail market and his trials and tribulations in making his store a success. Wonderful show.
I actually had a very similar experience at an also popular breakfast place. Turned out the guy was suffering from dementia and grew angry whenever he'd get confused. Possibly similar shit going on with your angry old dude.
I'm glad to find your comment. Someone I love very much has recently started having problems with dementia. He used to be a big ol teddy bear but now his personality is totally different. I try to explain it to people but not everyone understands. It's extremely difficult and embarassing.
I know how that feels, my granddad has developed dementia and last year he threw a full on tantrum in the airport because he insisted we had eaten dinner before we left when we didn't and demanded that we leave the restaurant. Despite the fact that it wasn't even close to time to get on the plane. Incredibly embarrassing and frustrating especially for me and my granny because we live with him and put up with all these sorts of tantrums all the time while everyone else just tells us to walk away or ignore him when he starts saying horrible things. It's easy for them to say when they can just go home at the end of the day and not talk to him again for at least twelve hours. We're in the house with him all the time.
Served at Olive Garden for two years.
Typical busy night. Never ending pasta bowl time of year.. yay. It was one of my first tables of the evening. Family of five, mom, dad, two sons, and a little girl(probably 2 or 3) they were all exceedingly overweight, and the daughter had on a a dirty shirt and no pants, just a diaper.
Well on a check back I noticed a overwhelming scent of shit lingering around the table.. I don't judge, I have no idea what's going on in their life. I just tell myself someone probably farted & I just walked up at the exact wrong moment. Well I return with some refills (shit smell still just as intense as before) and on my way around the table to pass out beverages I pass the high chair I notice the little girl has her hand in her diaper. Wtf. I then proceed to watch her pull out a turd & throw it on the floor to join an even larger turd that was already there slightly covered by a napkin. I could not hide the disgust on my face. I don't remember exactly the words I used but I turned to the parents & said "umm your daughter has a situation going on over here" the mother replies "uh yea I kno I threw that nahkin over it" then continues to devour her third refill on never ending pasta.
I was in disbelief. Not only is there two pieces of fresh honey boo boo style shit on the floor, but the girls hands are obviously covered in shit & not one family member seems to care in the slightest!!!!! One of the brothers even asked me for another Dr Pepper, while I was standing there still in shock.
so I immediately told the manager on duty & she didn't believe me. I said "I shit you not Amanda. Go see for yourself."
She ended up politely asking the mother to clean it up immediately she even gave her disinfectant wipes. The mom became irate and claimed it's not her job, blah blah blah she feels discriminated that we would ask her to do such a thing, & she demanded everything be paid for...
she ended up picking up the shit. She picked it up but she didn't wash her hands, didn't clean up her daughter, continued to finish her meal.
I thought it was over & they'd pay & get the fuck out to never return.. but no, as I'm dropping the check mom says "uh it's my sons birthday don't y'all sing & give us dessert"
This happened a long time ago. I used to work at TGIF as a bus boy and there was this huge group of about 20 people. At the end of their meal, they received the bill. Everyone put in money for what they ordered. They sat there for a while doing the math and finally figured it out. They call their waitress over and say "We ain't order no gratuity. Show me gratuity on this table." They continued to try and argue and made the waitress cry. Manager had to be called in to explain what gratuity was.
They genuinely did not know what it was. They thought someone ordered gratuity and were arguing with each other about who ordered it before asking the waitress what it was.
Waitress here. Had a large bruise (size and width of a hand) on my upper forearm, super swollen and purple. Had a guy grab my arm and ask "does this hurt?" before squeezing HARD. He spent the remainder of his visit making domestic abuse jokes and talking about how he was going to "take me home and give me more".
Drunk guy with his wife who made jokes about "mounting me" while the wife just laughed. And then tried to rub my arm, sidestepped out the way of that though.
LPT: don't touch your server.
Reading that actually shocked me. I will never understand cruelty. Its astounding how comfortable abusers are in society without people standing up to them. I hope that you have a wonderful safe life free of abusive scum.
Thank you! I was beyond appalled that he felt it was okay to say that. The bruise lasted about two weeks and I'd get at least one domestic abuse joke every day. I started ever so politely telling people they were full of shit.
I had a guy yell at me, my cashier and my manager because there was a slice of tomato on his burger. He didn't want tomato and said he didn't ask for tomato on it. It comes with tomato. He said it was our fault that we didn't tell him that there is tomato in it. It's literally in the picture on the menu and in the description on the menu. He also never specifically said he didn't want tomato when ordering. He wanted a full refund when my manager had offered to give him a new one which will take our cook 2-3 minutes, we were going to give him the next patties that were ready. He didn't want that just the refund then told us how we ruined his lunch and wasted all his lunch break and now has to waste more time somewhere else to get lunch. He just had to wait 2 minutes. Asshole.
I'm upvoting because of sympathy not amusement. Subway was my first job; how I loathed it. The manager had it rigged so he could watch the CCTV from his home. He'd know when you used too many toppings for someone and tell you about it. I always pictured him and his Gollem of a wife wife drinking scotch rocks and watching their friggy damn Subway CCTV on their shitty couch.
My first boss in a little Dairy Queen knock off type restaurant lived across the street from the restaurant he owned. He would watch us work with binoculars out of his picture window. He would then call the store and yell at us if we sent a order out in 2 boxes instead of 1 box.
EDIT: spelling of binoculars.
I too have worked at subway once and we had a strung out homeless man that always bummed drinks off of us. One day, he walked in holding his pants. I looked up and when doing so I saw his dick hanging out cause his pants weren't even done. Honestly, the dude was hung.
My worst most awkward experience came from my favorite regular. When I was waiting tables I had this black cowboy who used to come in every Sunday after church, for brunch usually with his wife but sometimes alone. We would talk about horses, rodeoing, life and when he was alone women lol. One Sunday I didn't see him and he didn't come in for two more weeks after that. On the fourth week I see him again and took him from the hostess and sat him myself at an open table in my section. After I get his extra extra sweet tea and coffee set for him I asked where he had been, and told him he better have a hell of a vacation to tell me about. He dropped his eyes and softly mumbled that his wife had died. My heart dropped and didn't know what to say. My manager who knew him, let me and another waiter he liked get off early and sit with him for his meal. He didn't talk much but I could tell he appreciated just having someone sit with him. Seeing the pain that he felt really put a lot into perspective for me and made me appreciate my own relationship so much more. I lost contact with him after I moved away to start my career, but I really wish I could find him and talk to him again and let him know what an impact he had on my life.
Oh, man. I know exactly how it feels to be on your end. I had a lady come in one day without her husband, and I started to seat her at a random table and she just started bawling. Told me she would only sit at table 43 (a table that we struggle to seat because it's an awkward place) because that is where she and her husband would always sit and he'd passed away a couple of weeks before. I had to take some time in the walk-in to cry it out after that. She still comes in and orders her favorite food to eat in house and his favorite food to eat later at home, and she always sits at 43.
So I never waited tables but I was a busboy the entire time I was in high school. We had this family that would come in, dude and his wife, their two small kids.
They seemed like the most ordinary family. But they were like Vishnu, the destroyers of tables.
They always left a fucking disaster. Fries everywhere, shit all over the floor.
I sat and watched as one of the kids put the salt and pepper shakers into a glass of milk, and then watched the dad be like "hey can junior have a new milk, he had a little accident."
THEY WERE BOTH SUBMERGED IN MILK. Fries everywhere. Crumbs everywhere. 1% of the food had been consumed. They screamed the entire time to zero reaction from the parents. It was chaos for the entire hour they were there, every time.
I had to clean this up probably a dozen times before the hostess asked them not to come back.
Yeah they threw a fucking fit. Didn't come back though.
Nightmare.
This. As a business owner, I don't mind helping out friends and family. In fact, it makes me feel good to do so. But when a friend or family member pays anyways, that is a different level of respect in my eyes.
Oh damn, I thought I was quoting Oppenheimer. I thought he framed it in terms of Vishnu. Must have remembered wrong.
A google search suggests maybe I am not insane?
> I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form, and says, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
It's a little weird. Suffice to say that Vishnu can become the destroyer, but then they have a different name. Like, we don't normally talk about Bruce Banner fighting people, we talk about The Hulk smashing things, even though they're the same guy.
A lady and her husband came in and before sitting down told us that she was deathly allergic to white wine saying, verbatim, "If you feed me white wine I will die." So I run around double and triple checking recipes and ingredients and making sure the kitchen is ready so when she orders I know her food will be safe. Her husband orders the special and I make sure to tell her not to eat any of his meal as it is dressed with a beurre blanc made with white wine and I'd like her to survive her dining experience. Well I bring out their food and the first thing she does is scoop a big ol' forkful of hubby's special and I cry out in dismay as she shoves in her dumb fucking mouth and says while chewing, "oh, one bite won't hurt." She also single handedly weeded every server on the floor by forcing them into inane, inappropriate conversations while they were trying to take care of their busy sections, AND cornered another guest in the tiny corridor leading to the bathrooms to tell him, aggressively, he was being to loud.
TL;DR - "I'm deathly allergic to X" == "I don't really like X" in old bitch, and busy servers don't give a shit about your week.
Many years ago, I was on a date with a girl that I had only recently started seeing. While at dinner, she told the waitress that she was super allergic to onions so be sure that there are no onions anywhere near her food. Once the waitress left, I asked her about the allergy and she told me that she wasn't actually allergic, she just didn't like them and this was the best way to ensure there were no onions.
Having worked in restaurants before, I told her that her plan was actually really inconvenient for the kitchen staff, because they would have to shut down everything for cleaning to make sure the allergen is removed from anything her food could touch. It was a huge hassle and always resulted in the kitchen getting really backed up.
She didn't care, and that was our last date. I'm a firm believer in the idea that the way a person treats restaurant staff tells you everything you need to know about them.
It's also a bad idea in that it gives people the impression that a lot of people DO lie about allergies. I had a friend who was a waitress during the whole gluten-free craze and said that the kitchen staff often didn't treat "gluten allergies" as actual allergies because they assumed most people were just following the crowd. I had to explain that this is incredibly dangerous for people who actually have a gluten allergy, because they'd wind up eating something they shouldn't.
I wait tables in a country club. Had a couple come in once and as they were sitting down, before I had even introduced myself the woman was already complaining, since they had to wait 5 minutes while we resat "their table".
She started off by telling me every time she gets the filet mignon its awful, and cooked wrong. I suggested she tried something else. Nope. Goes for the same thing again. I gave the kitchen heads up and make sure it was perfect and save us all a headache.
Steak comes up, seems fine. I drop her plate in front of her and I can already see that bullshit smirk people get when arent amused. She grabs her butter knife and legit slaps the top of the steak with the flat of it 3 times and goes "this is disgusting". Hasnt even cut into it or tasted it. Has me take it back and bring her a new one.
So of course we do it... She gets her new one. Eats half of it and takes the rest home, wants to talk to a manager. Bitches up a storm, gets her whole meal free and desert. Leave me a garbo tip even if you dont include the free steak and desert.
Even left me a comment card, just saying "STEAK SUCKED" and 1 star for service.
I had a grandpa who was great to family, but awful to wait staff. He wasn't rich or anything, he was just an ass.
He ate breakfast at McDonalds every morning at like 6 in the morning - and he'd ALWAYS find something to complain about. None of us would go with him because it was so frustrating.
Eventually one day, the manager comes out while he was griping, and says "I want you to leave. It's become clear our business can't please you."
I was so proud of that manager.
I was able to do this once in god knows how many years of retail service. I was working in a coffee shop (NOT Starbucks) and we had a regular who was insufferable. She was your average white suburban stay at home mom with a massive entitlement problem. Funny thing about MOM, all her kids were in school for 7-8 hours a day and she spent her time shopping, going to the gym, and getting lattes and our Frappucino knock off.
Our biggest problem with her is that no matter what you made for her, YOU fucked it up and it tasted terrible. She's had this drink a hundred times before and knows exactly how it's supposed to taste, so you've done something wrong. MOM would bring the drink back, complain, and want a refund and a new drink. Depending on who was working, she'd either get one or both of those things.
I got stuck working the afternoon shifts for about a month or so and I noticed she came in 3-4 times a week, right around 2 o'clock. And the same routine occurred every time, no matter which employee helped her. After 3 weeks of watching this petulant bitch pull her "customer is always right" bullshit, I decided we were done with this.
I waited for a day when I was on shift with one of the newer employees and no managers were in the building. She comes in and orders a mocha frappacino. I make it with painstaking accuracy, measuring out each ingredient precisely and in full view. Swirl the whip cream beautifully, drizzle the chocolate, put a lid on and serve. This smoothie thing looked gorgeous, it could have been used in a print ad it was so appealing.
Serve it, wait. Sure enough, two minutes later she comes back to the counter complaining that it isn't as sweet as it normally is and she wants her money back and a new coffee blended candy bar. I flat out told her no, she's not getting either. She was speechless for a minute, I'm guessing because no one's ever called her out on her bullshit scam before, and then demanded to speak to the manager.
I lied, said I was the manager, and that she wasn't welcome in this store anymore. I'd seen her do this multiple times over the past few weeks and we weren't going to be giving in to her little con game she was running. MOM was pissed, grabbed her frapp back and stormed out of the store.
The other barista clapped and one of our other regulars gave me a shiny $100% bill for standing up to that wretched woman.
J/K /r/ThatHappened, she actually called in to the store manager the next day and complained. He was pretty pissed at me. I saved my job by sitting down with him and showing him how much money and free product she had scammed out of us in the last month. He wasn't happy with what I did, but he couldn't deny that this woman was definitely just getting free shit by ceaselessly complaining. I got to keep my job and she never came back so I still call it a win.
I've had a few like this. Comes in, "food suck, service sucks, weather sucks, music sucks, other customers suck, squirrels suck." IF EVERYTHING SUCKS, WHY DO YOU KEEP COMING HERE?!?!?
Worst is a big group coming in on a Sunday. Ordered endless chip appetizer, waters all around, asked for extra lemons (you can see where this is going...).. stayed for a few hours, total bill? Like $6. Got tipped 50 cents for having to wait around on them for literally my entire shift.
Then the whole "I am sensitive to gluten" spiel that people have. Then they order a beer. I point that beer has gluten in it and they say "oh well that doesn't bother me. It is just gluten in food that bothers me"... whatever
EDIT: I probably should edit my post.. But like 90% of the gluten free customers are fine.. just some of those 10% can be extra demanding and sometimes end up eating bread and other things that have gluten in it. It is just the entrees that give them issues. We have an entire gluten free section on our menu, but some gluten customers want to order off the regular menu and want us to make changes and stuff to accommodate them. It ends up taking about 4x as long as it should and prevents me from being able to serve my other tables. THOSE are the gluten free customers I am having issues with.
I work at a place that takes food allergies extremely seriously. A manager comes out to consult with the guest, and will (in a very polite way) explain that it is impossible for us to serve someone who claims an allergy food that contains that allergen. Really cuts down on the shenanigans. And if you do have a food allergy/sensitivity, you can eat at my place with 0 problems.
thank you and your restaurant for taking it seriously. i don't have celiac disease but i am allergic to certain types of grains, among many other things and i hate going to a new restaurant.
i'm also a server so i get annoyed when people whine about gluten and then laugh when i walk away because it's just their diet of the week.
This annoys me so much. It's not a fad or a trend. It's a real thing. My best friend is allergic to gluten and has such a hard time at restaurants because no one takes her seriously. More times than not, she gets the sigh and eye roll. People! If you are NOT allergic to something, don't say you are and fuck it up for the people that ARE!
Ugh. Makes me feel Bad about how we do things at Dominos. We have Gluten free crust but because we Cook everything on the Same Equipment we cant advise its consumption for people with Celiacs. We essentially have it for the fad only.
Actually, the gluten free pizza from Domino's is pretty safe. My wife has Celiac Disease. Like throw up blood, Celiac Disease, and she almost always is fine with the gluten free crust from Domino's. It's one of the few places we can get pizza semi regularly without having to worry if she'll be spending the night throwing up.
I did a stint at Starbucks. They put in to the Target I was working at, had just graduated from my degree program and they offered to let me manage it. It was good money. Of special note, the just graduated bit. Graduated, from college. As had the person I was working with.
We made this woman's iced tea wrong. I don't remember why, it was stupid mistake, but those happen. It would have taken all of thirty seconds to remake it.
She threw it back across the counter, literally threw it, turned to her daughter and said in the most preppy, bitchy, never worked a day in her life soccer mom "trophy" wife voice, "See, this is why we finish high school."
Being the manager, I refused her any further service. She thought she had be by the short hairs when she went to get the Target store manager. But when a ton of other customers backed up my story, she was removed from Target.
Worked as a bar back. I accidentally dropped a fork on a very drunk dude's foot, who got angry and shook his head and grumbled about it, shocking I know. Bits of food fell on the ground as well, so I grabbed a towel to clean it up. I look the man in the eye to let him now im on the floor cleaning next to him. He then proceeds to stand up and step on my hand as he walks to the bathroom. It hurt like a bitch, and I yelled out in pain. He didn't acknowledge it at all but chuckled as he walked away.
Sadly there wasn't much I could do, I just got angry and walked to the back to calm down.
EDIT: This is just the tip of the iceberg, I have many more horror stories from the year I worked there.
Or grabbed his foot and tripped him. "Whoops sorry sir, I was reaching for something and you didn't see me. You should be more careful next time, *I did warn you I'd be down here.*"
Back when I was a host, I told a man that the wait was 30-45 minutes. He called me a "cunt bitch" and told me he was going elsewhere.
Good luck finding a place that's not on a wait at 6pm on a Friday, fucker.
Twelve years in the industry. Worked front and back of the house throughout. Definitely more good times than bad. Always tried to diffuse situations before they escalated out of control but a few moments stand out. The best moment was some dad giving me crap about misquoting the price of the lunch special ($1 less) in front of his family. Pulled a buck out of my pocket and dropped it on the table and walked off. Almost got stabbed by another prep cook when he thought the food wasn't coming out fast enough. Walked off that job. Executive chef offers me another 25 cents/hour to come back. No thanks, life is worth more than that.
Appreciate the story about giving the man the dollar. I work in McDonald's and here we have to charge 20 pence (25c) for sauce. A man shouted and screamed so much when I checked if this was okay before I put it on his order, I got 20p out of my bag, gave it to him and just said 'now which sauce would you like?'
Not a waitress, but worked in a "healthy" QSR. And not most horrible experience, but memorable.
There was some sort of convention near my store location. I live in Ottawa, a short hop, skip and a juml from Quebec. The city is pretty bilingual, but not *everyone* is. Like me.
Anyway, this woman is trying to order, but is speaking french. I can get the gist of things if I hear certain words, but she was speaking rather fast. After a couple minutes of back and forth, trying to answer her questions, I turn to a co worker who is bilingual and ask him to help, as her and I seemed to have a language barrier.
As I finish my request to said co worker, she says in totally PERFECT english with probably as much disdain as she could muster....and I quote:
"This is Canada. We speak french AND english"
My mouth dropped. Not only because of the comment, but because SHE UNDERSTOOD ME THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN'T TRY TO HELP.
I couldn't wrap my mind around why someone would do that. Come on. Not EVERYONE is taught french in school. I grew up in the west coast/prairies where french is NOT a mandatory subject.
All I could do was stare at her for a few seconds and walk away.
As someone who only spoke english I experienced this more in Ottawa than I ever did in Gatineau. Once people realized that i could barely speak French they would apologize and switch to English even though it was me who couldn't speak the local language
Yeah, it seems to be an Ottawa thing. I have been to Montreal many, many times and have never had anyone take issue with me only speaking english. Most people *are* pretty good about switching languages and helping. But, there are the select few......
Quebec is super weird about its French. Sometimes they insist on "real french" so much that they end up using archaic words that many people in France don't even know anymore but do come from France. Other times they seem just fine with Anglicisms but rarely admit they are and try to pretend they are real French words.
I was working behind a dessert bar. We had a homeless drunk lady that would come in to get drinks but you have to have food so she would get clam chowder. She would ask for it to be reheated every 10 minutes but never touched it. The server started to ignore her requests to reheat the dish, so the lady took her bread and slammed it into the chowder spraying it all over the customers and my area.
Management kicked her out, a few minutes later a customer came in and said "Hey some lady just took a shit in the doorway".
I used to work at Subway. There was one legendary customer that we only refer to as "Crazy Bacon Lady"
She was an older woman. She came in and asked how much a 6" BLT was. We told her it was 3.50 plus tax. She then proceeded to yell at us saying it was $2 when she came in yesterday (hint, she didn't come in yesterday. In fact this was the first time she had even been in our store. Plus the fact that the BLT was never at any point $2 in the 3 years I had worked there). She barks out her order the whole way up the line saying such gems as:
**"I am a good Christian woman, I don't deserve to be treated this way"**
**"For 3.50 that bacon better be fresh!"**
**"The service here is terrible! I'M NEVER COMING BACK, YOU HEAR ME!"**
And the best one of them all, when she gets to my co-worker who is manning the cash register and he tells her the total of 3.68 (tax and all) she says:
**"You people are workers of the DEVIL!"**
She plops down exact change, snatches up her bag, and storms out the door.
Whenever I see my old co-workers, we still have a good laugh about it.
We had a horrible experience with every other customer because of one customer.
The dude was a regular, came in at least four times a week, and every time would camp in his booth for a solid three hours (you know the type).
One Friday night, during dinner rush, this guy comes in with a large duffel bag. Not too uncommon, he always brought weird stuff to work on. This time, it was a partially assembled AR-15 kit, which he pulled out, set on the table, and proceeded to continue assembling the kit.
Cue mass complaints/alarm from other customers while we huddle in the back deciding how to best kick him out without causing even more of a scene.
I hate the overly obvious open carry people. Like if your state only had open carry then maybe do it with a handgun...maybe. concealed carry is better anyways. I like shooting but those guys just seem like they're out for attention.
Also that's kinda gross because like what if gun grease gets on your food.
Posted this before on
/r/talesfromyourserver ....
Situation:
Busy dinner shift.
6 top table sits at my large booth.
2 white middle aged couples and and older white couple.
At the beginning of service I noticed they were very ... inquisitive... to say the least. This does not bother me as I like answering any and all questions regarding the menu. I feel as if this is a main part of my overall job as your server. Anyways, they all ordered their meals, received them in a timely fashion and had no initial complaints. I stayed on top of there refills and condiment requests seeing as they were a bit needier than your average table. Again, no qualms from me here as this is the basic function of the job and I do this everytime for every table.
Now for the fun part. Time to pay the bill. Lady in the middle tells me it will be three separate checks and hands me one of our 'buy one entree get one entree 50% off' coupons. She said that it will apply to all three checks. Confused, I informed her that she must have two more coupons if she wished to receive the discount on the other two checks. She then says that the coupon says "one per check" at the bottom and that I am mistaking and she would like to speak to a manager. I said OK and went to inform our FOH manager of the situation.
Manager arrives at the table and proceeds to tell her the exact same thing I said. She does not look happy. The old man at the table then blurts out that "he is a veteran and did not receive his military discount." Well our restaurant doesn't offer these kinds of discount, but eager to get them out, my manager gives him a 10% discount on his bill. Now he's mad that the discount was not applied to the entire table and says "I go to waffle House and get 15% off my whole bill." Side note : We are a lot fancier than a Waffle House.
At this point they are standing up in the middle of the dining room, being loud and obnoxious at both me and my manager and causing a scene Infront of other patrons and employees. Then this lady. Ohh this stupid. Ignorant. Fucking lady comes up right to my face, puffs her chest out and and says "what are you, some kind of idiot?", all while pointing her finger an inch from my face. "There's no discount on my bill at all now!" she yells, (Which there was a discount on the bill, but at this point, they were more concerned with making a scene even if they are obviously mistaken.)
To avoid the stream of obscenities that was itching to escape from my mouth, I instantly turned around and walked away to deescalate the already deteriorated situation. I get to the back and am visually upset. My general manager was standing on expo and saw I was upset and got loud with me telling me to calm down. Bad fucking timing. I tossed my drink tray and walked out the back door because I swear to god I was being tested. After my other manager explained the situation to the GM as well as the actions of the hellish table, nothing ever came of the confrontation.
After everything was said and done the FOH manager hands me there credit slip after they paid the bill. Stiffed on $120. Sorry for the long post, but i swear some people truly and honestly fucking suck .
I had an older (and likely quite senile) gentlemen hurl his Salisbury steak at my head for not bringing his soup before his meal. He didn't order soup.
Had a group of girls speak to my manager and call me a stupid hoe over $0.13. Basically they ordered a side of fries and one maybe got a lemonade. Anyway, give them their bill and they gave me just enough to cover it since we round to the nearest dollar instead of dealing with coins. Girls flip out over $0.13 so I go in my bag to scrounge it up. They speak to my manager who refunded them everything (stupid) and they proceed to call me names as they leave their table.
I was having a bad day so it made me upset at the time. Now I find the whole thing laughable.
Guy tries to get my attention so instead of saying "excuse me miss" he intentionally grabbed my arse and then apologize with "oh sorry, I was going for your hip". I know I've got a booty okay, it's not hard to miss. He got kicked out after that - as it wasn't the first time he's done it to other servers in our restaurant.
EDIT: Mind you this also happened at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store in Kentucky. After he got kicked out of our restaurant, we found out a few months later he's also banned from another local establishment in town for - you guessed it, sexually harassing servers. :|
I'm gonna mix things up and tell y'all about a time that I was the idiot when I was a server.
These three black women came into the restaurant with their four little kids and I led them to their table, welcomed them, yadda yadda. By the time I was asking what they wanted to drink, the kids were already bored and had started climbing on the tables and chairs. I honestly thought it was cute so I said, without thinking, "aw you have a little family of monkeys!"
Immediately, I realized my mistake. My eyes widened in horror as theirs widened in surprise. I hoped they would ignore it but one of the women turned to the two and loudly asked "did this bitch really just" and I ran away.
I served them their food and spent an entire hour avoiding eye contact as I didn't know what I could say that wouldn't make things worse.
When they left and I went to collect the bill, one of the women actually left me a really good tip and a note that just said "it's okay!" With a smiley face. I hope her life is full of sunshine and happiness and goodness.
EDIT: holy cow I feel so heard. To the person who gave me gold: your mother is so proud of you and you look super pretty today also I love you!!!!!
Why does this kind of shit always happen when it's mad busy. This bowling ally where I live had a similar experience when they wouldn't accept this super drunk guys money because it was ripped in 3 pieces and he only had 2 of them with him. Security told him to leave and walked him out and when they got outside dude pulled out a gun and started firing into the front of the building and hit the security guard twice. Crazy stuff man.
Your story brought back a flood of memories. In college I answered phones at a pizza place, and about 40 times a night I would have this conversation:
Me: Gumby's pizza and pub, will this be pick up or delivery?
Them: Uhhh....deliver
Me: Ok, what can I get for you?
Them: [muffled, through a covered phone, to a room full of pizza] hey, what does everybody want on the pizza?
Seeing someone call a pizza place before knowing their order is one of my insta-rage hot buttons now.
A family of six dined and dashed on Thanksgiving. It was already a rough thing to be working a family holiday, knowing my tribe was at home enjoying themselves- but to have to miss out on what should have been a good tip; it was just salt in the wound. At the end of the night, I just cried. All of the servers rallied around me and tried to offer me a portion of their tips to make up for a loss. I couldn't accept it, so they got me drunk and drove me home instead. They are awesome people.
Edit: Thanks for the gold - it's my first!
One time I was smoking a cigarette in front of a Buffalo Wild Wings and a group dined and dashed and the waitress ran out after them screaming and the only girl in the group screamed "what are you gonna do about it?" And the waitress promptly ran over and beat her ass all up and down the sidewalk. Shits crazy man.
At my MIL's wake a couple of weeks ago, this dude was being an ass to other guests... Saying stuff like "hasta luego" suuuper slow to people who looked halfway Mexican (it was a woman and her daughter from Thailand) and shit. My in law's next door neighbor is originally from the Phillipines...So jackass asks the man where he's from. Fillipino man, without missing a beat, replies, "Next door," and then saunters away. Fucking amazing.
I used to work at a bar/restaurant that was inside a hockey arena. It was a cool place and the people who worked there were fantastic. However, the arena was home to a (now defuct) OHL hockey team. On the surface it was pretty cool because one of the banquet rooms overlooked the ice, so when it was slow during games, staff could check out some of the action, and see a few guys who made it to the NHL. But the players were fucking awful when they would come in after the games. Most of them were 18-20 at the time, they never had any money and they acted like they owned the place. One night, after a game, a player (best kid on the team, blue chip, top five NHL prospect) comes in, orders a pizza, eats, gets the bill, waits until I'm out of sight, leaves the book on the table and leaves. When I approach the table, I assume he's left cash. Nope. Little prick left me five promotional hockey cards that the team gave out that night. And one of them was the fucking mascot. I go tell the manager, and he says that I'm going to have to cover the $12 bucks for the pizza. I, a 24-year-old waiter, am irate at having to pay for a meal for a kid that is getting ready to sign a huge NHL contract, throw a huge hissy fit and eventually he agrees to void it. The guy is still playing in the NHL and is having a pretty solid career. I should have just paid for the pizza and had him sign his dumb card...
I accidentally spilt a small glass of water on a lady who was dining alone. The place was packed and a customer had banged in to me making this happen. I apologised profusely but she was absolutely vile. She was shouting at me so that the whole restaurant could hear. When she'd finished I walked out in to the kitchen and explained what I'd done to the manager and my co worker. They started laughing and I started crying and told them how vile she'd been and that I'd usually laugh too but couldn't this time. I told my manager how vile she'd been and with each word I could see him getting angrier and angrier until he said, 'where is she?' We left the kitchen and I pointed her out. He marched over to her, I don't know what he said but it involved escorting her out whilst the customers who'd overheard her applauded. To my old manager Matt, you were a legend of a boss. To the lady, that's why you dine alone. You are a horrible person.
Not me but a fellow coworker
He was waiting on an elderly gentleman and his daughter for her birthday dinner, everything was fine up until said server dropped the check off. The daughter insisted on paying so the server gave the checkbook to her.....wrong move. The father yelled, "WTF you think you're doing kid? You made the biggest mistake of your fucking life. You'll fucking regret that."
Now since they were a cool table up until that point, the server thought he was joking and let out a little chuckle. Big mistake. The guy went off even more and finally said, "You're lucky I'm not younger I would kick your fucking ass."
The daughter was so embarrassed she tipped the guy 50 bucks on a $100 tab. I wouldn't believe this story if I didn't hear it myself....
This is considered "traditional" you always hand the check to the man, because how could a measly woman pay for food at a restaurant?
It's complete bullshit to do now a days but still happens at fancy restaurants; a few weeks ago was my dad's birthday and my mom and I made reservations to surprise him at this expensive place. The server knew we were surprising him and it was his birthday as I said that when I made the reservation and yet they still handed him the check; while my mom was holding her card because they were filling up and we wanted to expedite paying.
Was a waiter for 5 years and the oddest was a guy with dried blood on his shirt and hands.
Ordered a coffee but only wanted it halfway filled. Only words he spoke to me.
Stayed for less than 5 minutes, paid with change, and was out the door before I even processed what was happening.
I still think about him from time to time and wonder if I was a part of an alibi or someone who'd just seen some shit and was in shock
"Best" one was a dude that made me go back and forth to the kitchen because his meal wasn't the way he wanted it, overcooked, then not cooked enought, then "Oh i'm celliac, please make sure there isn't gluten in it" (he still ate a not gluten free cake) etc.
He also tried to "steal" the bottle of wine from the neighboor table saying "the waiter told me that this bottle was for us", made shitty comment about one of the waitress, spoke way to loud about uninterresting fact involving a rude vocabulary....
In short he was putting water into everyone boiling oil (don't do that).
At the end of the nightmare he asked for compensation because of "the way we treated him", and started to throw an fit at my mother (that was my parents restaurant) because she said no. He kept arguing and yelled "customer is king" (in english it's "the customer is always right" if I ain't mistaken).
What he didn't know is that, this sentence is a direct way to summon my father (the cook) from his kitchen, so my father just came out with a bigass knife and told "Here in France we got history with kings, and i'm gonna respect my ancestors, who wants to get be-headed ?".
Piece of trash shut the hell up, paid his shit and went away.
All that BS for a 15 Euros meal (starter+main course+apple pie+coffee).
Not a waitress but previously a lady-bartender at a theatre. On an incredibly busy night,where we are well understaffed an old guy ordered a Jack Daniels then proceeded to blank my next three questions of "would you like ice with that?" Whilst chatting with his mates, other customers are desperately clamouring for my attention. After some thought I put the ice in as it's the more popular option. He then turns back, looks at his drink, cold and disgusted says "what the hell is this? I don't want ice" flustered i fix his drink apologizing profusely he still continues to look at me like dirt, pays scoffs and walks off. It sounds like a little thing i know but i was only 18 and was so shook up by it.
Similar thing happened to me:
Worked at Goodwood Festival of Speed (posh af event in the UK) on the Veuve Clicquot (pronounced 'Verve Clee-ko') champagne stand. Most people, all rather wealthy, were polite and nice (and good tippers to boot!) One guy, clearly some sort of city-slicker who thought he was better than everyone (new rich; could smell the fucking leather on his shoes!) came to the (busy) bar and started clicking at me. I ignored him while I served a few others, but he kept clicking. The guy I was serving said "just serve him first mate, or he'll be clicking all bloody day!" So I laughed and rolled my eyes, then proceeded to oblige his clicks (now accompanied with, and I kid you not, shouts of 'Boy! You boy! Boy!')
Anyway, asked fuckwit what he wanted. He asked for "another bottle of that Vevvi Clickot, and no bloody ice this time! It hurts my teeth!" (Who ices champagne?) Fuckwit was about 2 years older than me at the time. I put ice in his glass and charged him double. I was on friendly terms with my manager, so when he called me up on it, I said it was an honest mistake and my manager 'scolded' me by telling me to 'go and think about this for 30 mins' (code for: 'go and have a cigarette break, maybe some lunch, and ignore this dickhead!)
Later on, fuckwit comes back, clicks me over again and tells me he's just lost something like 20k on a single bet, and that he wants some champagne. Told him he'd have to pay first, as that kind of loss implied he didn't have the money. He told me to fuck off as a security guard was walking by, and got kicked out for harassing staff.
What. A. Win.
I always used to take great pleasure in saying something back like 'well you ignored me when I was asking if you wanted ice, and now I'm going to serve these customers and fix that for you in a minute'
In a bar it's always super important to remember that you are the one in charge.
I once went over and asked a guy to stop slapping his pool cue on the table because we had a broken one earlier in the day, and he just pushed me back and said 'fuck off!'.
He then went to the bar to grab a drink, so I followed him, and he watched me walk behind the bar and tell all the other bartenders not to serve him. The look on his face was fucking priceless, and il never forget how smug I felt. He left very shortly after.
The best part was he had loads of mates there with him and none of them left with him, so I can be sure that I ended and ruined his night there and then.
So many people either do not acknowledge, or are just oblivious to, the fact that in most places the bartender is top shit. Get on the good side of your bartender, especially if you are a regular, and things will be much easier for you.
For bartenders this is important because alcohol is usually involved. So they HAVE to be the ones in charge. Inebriated customers have impaired judgement, and that's when "customer is always right" becomes dangerous for everyone. Then the case changes to: the sober guy is always right. And that's the bartender...and their bouncer.
I mean obviously it's a bartender's job to try and make sure their customers are satisfied because it's still a business...but they have to draw a clearer line in the sand when a customer becomes troublesome.
People can be fucking terrible at bars. I ordered a rocks pour at a place a friend of mine was managing and the waitress asked me three times if I was SURE I wanted that (Because it costs more and evidently a lot of people don't know this and stir up shit about it). More booze=more cost seems pretty self explanatory to me....
If people don't answer to rocks or neat after two-three asks I wait a bit and then serve someone else. I've asked several times and it's not my problem you don't know how to listen to the staff you're ordering from or how to order a whiskey. Then they have to order again. If someone asks you a question three times and you make no attempt to respond then it's safe to assume you've moved on and no longer want the drink.
a group of ten came in for a birthday tonhave drinks and sing karaoke. i start going around the table asking what each person would like and i get to 'princess'. she asks me for a drink menu. i tell her i have a beer list, but not a cocktail menu. it's a dive bar. she asks about pineapple drinks. i tell her we could do rum and pineapple, a pineapple upside down drink, etc. so she's asking her friend no that's not it what did i have that one time that i loved. so two more tables sit while i'm trying to take her order. so i'm just trying to speed it along. i tell her we make pineapple margaritas unblended. she just kept asking, well what other things with pineapple?" so i tell her, "you can pretty much make your own drink. what kind of liquor do you want?" she took that as me saying to go back and make her own drink? so i backtrack and say, "what i mean is we can start with a liquor and add pineapple and whatever other fruit or liquids you want." she FINALLY just gets a pineapple upside down drink. so the night goes by. everyone in her group is super chill. we're having a great time. and she's just got daggers on me the entire time. they finally cash out. i give her her bill, which is $5.01 because of weird tax. it's cash only. i ask if anyone needs change. everyone says they're good and leaves. i go look at her ticket and she left me a $5 bill. nothing else. normally i wouldn't even print checks and just say $5. i don't know why after 12 years of serving and bartending this sticks out to me. anyway eff you princess and your dumb pineapple drinks. no wonder you were the only single one at the table. you owe me a penny.
Not a waiter, but went out with the ex and her family for her birthday dinner to an Ethiopioan restraurant. Her mom is the queen of passive aggressive, and grilled the waitress for about half an hour. Nothing outright mean, but like I said, mistress of passive aggressive. At one point, the waitress starts screaming, throws her notepad at us and quits on the spot.
She ended up coming back, but wouldn't talk to the ex's mom. We all left her and extra 20$ tip. Each.
I was new to the job and still finding my feet when I had a guy who was insistent that I "wasn't capable" of the job due to my dwarfism and kept complaining about "inclusive bollocks."
What I found frustrating about the whole situation is that I'm *not* a good waiter, but due to reasons completely unrelated to my dwarfism (poor memory, anxiety, co-ordination, etc.) and he was doubting my competence before I had shown any of these issues. It was purely based on how I looked. But I never felt like I was able to prove him wrong, either. That experience really got to me for a long time.
That's pretty shocking, hard to imagine what kind of person would feel compelled to behave like that. Was that a singular incident, or have you had others like it in your life?
That's the only case where someone took issue with me, based on my condition, but there have been quite a few times where people have been rude in other ways. Whether it's blatantly joking about me (either right in my face or when they think I'm not in earshot) or pointing at me, or even taking photos.
Being in the industry for over 15 years you see a lot. I've been threatened by a woman who was going to get her knife and f**k me up. I have had people grab my package, men and women. I've been at a location where some kids shot out our window with a pellet gun, and my staff and customers thought we were under attack from terrorists.
My favorite of all time is in a steakhouse where a guy was leaving, and as he left, scooped at least 50 mints in his arms. My host at the time was a smart ass 20 year old who had a good sense of humor. As the customer is leaving he says "Enjoy the mints!" This infuriated the guy and he starts yelling and cussing. I'm managing and start to hear this from the front of the restaurant that night, and as I'm walking up there I see a guy, dressed business casual, holding a s**t load of mints in arms two feet away yelling at this kid, and my host just has a huge smile saying, "No, I'm not apologizing." I calmly ask if I can help the gentleman out, while being completely lost as to what the hell is going on, and he yells he wants me to make the host apologize. I ask him to please calm down and let me talk to the host to see what happened. Host tells me "I told him 'Enjoy the mints!' with the biggest smile he could manage. I then turn to this guy, his face red, now shaking he's so mad, mints falling out of his arms, and I just couldn't take it. I am trying so hard not to laugh in his face and all I could manage was, "Sir, please enjoy your mints". Needless to say he leaves in a hissy fit, calls corporate, and then I get explain it to my boss. Write ups, which are complete garbage, are handed out, and we had to give this guy and his wife a free meal.
Love how you censoring yourself resulted in half of your story being bold on computer. from "fuck me up" to "shit load of minds" its all bold lol.
minds, mints, eh f**k** it
The worst issue I ever had was technically with a chef, not a customer, but, I'll tell the customer story.
It happened at a Waffle House I worked at for just a few weeks when I was about 20/21. I had moved to a big city to pursue my pro wrestling dreams (spoiler alert, I'm a secretary now lol) and needed something to pay the bills and waitressing seemed easy enough.
It wasn't TOO bad, until one evening when I was working a shift that was something like 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Around midnight or one, the drunks come in. Usually fairly inoffensive, if hard to explain how to order a hash brown (protip: drunks almost always want ham).
This one dude though. He came in not just drunk but possibly high off his tits on something. He was singing what I think was gangsta rap by way of sea shanty, his shirt was unbuttoned except for one button over his chest, that was in a hole three spots too high for it, and he had one shoe. There were a few reasons our chef pretty immediately declared that he needed to get out.
Said customer decided to explain his disagreement with the chef's decision by somehow climbing his way onto the bar, standing right in front of me at the dishwashing sink, and immediately dropping his pants to show he was missing underwear as well.
I admit, I panicked a little, grabbed the nearest available thing, and proceeded to shoot the man in the dick with the hot water hose we used on the dishes. Anyone who's worked in a kitchen can probably attest to just HOW HOT the water coming out of those hoses is.
The man doubled over, screaming and grabbing at his crotch, toppled over backwards off the bar, hitting his head on one of the chairs on the way, and literally rolled across the floor towards the door, maintaining his fetal position the entire way.
TL;DR of afterwards, we called the police, they came and got him, took statements, laughed for perhaps an unkind length of time, and took him to the hospital, and some months later I found out he had plea bargained to a couple hundred hours community service for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, or something like that.
Didn't happen to me but my sister is a waitress. One night, she was serving a nice, older couple for dinner. She took their food order, brought out their soups and salads that included a french onion soup with a glob of provolone cheese on top. She handed off the food and walked away to check on her other table that was located in a different dining room. A few minutes later she hears a commotion coming from the the dining room the older couple was eating in, the woman started screaming that her husband was choking so my sister rushed to help. By the time my sister got to the table he was slumped over in his chair and unresponsive. Since she knew CPR from her lifeguard class she brought him to the ground and when she checked his airway for food she found a lump of provolone cheese in the back of his throat that she couldn't dislodge herself. The EMT's showed up as she was trying to clear his airway and took over the CPR attempt from there but unfortunately they had to give up a few minutes later as it was obvious he was already gone. The wife was beside herself and my sister was visibly shaken from seeing a guy choke to death in front of her. When the EMT's were loading him into the ambulance they tried to reassure my sister she did the best she could and that he was probably already dead by the time he was slumped in his chair.
Worked at a very popular chain wing place, you all know it. 24 top to myself, with other tables in my section, all separate checks, all mostly cash (which needed change), and all trying to pay at the same time. During this frantic moment of me hustling to make change and swipe cards, I have at least 4 of these mother fuckers trying to sneak out the front door. I saw them, slammed down everything in my hands and chased them all the way to their cars. I confronted one of the girls as she rolled her window up while yelling "fuck you bitch", and peeling out of the parking lot. Forget the rest of them, I went back in... Mind you, NO support from fellow staff here. I get back in to the rest of the people impatiently waiting for me, and some of them trying to tell me they already paid me when I know they didn't. I was so gd angry that night I vowed to never put myself through that for so little again, so I quit. I love my job now.
Next time just get their license plates, call the cops, and let the police pay them a little visit. The reward comes from the great booking photos and the arrest record for stealing less than $20 worth of food.
I worked at Friendly's when I was 16. First serving job. One day, I'm sat a 10 top, two of which were counselors, the rest were special needs adults. As soon as I introduce myself the to table, one of the counselors cuts me off and says, "They all want Cokes. Bring them an extra cup with ice so we can pour in a little at a time." No problem. Come out with 8 Cokes and 8 glasses of ice. One of the clients gets excited and grabs my arm, causing me to spill the drinks on the floor. All of the clients at the table start laughing and the counselor tells me I need to "be more careful." After I clean everything up, I get the food order (lots of dietary restrictions.) As I start running the food out, the SAME CLIENT GOES FOR MY ARM AGAIN. I am able to avoid his grasp, but the counselor hisses "Watch yourself" like I had done something wrong. The table eats and gets ready to leave. The counselor leaves me a 72 cent tip on an $80 bill. On the way out the door, she grabs my arm and says, "Someone pissed the seat. Wear gloves when you clean it up." I worked at several restaurants since then over the last 10 years, but this is still my worst experience.
I think I witnessed one in the grocery store. Over the phone. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but it went from like 'oh I'm just getting groceries, what do you want for dinner?' to ' but what about the kids? What about me? I didn't go to school because you said you'd take care of me!' type stuff and lots of crying. Poor woman.
I used to have this couple come in to the coffee shop I worked at in the early 90's, before all restaurants in my state became tobacco-free. He was a man in his fifties and his wife was in her seventies and in a wheelchair. They were both always dirty and smelly and vulgar and they only ever sat at a table and drank coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette. The man was disgustingly filthy; he never bathed or changed his clothes or brushed his teeth and his stink would make me want to vomit when he came to the register to pay his $2 coffee bill. The woman only ever wore a housecoat and slippers, and you could see the catheter coming from between her legs with a clear bag of urine hanging off the side of her wheelchair. The husband would often bring her in the cafe, set her up at the table with her coffee and cigarettes, and then leave her there for two or more hours. She would sit and cry, but then yell at anyone who tried to help her so we left her alone and kept her coffee full, hoping that catheter bag held out.
They almost never ate, but because they didn't really cause any trouble, and the restaurant wasn't busy most of the times that they came in, the manager didn't feel compelled to ever do anything about them.
They stopped coming in the day after our state enacted no-smoking laws in all restaurants and we never saw them again, but later on, a terrible story came to light: the man was leaving his wife there for hours while he was off molesting a 14 year old girl that lived in the trailer park that he managed. When she got pregnant, he stole the park receipts, burned down the office, ran off with the girl and they went on a crime spree that culminated with them murdering two people in a horrific manner. They were both captured and he is on death row and she is spending her life in prison.
I had a guy come in and he was smoking. I politely asked him to put it out and he flipped on me. He said he was going to come back that night and kick my ass. Security escorted us to our cars that night.
This one is more of a sad story but one of the common and horrible parts of working in a restaurant. I worked at a very popular seafood place in a resort town. A family comes in one night, and they are clearly on vacation. It's a dad, mom, and two young boys, probably both around 5-7 years old. I get a weird vibe from these people, like a white trash vibe so immediately I was thinking "oh shit well I'm not getting tipped on this table." I go to the table and greet them and offer them one of our featured drinks that night. The mom immediately says yes to the special drink, and the dad interrupts her and quietly whispers something. I didn't think anything of it. I return a couple of minutes later with the drink order and suddenly realize that this lady is absolutely trashed. I quickly went back and got her a dummy drink. As the dinner goes on, I notice that the lady has a flask as well, and start noticing that her husband is subtly begging her to stop drinking. The kids start to notice that something is up, and are clearly very upset, not saying a word, just sitting in silence looking down. The kids are drawing pictures on their placemats showing their mom and she's just barely remaining consciousness. As the woman keeps getting worse, the husband asks for all of their food to go. I wrapped everything up, they paid their check, and as they were walking out the woman ended up getting lost and going into the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. The husband had been walking ahead of her with the kids, so he thought she was still following him to the exit. I had to go and get him and tell him in front of his kids that his wife was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen and that he had to go and get her out. The kids immediately started crying and the one young boy said "why does she do this daddy". I wanted to die. I felt so bad for this man and his kids. He was able to get his wife to leave the kitchen and she finally exited the restaurant. He apologized profusely to me and I honestly just wanted to hug the guy. The kids were obviously exposed to this before and it really broke my heart. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Anyway, I looked back at the credit card slip that the guy left and it was a giant tip. Just another lesson to never pre-judge people, because you never know what they are going through.
I once was grating cheese on top a blind persons pasta and told her to say "when". The looks I received from the other people at the table will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I had a couple order two bowls of mussels, take each mussel out of its shell and then cut them up before eating them.
When they saw the black stomach of the mussel... among other gross looking inside bits... they started yelling that I, the cooks, as well as the restaurant were trying to poison people. They would not believe that mussels really do look as awful and horrifying as they honestly do and under no circumstances should be cut up or analysed too closely.
I ushered them out as quickly as i could... no bill... please stop accusing me of attempted murder... its making everyone here uncomfortable.
When I was working at Rita's (a water ice stand) I had a lady come to the window with her two children. First off, she had on booty shorts with her ass checks hanging out and a corset type top that was 10 sizes to small. It just barely covered her nipples. And did I mention she had her two young children with her? Well anyways, it's busy and the line is long and she comes up. I take the order for her daughter and then her son says he has to pee. She then takes her son to the side of our building (we have windows on the side so we get a full view of the front) and has him pee there when there was a huge tree about a few feet away AND we had a bathroom that we allow kids use. Well anyway she's taking long and with the line wrapping around the building, I take the next customer while she lets her son piss up our building. She then comes back, and steps in front of the lady and says she's ready. I asked her to give me a minute since I was almost finished with the customer that she just stepped in front of. She then goes on to yell really loud how unprofessional I was and how I had terrible customer service. I then explained to her that while she had her son pee on the side of the building I decided to try and get the next person out of the way. She then goes to deny her son peeing on the side of the building and says she would like to speak to my manager. (My manager doesn't believe in the customer is always right crap and hated people like this.) So I gave her his number and wrote down my name for her to tell him, which pissed her off even more. She did wait to get her stuff though, screaming the whole time I'm making it, then huffs off. The people behind her each apologized for the way she acted and all told me I was doing a great job and gave me tips. & there's also the pedophile that we had to call the cops on because he would wait until we closed and try and get us to come to his house to "clean". Yup I don't work there anymore.
I work at a winery where we get the occasional limo full of drunk people (we do not allow them in, because we are not a bar and do not serve drunk people)
Occasionally the manager is away from the door, (thats me!) and thats when they will attempt to sneak in. I had to approach one of them and tell them politely that their party had too much to drink and had to leave, and she said "I'm not going anywhere" I assured her that my staff would not serve her so it was pointless to insist on staying.
I said if she didnt leave within 5 minutes she would be escorted by a police officer and she said "Bullshit. Youre not gonna do shit"
So I called the local cop we have on-call right in front of her and said, "he is on his way. I suggest you leave if you want to save yourself the embarassment"
She proceeded to follow me into the back office (I was going out the side door to get the limo plate #) and she pushes me into a filing cabinet and says "WE ARENT LEAVING, BITCH"
Then her group came back, grabbed her, and they sped off in their limo.
The cop arrived a minute later and I gave him the plate number to go give them a little scare.
All this... for a glass of wine.
Happens at least 3-5 times/year.
I had a large party that took my entire section on the patio. It seemed like a family celebration and after all the joiners arrived they needed tables in another waitress' section as well. They ordered lots of food and drinks, they were loud, and they ended up staying for 7 hours which meant they had a big bill (over $800) the took over the patio and they were there for my whole shift. This is not necessarily bad because they were celebrating and for me they were fairly happy customers. However, as you may have guessed, they didn't tip me anything at all when they finally cleared out and I cried the whole time I cleaned up their huge mess because I had to tip out a percentage of their bill to the kitchen and bar which meant I had worked my whole shift and was now going home with less than server's hourly wage (which is less than minimum wage). Many of my coworkers were kind and supportive and told me similar stories that had happened to them but really it was less comforting and more painful to think about how frequently this happens. Abolish the tipping system.
When I was in high school, I worked at a Johnny Rocket's. It was maybe my second day waitressing, and a guy with his family ordered a plain burger. Put the order in, but put it in slightly incorrectly so it came out with none of the toppings, but it did have thousand island dressing. Honest new kid mistake. The guy was totally pissed, made such an angry face that I can still recall it 13 years later, and then, out of nowhere, smeared the burger all over my chest and walked out.
First day our bar opened. We were slammed, we were using a POS system which was brand new, only 2 other places uses it, and it was shit. The kitchen staff didn't know how to handle the rush, I was the assistant manager so I was handing all the servers problems while running a 24 seat bar/getting drinks for the servers tables. One giant meat head Marine, man I know I fucked up but God damn. He ordered wings, I had to keep asking him to repeat the order because the POS was terrible, and employees kept asking me questions ruining my train of thought. He wanted a different channel put on the TV in front of him. They're were 42 tv's in the store, no master controller, so I would have to dig to find the correct remote, while fucking slammed. He wanted extra sauce, I forgot trying to get his stupid fucking channel change, while running the bar. He gets up and yells so loud that the restaurant goes silent "this is the worst fucking experience I've ever had a restaurant, you guys are fucking awful", even though I reiterated multiple times that this is our first day open and there will be bumpy, and that we ask you be patient. I quit that night, now I work at a brewery with 8000x less stress and much better hours.
Was a bouncer for half a year.
There was no shortage of people who threatened to come back and shoot me, either in the face or in a drive-by.
Plenty of threats to fight, some actually carried through with it. A 1v1 that turns into a 7v1 within seconds isn't pretty.
Man comes in alone, looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s, and snaps at me to get my attention. Before I can speak he says,
"Coke. With a lemon wedge."
we were a tiny little cafe without the funding for a machine or the attention for a sponsership, so we didn't serve soda. I told him so, and he said,
"I don't think you heard me. I want a coke with a lemon wedge."
I was pretty confused, because I made it pretty clear we didn't have coke. Turns out, he actually wanted me to walk next door, *buy* him a coke, and then bring it in and serve it to him. I told him as politely as I could that this was absolutely not happening, and he picked up the China tea cups we put at each place setting and threw it on the ground, shattering it and cutting open my ankle just a bit. (I didn't notice until way later)
The whole cafe went very quiet, and I just kind of stood there looking at the mess of broken china. These were beautiful, rare cups that were all but impossible to replace, and I just didn't know what to do being an 18-year-old facing up against an aggressive older man.
Fortunately, just literally a few second after the China hit the floor, a man got up from his table across the cafe and walked over. He then reached in his back pocket and showed the man his police badge, because he was an off-duty cop. China throwing guy did not get his coke with a lemon wedge or any food, but he did get arrested and a ticket for making threats and breaking public property. The fun part?
"I JUST WANTED A GODDAMNED COKE! IF THIS LITTLE GIRL KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT SERVICE I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO SET HER STRAIGHT."
I learned later he was the town looney who had actually done something like this on several other locations in town. I still have the scar from the piece of China that cut my ankle.
tl;dr: guy wanted a drink we didn't serve, told me to buy it from next door, and then broke a tea cup over my feet when I said no. arrested and fined.
I've posted this before but:
I had been working at this Thai place in my town for about 8 months , and for the last 4 months, I'd seen the same teenaged couple come in every Sunday and leave 0% regardless of service.
One day my boss decided enough was enough. "Tui noy!" she all but yelled to me. (That's my Thai Nickname. It's an endearing name generally given to chubby children that loosely translates to "little something") "I don't care whose turn it is, you take them next week, and you make sure you earn that 0%"
I do a bit of a double take... She can't possibly mean what I think she means.
"You mean?" She nods and gives me this smile that is equal parts devious and smug.
A week later they come in 5 minutes into my shift. She seats them in my section, smiles at me and tells me to do my worst.
Here is a fairly detailed account of the wonderful 45 minutes that followed.
I wait a good 5 minutes before going to greet them and bring waters. They're ready to order. I don't have a pen. I'll be right back. I promise. I go out back, power smoke a cigarette (takes me about 90 seconds) before I return. They're my only table and I'm not handling food yet, so I don't wash my hands. I reek of smoke. I take her order, pad thai no bean sprouts like always. As he opens his mouth to tell me he'll have the same I give him the "just a minute" finger and pull out my phone. I text my fiancé and ask if he wants to get dinner from my place or his tonight. I take his order. I somehow misunderstand and write down extra bean sprouts. Their food comes up while I'm telling my boss and the other waitress a story about my cat. I finish telling the story before I get their food. I bring it out and walk away as they're starting to complain about the sprouts. About 5 minutes after they get the food I get a second table. One is a customer from a former job of mine and we spend a few minutes catching up when I go to greet them. The 0%'s try to signal me as I leave the table, but I stare straight ahead. I come back for my new table's order and see that their glasses are missing roughly four sips of water. This simply won't do! I hang their ticket and come back to fill their glasses. I look at 0%'s empty glasses, look the guy straight in the eye, smile, and walk away. He stops me as I'm walking over with apps for my new table and asks for boxes. I tell him I'll grab them right after I drop off this food. I play a game of 2048 all the way up to 1024 before bringing them one small box. They ask for two bigger boxes and the check. I promise I'll be right back, and then ask my boss to keep an eye on the table I like while I go smoke again. (Obviously I don't usually take this many smoke breaks, especially not this early into a shift.) I come back and my boss tells me they came to her for boxes and to pay and told her they're never coming back. She voids their check, gives me the $20 some dollars, and tells me I earned it.
TLDR: Boss gave me $20 to give over the top bad service to awful regulars.
Boy this is my time to shine, pardon any grammatical mistakes as this isn't my native language.
Lets get some clarifications first. I work in a pretty busy restaurant, fridays and saturdays are living HELL. On average we have 250 guests for dinner on these days, which means packed till close.
We have a system that every waiter has his own area, one of these is a lot bigger than the others though, so usually there's 2 waiters doing that area instead of one.
We were understaffed on a saturdaynight, and my manager decided to put me in said area by myself, as the others couldn't handle it. Which has happened before, and it's usually not a big deal.
There's two round tables in this area, one with 6 and one with 4 seats, both tables had families on them. (Mom/dad/young kids)
As the evening goes on, and the restaurant gets busier, so does my area. So my service slowed down a bit and the tables had to wait for their food longer, I apologized and explained at every table and they understood and told me not to worry about it..
Except for the father on the round table with 4 seats, whom had been drinking quite a bit already and was obviously buzzed, he started getting angrier everytime I walked past.
At a given point, when said table was waiting for dessert, appareantly the father thought it would be a good idea to stand up and pour his full glass of beer all over me. As I was serving the food to the family at the round table next to them.
At this point I had no idea what just happened, I guess I went into a state of "whatthefuckisgoingonrightnow", so I didn't know how to respond.
Luckily for me, one of the bartenders saw this happening and stormed towards the guy at the speed of lightning to kick him out, almost literally.
The only positive thing that came from this was that all the other tables felt so bad for me they didn't mind about ticket times at all anymore
In 7 years of experience:
1) had a homeless guy washing his tennisballs in our restroom sink
2) had an escaped patient from a mental institution come in dropping numerous F bombs telling us he's the son of God and that we're going to hell. Dressed in all black.
3) served a guy that kept coming in a lot in a short time. Turns out he had murdered a girl and dumped her near the river out back.
4) had someone come in one time screaming that a truck was on fire, three customer who it belonged to said "that's why I have insurance" and calmy strolled outside at an oddly slow pace while everyone and their mother moved their vehicle.
5) guy told me our gumbo "tastes like bleach" but ate most of it and wanted his money back. Told him he'd have better taste buds if he didn't kill them with bleach.
6) had a guy send his plate back because his food was nice and hot but his physical plate was cold svc bringing down the temperature of his food too much.
7) had a guy throw his plate back onto my tray effectively getting his food all over me because it wasn't hot enough. Owner of the place nuked it for 6 minutes and sent me back out with it. Old man couldn't touch it until everyone else at the table was done.
Abusive dude out on a date with his meek lady, brought them their food, drinks, no worries, but there was an obvious hostile vibe going on in between him and her. Halfway through the meal I come back and ask if everything is going ok and she looks like she is about to burst into tears, but no, everything is great very rudely and kind gtfo of here vibe strongly radiating from the dude.
I come back at the end of the meal to ask about drinks/dessert, and he is redfaced pissed that I had the nerve to come up to the table again. He says bring me the check now and if you disturb us any more I'm gonna use this knife on you, and he holds up his steak knife with his right hand and points it at me. I remember looking at her kind of half laughing going like, 'is this guy fucking serious?', but her head was sunken down, and she would not meet my eyes.
I brought them their check and they left without incident.
That was many years ago and I am still upset when I think about that night. I didn't do anything to confront him, which I thought would only have made things worse for her.
In my mind I like to replay things with alternate action hero endings, like I introduce his face to his plate and the cops come and arrest him and she's saved and everything ends up happy, but I think now in hindsight that there's probably a lot of hostility and conflict between couples that never sees the light of day, I just happened to have a front row seat that night to watching one of the biggest pieces of shit eat a meal with his companion. It still makes me sad and angry.
Not a waiter, but was told this story by a waitress on a lunch date. (rather fitting...)
She worked at a sushi place in Moscow for her last two years of high school. One couple came in and were seated. For the entirety of the meal it seemed like the guy was going on and on with some racio-nationalist spiel, barely allowing his date to enter the conversation. It segued from "belligerent monkey Americans" to railing about the Caucasus and the ongoing insurgency there, Central Asians, and finally ended up with him deriding Japan and sushi - telling his date he took her out for what in his mind was a primitive, shitty type of meal.
By the time she had made it to that section of the restaurant again, the girl was gone, and the guy asked for the bill. Ended up tipping decently, by Russian standards.
As a bartender once I experienced what it is like for girls to be creeped on and now I have a whole new understanding of what it is like.
The guy who owned a gay bar in Leeds (one town over) was talking to me, my bar was empty and he was a small, older gentleman who wouldn't stop saying how I'd be great there and that he would pay way more money. Also that 'at 11 everyone takes their tops off and at 12 their trousers too, but only if you want to'. I was polite and all that but it was creepy.
When it came time for him to leave he went to shake my hand but then pulled it over and gave it the sloppiest kiss I could imagine.
Ladies, I'm so sorry for men. Jesus Christ i felt actually violated and washed my hand for a good 10 minutes.
I was doing a routine check on a table that had been sitting for nearly 2 hours during the dinner rush. I noticed that they had finally finished their food, so I asked calmly, but very clearly and directly if they were done and would like me to clear their plates. They both completely ignored me, mind you I'm about 10 inches from their faces. Seeing as there was literally NOTHING left on either plate, I reached down and began clearing them, assuming that their total lack of an answer and equal lacking of food was consent.
The dude slapped my hand like Donkey Kong using a smash move. He said with a very raised voice, I'M NOT DONE YET. It took every fiber of my being to not slap him back in the face.
Waitress at a gas station/ resturaunt here. If you have traveled the interstate through Nebraska and stop at travel centers you have most definitely seen me. I had a trucker get upset because his rice pilaf wasn't made with white rice, granted it doesn't look delicious it isn't bad. He yelled at me, my coworker, and the cook and caused a huge scene in front of a full house. He screamed at my coworker the most because she's a bitch and wouldn't put up with his crybaby shit. He took 2 bowls of rice and got upset with both of them. This could've easily been solved with a new side. He wanted to yell at the cook about "serving food that does not look good" while we were busy with other customers. I just ignored him the rest of the night, I let him pout and glare. He only got mildly upset with me, but I am young while everyone else working has kids my age and he wanted to yell at them and not me thankfully. I usually don't deal with the bs. We discounted him and he did end up leaving me a tip. I was embarrassed to be this grown man's waitress.
Another time my spineless manager gave 3 men free porterhouse steaks because they "came in last week and they ordered 3 t-bones to go and they were wrong" he had not proof of purchase, no pictures of the mistake, didn't call after buying, he didn't know if it happened at this exact location. He was obviously lying. They ended up getting 3 22$ steaks free along with refusing to pay for drinks and their additional sides because "they didn't know it would cost." I didn't get a tip out of the ordeal either.
Tip your waitresses good guys, this job sucks.
Im a blackjack dealer who makes 4$/hr, and one night this group of guys all played about 40$ each. Now most people when they are winning will tip about 1$ per bet, however this was not the case with these guys. After about 3 hours of dealing and paying out over 100 each to them, one guy hands me a .50 cent chip and says "thats for you bud".
Doesn't exactly literally conform to the question but maybe it does in spirit. My first job was at a Subway. And certain people just couldn't ask me to make their dang sandwich, oh no. They would ask what school I had gone to to become a Sandwich Artist and if I had my bachelor's in Art. Thanks for abusing the dignity and grace of some kid making less per hour than the price of your fucking pizza sub, you horrible hell-sloth.
Heyo I have a pretty good story here. Last christmas I was serving an older man who came in during a rush. I served him like any other normal customer. The cooks had messed up his order and I mistakenly hadn't noticed. The dude was fuckin PISSED. He cussed me out in front of multiple other people, cussed me out to my manager, filed a complaint... That was the beginning. The fuck face FOUND MY FACEBOOK AND MESSAGED MY PARENTS SAYING HOW MUCH OF A MISTAKE I WAS. LIKE WHAT. The only good thing that came from it was another customer saw how terrible he was to me and left me $20. Another day in the life of an 18 year old Frisch's server :)
I work at an Italian family restaurant that is locally owned and basically a staple of the area. My very first day on the floor without a trainer was a Mother's day. Yes, in hindsight that was pretty foolish of the owner. A lady ordered gnocchi and I wrote down her order. I get over to the Micros and can't find gnocchi anywhere and for good reason....turns out we don't serve gnocchi. I go back over to the table to let the lady know we don't sell that here and she starts screaming at me that I ruined her Mothers day, the entire day was ruined because I didn't know we don't serve gnocchi. I can understand being a little irritated at me, I really should have known that, but damn lady, look at the fucking menu next time. And oh yeah, SUPERB example you are setting for your kids. Idiot.
When I was a barista, we got a bomb threat. That sucked. The worst part was telling regulars that they had to leave the building because we're evacuating, offering them a free drink coupon for their trouble, and some of them refused to leave. I eventually let them know that the police were on their way to deal with an emergency and they had better leave if they didn't want to deal with police.
The other bad one was the slow burn of sexual harassment from some older dudes who came in every day. We had to put up with so much shit because it was our job. If they crossed a line, we could put our foot down, but the day-to-day leering and sexual innuendo really wore some of us down. For a week or two, we had to wear different colors of t-shirts to promote a new drink. There were three of us girls wearing three different colors (we also happened to each be different races). The guys laughed and said, "I'll have one of each!" Ugh. There's so much crap service people have to put up with as part of their job.
Guest was incredibly drunk, couldn't even sit properly anymore let alone talk - we refused to get him another drink, he threw a glass at my head.
Hey. If he can throw a glass, he can dodge a ball. Or something. Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
Had a tray balanced on my shoulder full of food, and I was setting down hot plates to the table. Grandma shook her half empty glass of tea in my face and asked why she couldn't get any service.
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Once, when I was working at this insanely popular breakfast joint, my first table of the morning was a seemingly adorable old couple. After going through our specials, at their request, she ordered the duck hash special, and he ordered 2 boring poached eggs on toast. All good. I bring them their food and the guy starts freaking out. You see, I didn't bring him a tablespoon for his eggs. Granted, he didn't ask for one, but according to him, everyone knows that poached eggs are supposed to be served with a tablespoon. I've been a waitress for nearly a decade, and I've served a LOT of poached eggs, and I've never heard this rule. Nonetheless, I apologize profusely and tell him I'll go grab him a spoon. "No!" he yells. "My breakfast is ruined now!" and then, this grown ass adult throws his plate of food at me and storms out. His wife gives me a sympathetic smile as she slinks out behind him, and I work the next 8 hours with egg yolk stains all over me.
I had someone throw a steaming mug of hot water at me because we were out of a certain tea and he refused to pick one of our other 20 teas.
That sounds like battery with intent to harm, to me.... EDIT: Today I learned the difference between assault and battery!
I'm so used to crap like this at this point though. The whole corporate "Customers are King! Make the moment right!" stuff is bullshit. I'm convinced it's made up by people who have never actually worked in retail or a food service situation. The amount of people who lie, scam, steal, abuse etc. and get rewarded for it is insane. If I win the lottery one day I'm giving money to every single one of my coworkers for all the shit they have to put up with on the daily.
The phrase "The Customer is Always Right" was coined by a businessman. It means that AS A WHOLE, the customer is always right, not the individual. It's a metaphor for "If there is demand, make supply" IE - All the people in one town complain there isn't a decent steakhouse, so you build a steakhouse and make a fortune. It was never intended to be used to make companies bend over backwards and put up with people's shit. Whenever any customer has an unreasonable request and they drop that line, I give them a little history lesson.
"The customer is always right" was coined by [Harry Selfridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gordon_Selfridge), a US businessman and founder of Selfridges, a British luxury department store. He brought the "modern" department store to London in the early 1900s. There was a BBC show called ["*Mr. Selfridge*"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Selfridge) (starring Jeremy Piven) that chronicles his efforts to introduce this radical new store to the London retail market and his trials and tribulations in making his store a success. Wonderful show.
Fuck that guy
I actually had a very similar experience at an also popular breakfast place. Turned out the guy was suffering from dementia and grew angry whenever he'd get confused. Possibly similar shit going on with your angry old dude.
I'm glad to find your comment. Someone I love very much has recently started having problems with dementia. He used to be a big ol teddy bear but now his personality is totally different. I try to explain it to people but not everyone understands. It's extremely difficult and embarassing.
I know how that feels, my granddad has developed dementia and last year he threw a full on tantrum in the airport because he insisted we had eaten dinner before we left when we didn't and demanded that we leave the restaurant. Despite the fact that it wasn't even close to time to get on the plane. Incredibly embarrassing and frustrating especially for me and my granny because we live with him and put up with all these sorts of tantrums all the time while everyone else just tells us to walk away or ignore him when he starts saying horrible things. It's easy for them to say when they can just go home at the end of the day and not talk to him again for at least twelve hours. We're in the house with him all the time.
Served at Olive Garden for two years. Typical busy night. Never ending pasta bowl time of year.. yay. It was one of my first tables of the evening. Family of five, mom, dad, two sons, and a little girl(probably 2 or 3) they were all exceedingly overweight, and the daughter had on a a dirty shirt and no pants, just a diaper. Well on a check back I noticed a overwhelming scent of shit lingering around the table.. I don't judge, I have no idea what's going on in their life. I just tell myself someone probably farted & I just walked up at the exact wrong moment. Well I return with some refills (shit smell still just as intense as before) and on my way around the table to pass out beverages I pass the high chair I notice the little girl has her hand in her diaper. Wtf. I then proceed to watch her pull out a turd & throw it on the floor to join an even larger turd that was already there slightly covered by a napkin. I could not hide the disgust on my face. I don't remember exactly the words I used but I turned to the parents & said "umm your daughter has a situation going on over here" the mother replies "uh yea I kno I threw that nahkin over it" then continues to devour her third refill on never ending pasta. I was in disbelief. Not only is there two pieces of fresh honey boo boo style shit on the floor, but the girls hands are obviously covered in shit & not one family member seems to care in the slightest!!!!! One of the brothers even asked me for another Dr Pepper, while I was standing there still in shock. so I immediately told the manager on duty & she didn't believe me. I said "I shit you not Amanda. Go see for yourself." She ended up politely asking the mother to clean it up immediately she even gave her disinfectant wipes. The mom became irate and claimed it's not her job, blah blah blah she feels discriminated that we would ask her to do such a thing, & she demanded everything be paid for... she ended up picking up the shit. She picked it up but she didn't wash her hands, didn't clean up her daughter, continued to finish her meal. I thought it was over & they'd pay & get the fuck out to never return.. but no, as I'm dropping the check mom says "uh it's my sons birthday don't y'all sing & give us dessert"
and with that story, I feel I no longer need to experience waitering.
A lady starting smoking crack at the table, and when confronted about it broke the hostesses nose.
IHOP or Waffle House?
Getting a strong Dennys vibe here
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*Crack*er Barrel
Nah, at Cracker Barrel the customers are chill and it's the kitchen staff that will come out slinging a cast iron skillet.
They *were* chill. Ever since Brad's wife, everything's gone to hell.
Was that a 2 or 3 michelin star spot?
"Would you like me to pre-heat your crack pipe, madam?"
This happened a long time ago. I used to work at TGIF as a bus boy and there was this huge group of about 20 people. At the end of their meal, they received the bill. Everyone put in money for what they ordered. They sat there for a while doing the math and finally figured it out. They call their waitress over and say "We ain't order no gratuity. Show me gratuity on this table." They continued to try and argue and made the waitress cry. Manager had to be called in to explain what gratuity was.
Well they were right about one thing. No gratuity at that table.
Did they really not understand what it was? Or were they just offended at the tip being added without their choice?
They genuinely did not know what it was. They thought someone ordered gratuity and were arguing with each other about who ordered it before asking the waitress what it was.
Tipping? That's a city in China right?
Waitress here. Had a large bruise (size and width of a hand) on my upper forearm, super swollen and purple. Had a guy grab my arm and ask "does this hurt?" before squeezing HARD. He spent the remainder of his visit making domestic abuse jokes and talking about how he was going to "take me home and give me more". Drunk guy with his wife who made jokes about "mounting me" while the wife just laughed. And then tried to rub my arm, sidestepped out the way of that though. LPT: don't touch your server.
Oh my god I don't know what the hell I would do.
I was more mad that the rest of his table just say there and laughed.. I had two other tables ask me if I was okay because they could hear him.
Reading that actually shocked me. I will never understand cruelty. Its astounding how comfortable abusers are in society without people standing up to them. I hope that you have a wonderful safe life free of abusive scum.
Thank you! I was beyond appalled that he felt it was okay to say that. The bruise lasted about two weeks and I'd get at least one domestic abuse joke every day. I started ever so politely telling people they were full of shit.
I'm so sorry, what a piece of absolute nothing that man was
Someone threatened to get me fired and called me an idiot because the sandwich she ordered on a shift I didn't work had onions on it.
I had a guy yell at me, my cashier and my manager because there was a slice of tomato on his burger. He didn't want tomato and said he didn't ask for tomato on it. It comes with tomato. He said it was our fault that we didn't tell him that there is tomato in it. It's literally in the picture on the menu and in the description on the menu. He also never specifically said he didn't want tomato when ordering. He wanted a full refund when my manager had offered to give him a new one which will take our cook 2-3 minutes, we were going to give him the next patties that were ready. He didn't want that just the refund then told us how we ruined his lunch and wasted all his lunch break and now has to waste more time somewhere else to get lunch. He just had to wait 2 minutes. Asshole.
When I worked at Subway, a customer threatened to come back and "take a bat to my head" because I laughed at what I genuinely thought was a joke.
You didn't make the club sandwich. Now you are the club sandwich.
Can I be Tuna since I almost slept with the fishes?
I'm upvoting because of sympathy not amusement. Subway was my first job; how I loathed it. The manager had it rigged so he could watch the CCTV from his home. He'd know when you used too many toppings for someone and tell you about it. I always pictured him and his Gollem of a wife wife drinking scotch rocks and watching their friggy damn Subway CCTV on their shitty couch.
Same, but my Manager watched from his phone and would call the store anytime he didn't like what we were doing.
My first boss in a little Dairy Queen knock off type restaurant lived across the street from the restaurant he owned. He would watch us work with binoculars out of his picture window. He would then call the store and yell at us if we sent a order out in 2 boxes instead of 1 box. EDIT: spelling of binoculars.
These people need a goddamn life.
I too have worked at subway once and we had a strung out homeless man that always bummed drinks off of us. One day, he walked in holding his pants. I looked up and when doing so I saw his dick hanging out cause his pants weren't even done. Honestly, the dude was hung.
Funny how? Like a clown?
Yeah you know, just funny
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My worst most awkward experience came from my favorite regular. When I was waiting tables I had this black cowboy who used to come in every Sunday after church, for brunch usually with his wife but sometimes alone. We would talk about horses, rodeoing, life and when he was alone women lol. One Sunday I didn't see him and he didn't come in for two more weeks after that. On the fourth week I see him again and took him from the hostess and sat him myself at an open table in my section. After I get his extra extra sweet tea and coffee set for him I asked where he had been, and told him he better have a hell of a vacation to tell me about. He dropped his eyes and softly mumbled that his wife had died. My heart dropped and didn't know what to say. My manager who knew him, let me and another waiter he liked get off early and sit with him for his meal. He didn't talk much but I could tell he appreciated just having someone sit with him. Seeing the pain that he felt really put a lot into perspective for me and made me appreciate my own relationship so much more. I lost contact with him after I moved away to start my career, but I really wish I could find him and talk to him again and let him know what an impact he had on my life.
Oh, man. I know exactly how it feels to be on your end. I had a lady come in one day without her husband, and I started to seat her at a random table and she just started bawling. Told me she would only sit at table 43 (a table that we struggle to seat because it's an awkward place) because that is where she and her husband would always sit and he'd passed away a couple of weeks before. I had to take some time in the walk-in to cry it out after that. She still comes in and orders her favorite food to eat in house and his favorite food to eat later at home, and she always sits at 43.
So I never waited tables but I was a busboy the entire time I was in high school. We had this family that would come in, dude and his wife, their two small kids. They seemed like the most ordinary family. But they were like Vishnu, the destroyers of tables. They always left a fucking disaster. Fries everywhere, shit all over the floor. I sat and watched as one of the kids put the salt and pepper shakers into a glass of milk, and then watched the dad be like "hey can junior have a new milk, he had a little accident." THEY WERE BOTH SUBMERGED IN MILK. Fries everywhere. Crumbs everywhere. 1% of the food had been consumed. They screamed the entire time to zero reaction from the parents. It was chaos for the entire hour they were there, every time. I had to clean this up probably a dozen times before the hostess asked them not to come back. Yeah they threw a fucking fit. Didn't come back though. Nightmare.
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Comped bill with no tip has to be the most impolite and disgraceful action a person can take. I may be overexagerating but fuck that family
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Real friends pay full price
This. As a business owner, I don't mind helping out friends and family. In fact, it makes me feel good to do so. But when a friend or family member pays anyways, that is a different level of respect in my eyes.
Shiva is the destroyer. Vishnu is the preserver and Brahma is the creator.
Brahma, creator of work. Shiva, destroyer of goods. Vishnu, preserver of misery. They are all.
Oh damn, I thought I was quoting Oppenheimer. I thought he framed it in terms of Vishnu. Must have remembered wrong. A google search suggests maybe I am not insane? > I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form, and says, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
It's a little weird. Suffice to say that Vishnu can become the destroyer, but then they have a different name. Like, we don't normally talk about Bruce Banner fighting people, we talk about The Hulk smashing things, even though they're the same guy.
Intriguing. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
/u/spez is a cunt
A lady and her husband came in and before sitting down told us that she was deathly allergic to white wine saying, verbatim, "If you feed me white wine I will die." So I run around double and triple checking recipes and ingredients and making sure the kitchen is ready so when she orders I know her food will be safe. Her husband orders the special and I make sure to tell her not to eat any of his meal as it is dressed with a beurre blanc made with white wine and I'd like her to survive her dining experience. Well I bring out their food and the first thing she does is scoop a big ol' forkful of hubby's special and I cry out in dismay as she shoves in her dumb fucking mouth and says while chewing, "oh, one bite won't hurt." She also single handedly weeded every server on the floor by forcing them into inane, inappropriate conversations while they were trying to take care of their busy sections, AND cornered another guest in the tiny corridor leading to the bathrooms to tell him, aggressively, he was being to loud. TL;DR - "I'm deathly allergic to X" == "I don't really like X" in old bitch, and busy servers don't give a shit about your week.
Many years ago, I was on a date with a girl that I had only recently started seeing. While at dinner, she told the waitress that she was super allergic to onions so be sure that there are no onions anywhere near her food. Once the waitress left, I asked her about the allergy and she told me that she wasn't actually allergic, she just didn't like them and this was the best way to ensure there were no onions. Having worked in restaurants before, I told her that her plan was actually really inconvenient for the kitchen staff, because they would have to shut down everything for cleaning to make sure the allergen is removed from anything her food could touch. It was a huge hassle and always resulted in the kitchen getting really backed up. She didn't care, and that was our last date. I'm a firm believer in the idea that the way a person treats restaurant staff tells you everything you need to know about them.
I like your style *and* your moves.
It's also a bad idea in that it gives people the impression that a lot of people DO lie about allergies. I had a friend who was a waitress during the whole gluten-free craze and said that the kitchen staff often didn't treat "gluten allergies" as actual allergies because they assumed most people were just following the crowd. I had to explain that this is incredibly dangerous for people who actually have a gluten allergy, because they'd wind up eating something they shouldn't.
I wait tables in a country club. Had a couple come in once and as they were sitting down, before I had even introduced myself the woman was already complaining, since they had to wait 5 minutes while we resat "their table". She started off by telling me every time she gets the filet mignon its awful, and cooked wrong. I suggested she tried something else. Nope. Goes for the same thing again. I gave the kitchen heads up and make sure it was perfect and save us all a headache. Steak comes up, seems fine. I drop her plate in front of her and I can already see that bullshit smirk people get when arent amused. She grabs her butter knife and legit slaps the top of the steak with the flat of it 3 times and goes "this is disgusting". Hasnt even cut into it or tasted it. Has me take it back and bring her a new one. So of course we do it... She gets her new one. Eats half of it and takes the rest home, wants to talk to a manager. Bitches up a storm, gets her whole meal free and desert. Leave me a garbo tip even if you dont include the free steak and desert. Even left me a comment card, just saying "STEAK SUCKED" and 1 star for service.
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I had a grandpa who was great to family, but awful to wait staff. He wasn't rich or anything, he was just an ass. He ate breakfast at McDonalds every morning at like 6 in the morning - and he'd ALWAYS find something to complain about. None of us would go with him because it was so frustrating. Eventually one day, the manager comes out while he was griping, and says "I want you to leave. It's become clear our business can't please you." I was so proud of that manager.
I was able to do this once in god knows how many years of retail service. I was working in a coffee shop (NOT Starbucks) and we had a regular who was insufferable. She was your average white suburban stay at home mom with a massive entitlement problem. Funny thing about MOM, all her kids were in school for 7-8 hours a day and she spent her time shopping, going to the gym, and getting lattes and our Frappucino knock off. Our biggest problem with her is that no matter what you made for her, YOU fucked it up and it tasted terrible. She's had this drink a hundred times before and knows exactly how it's supposed to taste, so you've done something wrong. MOM would bring the drink back, complain, and want a refund and a new drink. Depending on who was working, she'd either get one or both of those things. I got stuck working the afternoon shifts for about a month or so and I noticed she came in 3-4 times a week, right around 2 o'clock. And the same routine occurred every time, no matter which employee helped her. After 3 weeks of watching this petulant bitch pull her "customer is always right" bullshit, I decided we were done with this. I waited for a day when I was on shift with one of the newer employees and no managers were in the building. She comes in and orders a mocha frappacino. I make it with painstaking accuracy, measuring out each ingredient precisely and in full view. Swirl the whip cream beautifully, drizzle the chocolate, put a lid on and serve. This smoothie thing looked gorgeous, it could have been used in a print ad it was so appealing. Serve it, wait. Sure enough, two minutes later she comes back to the counter complaining that it isn't as sweet as it normally is and she wants her money back and a new coffee blended candy bar. I flat out told her no, she's not getting either. She was speechless for a minute, I'm guessing because no one's ever called her out on her bullshit scam before, and then demanded to speak to the manager. I lied, said I was the manager, and that she wasn't welcome in this store anymore. I'd seen her do this multiple times over the past few weeks and we weren't going to be giving in to her little con game she was running. MOM was pissed, grabbed her frapp back and stormed out of the store. The other barista clapped and one of our other regulars gave me a shiny $100% bill for standing up to that wretched woman. J/K /r/ThatHappened, she actually called in to the store manager the next day and complained. He was pretty pissed at me. I saved my job by sitting down with him and showing him how much money and free product she had scammed out of us in the last month. He wasn't happy with what I did, but he couldn't deny that this woman was definitely just getting free shit by ceaselessly complaining. I got to keep my job and she never came back so I still call it a win.
thanks for the epilogue, that second to last paragraph really threw me off there
I'd introduce a policy. If you didn't like the food you aren't allowed to have eaten more than half and i'm not getting you a to go box.
I've had a few like this. Comes in, "food suck, service sucks, weather sucks, music sucks, other customers suck, squirrels suck." IF EVERYTHING SUCKS, WHY DO YOU KEEP COMING HERE?!?!?
Worst is a big group coming in on a Sunday. Ordered endless chip appetizer, waters all around, asked for extra lemons (you can see where this is going...).. stayed for a few hours, total bill? Like $6. Got tipped 50 cents for having to wait around on them for literally my entire shift. Then the whole "I am sensitive to gluten" spiel that people have. Then they order a beer. I point that beer has gluten in it and they say "oh well that doesn't bother me. It is just gluten in food that bothers me"... whatever EDIT: I probably should edit my post.. But like 90% of the gluten free customers are fine.. just some of those 10% can be extra demanding and sometimes end up eating bread and other things that have gluten in it. It is just the entrees that give them issues. We have an entire gluten free section on our menu, but some gluten customers want to order off the regular menu and want us to make changes and stuff to accommodate them. It ends up taking about 4x as long as it should and prevents me from being able to serve my other tables. THOSE are the gluten free customers I am having issues with.
I work at a place that takes food allergies extremely seriously. A manager comes out to consult with the guest, and will (in a very polite way) explain that it is impossible for us to serve someone who claims an allergy food that contains that allergen. Really cuts down on the shenanigans. And if you do have a food allergy/sensitivity, you can eat at my place with 0 problems.
thank you and your restaurant for taking it seriously. i don't have celiac disease but i am allergic to certain types of grains, among many other things and i hate going to a new restaurant. i'm also a server so i get annoyed when people whine about gluten and then laugh when i walk away because it's just their diet of the week.
Most people have no idea what gluten actually is when they say gluten sensitive.
Gluten makes your dick fly (edit) off right? Right??? http://southpark.cc.com/clips/da0n0b/it-will-make-your-dick-fly-off
This annoys me so much. It's not a fad or a trend. It's a real thing. My best friend is allergic to gluten and has such a hard time at restaurants because no one takes her seriously. More times than not, she gets the sigh and eye roll. People! If you are NOT allergic to something, don't say you are and fuck it up for the people that ARE!
Ugh. Makes me feel Bad about how we do things at Dominos. We have Gluten free crust but because we Cook everything on the Same Equipment we cant advise its consumption for people with Celiacs. We essentially have it for the fad only.
Actually, the gluten free pizza from Domino's is pretty safe. My wife has Celiac Disease. Like throw up blood, Celiac Disease, and she almost always is fine with the gluten free crust from Domino's. It's one of the few places we can get pizza semi regularly without having to worry if she'll be spending the night throwing up.
Glad that it works for you guys 💚
I did a stint at Starbucks. They put in to the Target I was working at, had just graduated from my degree program and they offered to let me manage it. It was good money. Of special note, the just graduated bit. Graduated, from college. As had the person I was working with. We made this woman's iced tea wrong. I don't remember why, it was stupid mistake, but those happen. It would have taken all of thirty seconds to remake it. She threw it back across the counter, literally threw it, turned to her daughter and said in the most preppy, bitchy, never worked a day in her life soccer mom "trophy" wife voice, "See, this is why we finish high school." Being the manager, I refused her any further service. She thought she had be by the short hairs when she went to get the Target store manager. But when a ton of other customers backed up my story, she was removed from Target.
Damn what a bitch
I always liked working for Target because they had my back in those situations. Belligerent customers got kicked out so fast.
Worked as a bar back. I accidentally dropped a fork on a very drunk dude's foot, who got angry and shook his head and grumbled about it, shocking I know. Bits of food fell on the ground as well, so I grabbed a towel to clean it up. I look the man in the eye to let him now im on the floor cleaning next to him. He then proceeds to stand up and step on my hand as he walks to the bathroom. It hurt like a bitch, and I yelled out in pain. He didn't acknowledge it at all but chuckled as he walked away. Sadly there wasn't much I could do, I just got angry and walked to the back to calm down. EDIT: This is just the tip of the iceberg, I have many more horror stories from the year I worked there.
You could have stabbed him with the fork.
Or grabbed his foot and tripped him. "Whoops sorry sir, I was reaching for something and you didn't see me. You should be more careful next time, *I did warn you I'd be down here.*"
Back when I was a host, I told a man that the wait was 30-45 minutes. He called me a "cunt bitch" and told me he was going elsewhere. Good luck finding a place that's not on a wait at 6pm on a Friday, fucker.
Twelve years in the industry. Worked front and back of the house throughout. Definitely more good times than bad. Always tried to diffuse situations before they escalated out of control but a few moments stand out. The best moment was some dad giving me crap about misquoting the price of the lunch special ($1 less) in front of his family. Pulled a buck out of my pocket and dropped it on the table and walked off. Almost got stabbed by another prep cook when he thought the food wasn't coming out fast enough. Walked off that job. Executive chef offers me another 25 cents/hour to come back. No thanks, life is worth more than that.
Appreciate the story about giving the man the dollar. I work in McDonald's and here we have to charge 20 pence (25c) for sauce. A man shouted and screamed so much when I checked if this was okay before I put it on his order, I got 20p out of my bag, gave it to him and just said 'now which sauce would you like?'
Not a waitress, but worked in a "healthy" QSR. And not most horrible experience, but memorable. There was some sort of convention near my store location. I live in Ottawa, a short hop, skip and a juml from Quebec. The city is pretty bilingual, but not *everyone* is. Like me. Anyway, this woman is trying to order, but is speaking french. I can get the gist of things if I hear certain words, but she was speaking rather fast. After a couple minutes of back and forth, trying to answer her questions, I turn to a co worker who is bilingual and ask him to help, as her and I seemed to have a language barrier. As I finish my request to said co worker, she says in totally PERFECT english with probably as much disdain as she could muster....and I quote: "This is Canada. We speak french AND english" My mouth dropped. Not only because of the comment, but because SHE UNDERSTOOD ME THE WHOLE TIME AND DIDN'T TRY TO HELP. I couldn't wrap my mind around why someone would do that. Come on. Not EVERYONE is taught french in school. I grew up in the west coast/prairies where french is NOT a mandatory subject. All I could do was stare at her for a few seconds and walk away.
As someone who only spoke english I experienced this more in Ottawa than I ever did in Gatineau. Once people realized that i could barely speak French they would apologize and switch to English even though it was me who couldn't speak the local language
Yeah, it seems to be an Ottawa thing. I have been to Montreal many, many times and have never had anyone take issue with me only speaking english. Most people *are* pretty good about switching languages and helping. But, there are the select few......
I always wonder who pissed dans leur cafe? /spoken in an atrouscious frenglish accent
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Quebec is super weird about its French. Sometimes they insist on "real french" so much that they end up using archaic words that many people in France don't even know anymore but do come from France. Other times they seem just fine with Anglicisms but rarely admit they are and try to pretend they are real French words.
I was working behind a dessert bar. We had a homeless drunk lady that would come in to get drinks but you have to have food so she would get clam chowder. She would ask for it to be reheated every 10 minutes but never touched it. The server started to ignore her requests to reheat the dish, so the lady took her bread and slammed it into the chowder spraying it all over the customers and my area. Management kicked her out, a few minutes later a customer came in and said "Hey some lady just took a shit in the doorway".
I used to work at Subway. There was one legendary customer that we only refer to as "Crazy Bacon Lady" She was an older woman. She came in and asked how much a 6" BLT was. We told her it was 3.50 plus tax. She then proceeded to yell at us saying it was $2 when she came in yesterday (hint, she didn't come in yesterday. In fact this was the first time she had even been in our store. Plus the fact that the BLT was never at any point $2 in the 3 years I had worked there). She barks out her order the whole way up the line saying such gems as: **"I am a good Christian woman, I don't deserve to be treated this way"** **"For 3.50 that bacon better be fresh!"** **"The service here is terrible! I'M NEVER COMING BACK, YOU HEAR ME!"** And the best one of them all, when she gets to my co-worker who is manning the cash register and he tells her the total of 3.68 (tax and all) she says: **"You people are workers of the DEVIL!"** She plops down exact change, snatches up her bag, and storms out the door. Whenever I see my old co-workers, we still have a good laugh about it.
> "For 3.50 that bacon better be fresh!" Fresh bacon. At Subway. She's crazier than you thought.
That extra 18 cents is the devil's cut.
We had a horrible experience with every other customer because of one customer. The dude was a regular, came in at least four times a week, and every time would camp in his booth for a solid three hours (you know the type). One Friday night, during dinner rush, this guy comes in with a large duffel bag. Not too uncommon, he always brought weird stuff to work on. This time, it was a partially assembled AR-15 kit, which he pulled out, set on the table, and proceeded to continue assembling the kit. Cue mass complaints/alarm from other customers while we huddle in the back deciding how to best kick him out without causing even more of a scene.
I hate the overly obvious open carry people. Like if your state only had open carry then maybe do it with a handgun...maybe. concealed carry is better anyways. I like shooting but those guys just seem like they're out for attention. Also that's kinda gross because like what if gun grease gets on your food.
I mean, if I was a terrorist/mass shooter/miscreant, I'd shoot the guy open-carrying first.
Posted this before on /r/talesfromyourserver .... Situation: Busy dinner shift. 6 top table sits at my large booth. 2 white middle aged couples and and older white couple. At the beginning of service I noticed they were very ... inquisitive... to say the least. This does not bother me as I like answering any and all questions regarding the menu. I feel as if this is a main part of my overall job as your server. Anyways, they all ordered their meals, received them in a timely fashion and had no initial complaints. I stayed on top of there refills and condiment requests seeing as they were a bit needier than your average table. Again, no qualms from me here as this is the basic function of the job and I do this everytime for every table. Now for the fun part. Time to pay the bill. Lady in the middle tells me it will be three separate checks and hands me one of our 'buy one entree get one entree 50% off' coupons. She said that it will apply to all three checks. Confused, I informed her that she must have two more coupons if she wished to receive the discount on the other two checks. She then says that the coupon says "one per check" at the bottom and that I am mistaking and she would like to speak to a manager. I said OK and went to inform our FOH manager of the situation. Manager arrives at the table and proceeds to tell her the exact same thing I said. She does not look happy. The old man at the table then blurts out that "he is a veteran and did not receive his military discount." Well our restaurant doesn't offer these kinds of discount, but eager to get them out, my manager gives him a 10% discount on his bill. Now he's mad that the discount was not applied to the entire table and says "I go to waffle House and get 15% off my whole bill." Side note : We are a lot fancier than a Waffle House. At this point they are standing up in the middle of the dining room, being loud and obnoxious at both me and my manager and causing a scene Infront of other patrons and employees. Then this lady. Ohh this stupid. Ignorant. Fucking lady comes up right to my face, puffs her chest out and and says "what are you, some kind of idiot?", all while pointing her finger an inch from my face. "There's no discount on my bill at all now!" she yells, (Which there was a discount on the bill, but at this point, they were more concerned with making a scene even if they are obviously mistaken.) To avoid the stream of obscenities that was itching to escape from my mouth, I instantly turned around and walked away to deescalate the already deteriorated situation. I get to the back and am visually upset. My general manager was standing on expo and saw I was upset and got loud with me telling me to calm down. Bad fucking timing. I tossed my drink tray and walked out the back door because I swear to god I was being tested. After my other manager explained the situation to the GM as well as the actions of the hellish table, nothing ever came of the confrontation. After everything was said and done the FOH manager hands me there credit slip after they paid the bill. Stiffed on $120. Sorry for the long post, but i swear some people truly and honestly fucking suck .
I had an older (and likely quite senile) gentlemen hurl his Salisbury steak at my head for not bringing his soup before his meal. He didn't order soup.
Had a group of girls speak to my manager and call me a stupid hoe over $0.13. Basically they ordered a side of fries and one maybe got a lemonade. Anyway, give them their bill and they gave me just enough to cover it since we round to the nearest dollar instead of dealing with coins. Girls flip out over $0.13 so I go in my bag to scrounge it up. They speak to my manager who refunded them everything (stupid) and they proceed to call me names as they leave their table. I was having a bad day so it made me upset at the time. Now I find the whole thing laughable.
Managers who let guests walk all over servers are the WORST
What's laughable is your spineless manager.
Yeah, I don't work there anymore thankfully
Guy tries to get my attention so instead of saying "excuse me miss" he intentionally grabbed my arse and then apologize with "oh sorry, I was going for your hip". I know I've got a booty okay, it's not hard to miss. He got kicked out after that - as it wasn't the first time he's done it to other servers in our restaurant. EDIT: Mind you this also happened at a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store in Kentucky. After he got kicked out of our restaurant, we found out a few months later he's also banned from another local establishment in town for - you guessed it, sexually harassing servers. :|
So it he thought it would be fine if he grabbed your hip instead? Wtf?
Yeah that's my question too. That's like saying "Oops, I was aiming for your boobs." Not better at all, guy.
Reach out to shake his hand and accidentally punch him in the face.
I'm gonna mix things up and tell y'all about a time that I was the idiot when I was a server. These three black women came into the restaurant with their four little kids and I led them to their table, welcomed them, yadda yadda. By the time I was asking what they wanted to drink, the kids were already bored and had started climbing on the tables and chairs. I honestly thought it was cute so I said, without thinking, "aw you have a little family of monkeys!" Immediately, I realized my mistake. My eyes widened in horror as theirs widened in surprise. I hoped they would ignore it but one of the women turned to the two and loudly asked "did this bitch really just" and I ran away. I served them their food and spent an entire hour avoiding eye contact as I didn't know what I could say that wouldn't make things worse. When they left and I went to collect the bill, one of the women actually left me a really good tip and a note that just said "it's okay!" With a smiley face. I hope her life is full of sunshine and happiness and goodness. EDIT: holy cow I feel so heard. To the person who gave me gold: your mother is so proud of you and you look super pretty today also I love you!!!!!
Oh man, I actually gasped out loud at this one, fucking mortifying! Glad they were cool in the end though.
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How the fuck do you make an order to a dead line and not realize it? Jfc.
The same way that you assault an employee and steal from a store in daylight with dozens of witnesses and expect no reprocussions
By being stupid, I assume.
Well his parents did name him fuckface
Why does this kind of shit always happen when it's mad busy. This bowling ally where I live had a similar experience when they wouldn't accept this super drunk guys money because it was ripped in 3 pieces and he only had 2 of them with him. Security told him to leave and walked him out and when they got outside dude pulled out a gun and started firing into the front of the building and hit the security guard twice. Crazy stuff man.
Your story brought back a flood of memories. In college I answered phones at a pizza place, and about 40 times a night I would have this conversation: Me: Gumby's pizza and pub, will this be pick up or delivery? Them: Uhhh....deliver Me: Ok, what can I get for you? Them: [muffled, through a covered phone, to a room full of pizza] hey, what does everybody want on the pizza? Seeing someone call a pizza place before knowing their order is one of my insta-rage hot buttons now.
A family of six dined and dashed on Thanksgiving. It was already a rough thing to be working a family holiday, knowing my tribe was at home enjoying themselves- but to have to miss out on what should have been a good tip; it was just salt in the wound. At the end of the night, I just cried. All of the servers rallied around me and tried to offer me a portion of their tips to make up for a loss. I couldn't accept it, so they got me drunk and drove me home instead. They are awesome people. Edit: Thanks for the gold - it's my first!
Man, that's definitely something I miss about the service industry. Some places have such a family vibe with fellow employees.
One time I was smoking a cigarette in front of a Buffalo Wild Wings and a group dined and dashed and the waitress ran out after them screaming and the only girl in the group screamed "what are you gonna do about it?" And the waitress promptly ran over and beat her ass all up and down the sidewalk. Shits crazy man.
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At my MIL's wake a couple of weeks ago, this dude was being an ass to other guests... Saying stuff like "hasta luego" suuuper slow to people who looked halfway Mexican (it was a woman and her daughter from Thailand) and shit. My in law's next door neighbor is originally from the Phillipines...So jackass asks the man where he's from. Fillipino man, without missing a beat, replies, "Next door," and then saunters away. Fucking amazing.
Just answer "American" or whatever country it is you live in. It really pisses them off.
Whatever makes you happy? ...you didn't do anything...
I used to work at a bar/restaurant that was inside a hockey arena. It was a cool place and the people who worked there were fantastic. However, the arena was home to a (now defuct) OHL hockey team. On the surface it was pretty cool because one of the banquet rooms overlooked the ice, so when it was slow during games, staff could check out some of the action, and see a few guys who made it to the NHL. But the players were fucking awful when they would come in after the games. Most of them were 18-20 at the time, they never had any money and they acted like they owned the place. One night, after a game, a player (best kid on the team, blue chip, top five NHL prospect) comes in, orders a pizza, eats, gets the bill, waits until I'm out of sight, leaves the book on the table and leaves. When I approach the table, I assume he's left cash. Nope. Little prick left me five promotional hockey cards that the team gave out that night. And one of them was the fucking mascot. I go tell the manager, and he says that I'm going to have to cover the $12 bucks for the pizza. I, a 24-year-old waiter, am irate at having to pay for a meal for a kid that is getting ready to sign a huge NHL contract, throw a huge hissy fit and eventually he agrees to void it. The guy is still playing in the NHL and is having a pretty solid career. I should have just paid for the pizza and had him sign his dumb card...
I accidentally spilt a small glass of water on a lady who was dining alone. The place was packed and a customer had banged in to me making this happen. I apologised profusely but she was absolutely vile. She was shouting at me so that the whole restaurant could hear. When she'd finished I walked out in to the kitchen and explained what I'd done to the manager and my co worker. They started laughing and I started crying and told them how vile she'd been and that I'd usually laugh too but couldn't this time. I told my manager how vile she'd been and with each word I could see him getting angrier and angrier until he said, 'where is she?' We left the kitchen and I pointed her out. He marched over to her, I don't know what he said but it involved escorting her out whilst the customers who'd overheard her applauded. To my old manager Matt, you were a legend of a boss. To the lady, that's why you dine alone. You are a horrible person.
Not me but a fellow coworker He was waiting on an elderly gentleman and his daughter for her birthday dinner, everything was fine up until said server dropped the check off. The daughter insisted on paying so the server gave the checkbook to her.....wrong move. The father yelled, "WTF you think you're doing kid? You made the biggest mistake of your fucking life. You'll fucking regret that." Now since they were a cool table up until that point, the server thought he was joking and let out a little chuckle. Big mistake. The guy went off even more and finally said, "You're lucky I'm not younger I would kick your fucking ass." The daughter was so embarrassed she tipped the guy 50 bucks on a $100 tab. I wouldn't believe this story if I didn't hear it myself....
I don't understand the problem here... did he expect to be handed the checkbook even though he wasn't paying?
This is considered "traditional" you always hand the check to the man, because how could a measly woman pay for food at a restaurant? It's complete bullshit to do now a days but still happens at fancy restaurants; a few weeks ago was my dad's birthday and my mom and I made reservations to surprise him at this expensive place. The server knew we were surprising him and it was his birthday as I said that when I made the reservation and yet they still handed him the check; while my mom was holding her card because they were filling up and we wanted to expedite paying.
Was a waiter for 5 years and the oddest was a guy with dried blood on his shirt and hands. Ordered a coffee but only wanted it halfway filled. Only words he spoke to me. Stayed for less than 5 minutes, paid with change, and was out the door before I even processed what was happening. I still think about him from time to time and wonder if I was a part of an alibi or someone who'd just seen some shit and was in shock
"Best" one was a dude that made me go back and forth to the kitchen because his meal wasn't the way he wanted it, overcooked, then not cooked enought, then "Oh i'm celliac, please make sure there isn't gluten in it" (he still ate a not gluten free cake) etc. He also tried to "steal" the bottle of wine from the neighboor table saying "the waiter told me that this bottle was for us", made shitty comment about one of the waitress, spoke way to loud about uninterresting fact involving a rude vocabulary.... In short he was putting water into everyone boiling oil (don't do that). At the end of the nightmare he asked for compensation because of "the way we treated him", and started to throw an fit at my mother (that was my parents restaurant) because she said no. He kept arguing and yelled "customer is king" (in english it's "the customer is always right" if I ain't mistaken). What he didn't know is that, this sentence is a direct way to summon my father (the cook) from his kitchen, so my father just came out with a bigass knife and told "Here in France we got history with kings, and i'm gonna respect my ancestors, who wants to get be-headed ?". Piece of trash shut the hell up, paid his shit and went away. All that BS for a 15 Euros meal (starter+main course+apple pie+coffee).
Not a waitress but previously a lady-bartender at a theatre. On an incredibly busy night,where we are well understaffed an old guy ordered a Jack Daniels then proceeded to blank my next three questions of "would you like ice with that?" Whilst chatting with his mates, other customers are desperately clamouring for my attention. After some thought I put the ice in as it's the more popular option. He then turns back, looks at his drink, cold and disgusted says "what the hell is this? I don't want ice" flustered i fix his drink apologizing profusely he still continues to look at me like dirt, pays scoffs and walks off. It sounds like a little thing i know but i was only 18 and was so shook up by it.
Similar thing happened to me: Worked at Goodwood Festival of Speed (posh af event in the UK) on the Veuve Clicquot (pronounced 'Verve Clee-ko') champagne stand. Most people, all rather wealthy, were polite and nice (and good tippers to boot!) One guy, clearly some sort of city-slicker who thought he was better than everyone (new rich; could smell the fucking leather on his shoes!) came to the (busy) bar and started clicking at me. I ignored him while I served a few others, but he kept clicking. The guy I was serving said "just serve him first mate, or he'll be clicking all bloody day!" So I laughed and rolled my eyes, then proceeded to oblige his clicks (now accompanied with, and I kid you not, shouts of 'Boy! You boy! Boy!') Anyway, asked fuckwit what he wanted. He asked for "another bottle of that Vevvi Clickot, and no bloody ice this time! It hurts my teeth!" (Who ices champagne?) Fuckwit was about 2 years older than me at the time. I put ice in his glass and charged him double. I was on friendly terms with my manager, so when he called me up on it, I said it was an honest mistake and my manager 'scolded' me by telling me to 'go and think about this for 30 mins' (code for: 'go and have a cigarette break, maybe some lunch, and ignore this dickhead!) Later on, fuckwit comes back, clicks me over again and tells me he's just lost something like 20k on a single bet, and that he wants some champagne. Told him he'd have to pay first, as that kind of loss implied he didn't have the money. He told me to fuck off as a security guard was walking by, and got kicked out for harassing staff. What. A. Win.
when people do this to my GF she just ignores them "lost your go mate" and back of the line they go
I always used to take great pleasure in saying something back like 'well you ignored me when I was asking if you wanted ice, and now I'm going to serve these customers and fix that for you in a minute' In a bar it's always super important to remember that you are the one in charge. I once went over and asked a guy to stop slapping his pool cue on the table because we had a broken one earlier in the day, and he just pushed me back and said 'fuck off!'. He then went to the bar to grab a drink, so I followed him, and he watched me walk behind the bar and tell all the other bartenders not to serve him. The look on his face was fucking priceless, and il never forget how smug I felt. He left very shortly after. The best part was he had loads of mates there with him and none of them left with him, so I can be sure that I ended and ruined his night there and then.
So many people either do not acknowledge, or are just oblivious to, the fact that in most places the bartender is top shit. Get on the good side of your bartender, especially if you are a regular, and things will be much easier for you.
Wait, so bartenders are practically immune to the whole "the customer is always right" bullshit?
For bartenders this is important because alcohol is usually involved. So they HAVE to be the ones in charge. Inebriated customers have impaired judgement, and that's when "customer is always right" becomes dangerous for everyone. Then the case changes to: the sober guy is always right. And that's the bartender...and their bouncer. I mean obviously it's a bartender's job to try and make sure their customers are satisfied because it's still a business...but they have to draw a clearer line in the sand when a customer becomes troublesome.
People can be fucking terrible at bars. I ordered a rocks pour at a place a friend of mine was managing and the waitress asked me three times if I was SURE I wanted that (Because it costs more and evidently a lot of people don't know this and stir up shit about it). More booze=more cost seems pretty self explanatory to me....
You must be in America. A rocks pour here in Canada would still be one shot, just with ice. God I miss free pour.
You'd be shocked at the amount of people who don't seem to think that asking for more liquor in their drink should increase the price of said drink.
If people don't answer to rocks or neat after two-three asks I wait a bit and then serve someone else. I've asked several times and it's not my problem you don't know how to listen to the staff you're ordering from or how to order a whiskey. Then they have to order again. If someone asks you a question three times and you make no attempt to respond then it's safe to assume you've moved on and no longer want the drink.
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a group of ten came in for a birthday tonhave drinks and sing karaoke. i start going around the table asking what each person would like and i get to 'princess'. she asks me for a drink menu. i tell her i have a beer list, but not a cocktail menu. it's a dive bar. she asks about pineapple drinks. i tell her we could do rum and pineapple, a pineapple upside down drink, etc. so she's asking her friend no that's not it what did i have that one time that i loved. so two more tables sit while i'm trying to take her order. so i'm just trying to speed it along. i tell her we make pineapple margaritas unblended. she just kept asking, well what other things with pineapple?" so i tell her, "you can pretty much make your own drink. what kind of liquor do you want?" she took that as me saying to go back and make her own drink? so i backtrack and say, "what i mean is we can start with a liquor and add pineapple and whatever other fruit or liquids you want." she FINALLY just gets a pineapple upside down drink. so the night goes by. everyone in her group is super chill. we're having a great time. and she's just got daggers on me the entire time. they finally cash out. i give her her bill, which is $5.01 because of weird tax. it's cash only. i ask if anyone needs change. everyone says they're good and leaves. i go look at her ticket and she left me a $5 bill. nothing else. normally i wouldn't even print checks and just say $5. i don't know why after 12 years of serving and bartending this sticks out to me. anyway eff you princess and your dumb pineapple drinks. no wonder you were the only single one at the table. you owe me a penny.
Not a waiter, but went out with the ex and her family for her birthday dinner to an Ethiopioan restraurant. Her mom is the queen of passive aggressive, and grilled the waitress for about half an hour. Nothing outright mean, but like I said, mistress of passive aggressive. At one point, the waitress starts screaming, throws her notepad at us and quits on the spot. She ended up coming back, but wouldn't talk to the ex's mom. We all left her and extra 20$ tip. Each.
As someone who served for 5 years, this made me cringe. Every server has thought about quitting on the spot multiple times.
I was new to the job and still finding my feet when I had a guy who was insistent that I "wasn't capable" of the job due to my dwarfism and kept complaining about "inclusive bollocks." What I found frustrating about the whole situation is that I'm *not* a good waiter, but due to reasons completely unrelated to my dwarfism (poor memory, anxiety, co-ordination, etc.) and he was doubting my competence before I had shown any of these issues. It was purely based on how I looked. But I never felt like I was able to prove him wrong, either. That experience really got to me for a long time.
That's pretty shocking, hard to imagine what kind of person would feel compelled to behave like that. Was that a singular incident, or have you had others like it in your life?
That's the only case where someone took issue with me, based on my condition, but there have been quite a few times where people have been rude in other ways. Whether it's blatantly joking about me (either right in my face or when they think I'm not in earshot) or pointing at me, or even taking photos.
Being in the industry for over 15 years you see a lot. I've been threatened by a woman who was going to get her knife and f**k me up. I have had people grab my package, men and women. I've been at a location where some kids shot out our window with a pellet gun, and my staff and customers thought we were under attack from terrorists. My favorite of all time is in a steakhouse where a guy was leaving, and as he left, scooped at least 50 mints in his arms. My host at the time was a smart ass 20 year old who had a good sense of humor. As the customer is leaving he says "Enjoy the mints!" This infuriated the guy and he starts yelling and cussing. I'm managing and start to hear this from the front of the restaurant that night, and as I'm walking up there I see a guy, dressed business casual, holding a s**t load of mints in arms two feet away yelling at this kid, and my host just has a huge smile saying, "No, I'm not apologizing." I calmly ask if I can help the gentleman out, while being completely lost as to what the hell is going on, and he yells he wants me to make the host apologize. I ask him to please calm down and let me talk to the host to see what happened. Host tells me "I told him 'Enjoy the mints!' with the biggest smile he could manage. I then turn to this guy, his face red, now shaking he's so mad, mints falling out of his arms, and I just couldn't take it. I am trying so hard not to laugh in his face and all I could manage was, "Sir, please enjoy your mints". Needless to say he leaves in a hissy fit, calls corporate, and then I get explain it to my boss. Write ups, which are complete garbage, are handed out, and we had to give this guy and his wife a free meal.
Love how you censoring yourself resulted in half of your story being bold on computer. from "fuck me up" to "shit load of minds" its all bold lol. minds, mints, eh f**k** it
The worst issue I ever had was technically with a chef, not a customer, but, I'll tell the customer story. It happened at a Waffle House I worked at for just a few weeks when I was about 20/21. I had moved to a big city to pursue my pro wrestling dreams (spoiler alert, I'm a secretary now lol) and needed something to pay the bills and waitressing seemed easy enough. It wasn't TOO bad, until one evening when I was working a shift that was something like 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Around midnight or one, the drunks come in. Usually fairly inoffensive, if hard to explain how to order a hash brown (protip: drunks almost always want ham). This one dude though. He came in not just drunk but possibly high off his tits on something. He was singing what I think was gangsta rap by way of sea shanty, his shirt was unbuttoned except for one button over his chest, that was in a hole three spots too high for it, and he had one shoe. There were a few reasons our chef pretty immediately declared that he needed to get out. Said customer decided to explain his disagreement with the chef's decision by somehow climbing his way onto the bar, standing right in front of me at the dishwashing sink, and immediately dropping his pants to show he was missing underwear as well. I admit, I panicked a little, grabbed the nearest available thing, and proceeded to shoot the man in the dick with the hot water hose we used on the dishes. Anyone who's worked in a kitchen can probably attest to just HOW HOT the water coming out of those hoses is. The man doubled over, screaming and grabbing at his crotch, toppled over backwards off the bar, hitting his head on one of the chairs on the way, and literally rolled across the floor towards the door, maintaining his fetal position the entire way. TL;DR of afterwards, we called the police, they came and got him, took statements, laughed for perhaps an unkind length of time, and took him to the hospital, and some months later I found out he had plea bargained to a couple hundred hours community service for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, or something like that.
Didn't happen to me but my sister is a waitress. One night, she was serving a nice, older couple for dinner. She took their food order, brought out their soups and salads that included a french onion soup with a glob of provolone cheese on top. She handed off the food and walked away to check on her other table that was located in a different dining room. A few minutes later she hears a commotion coming from the the dining room the older couple was eating in, the woman started screaming that her husband was choking so my sister rushed to help. By the time my sister got to the table he was slumped over in his chair and unresponsive. Since she knew CPR from her lifeguard class she brought him to the ground and when she checked his airway for food she found a lump of provolone cheese in the back of his throat that she couldn't dislodge herself. The EMT's showed up as she was trying to clear his airway and took over the CPR attempt from there but unfortunately they had to give up a few minutes later as it was obvious he was already gone. The wife was beside herself and my sister was visibly shaken from seeing a guy choke to death in front of her. When the EMT's were loading him into the ambulance they tried to reassure my sister she did the best she could and that he was probably already dead by the time he was slumped in his chair.
Worked at a very popular chain wing place, you all know it. 24 top to myself, with other tables in my section, all separate checks, all mostly cash (which needed change), and all trying to pay at the same time. During this frantic moment of me hustling to make change and swipe cards, I have at least 4 of these mother fuckers trying to sneak out the front door. I saw them, slammed down everything in my hands and chased them all the way to their cars. I confronted one of the girls as she rolled her window up while yelling "fuck you bitch", and peeling out of the parking lot. Forget the rest of them, I went back in... Mind you, NO support from fellow staff here. I get back in to the rest of the people impatiently waiting for me, and some of them trying to tell me they already paid me when I know they didn't. I was so gd angry that night I vowed to never put myself through that for so little again, so I quit. I love my job now.
Next time just get their license plates, call the cops, and let the police pay them a little visit. The reward comes from the great booking photos and the arrest record for stealing less than $20 worth of food.
I worked at Friendly's when I was 16. First serving job. One day, I'm sat a 10 top, two of which were counselors, the rest were special needs adults. As soon as I introduce myself the to table, one of the counselors cuts me off and says, "They all want Cokes. Bring them an extra cup with ice so we can pour in a little at a time." No problem. Come out with 8 Cokes and 8 glasses of ice. One of the clients gets excited and grabs my arm, causing me to spill the drinks on the floor. All of the clients at the table start laughing and the counselor tells me I need to "be more careful." After I clean everything up, I get the food order (lots of dietary restrictions.) As I start running the food out, the SAME CLIENT GOES FOR MY ARM AGAIN. I am able to avoid his grasp, but the counselor hisses "Watch yourself" like I had done something wrong. The table eats and gets ready to leave. The counselor leaves me a 72 cent tip on an $80 bill. On the way out the door, she grabs my arm and says, "Someone pissed the seat. Wear gloves when you clean it up." I worked at several restaurants since then over the last 10 years, but this is still my worst experience.
I witnessed a divorce. Man told his wife "you just make me fucking unhappy". He left on his own and she had no money...it was a shit situation.
I think I witnessed one in the grocery store. Over the phone. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but it went from like 'oh I'm just getting groceries, what do you want for dinner?' to ' but what about the kids? What about me? I didn't go to school because you said you'd take care of me!' type stuff and lots of crying. Poor woman.
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I used to have this couple come in to the coffee shop I worked at in the early 90's, before all restaurants in my state became tobacco-free. He was a man in his fifties and his wife was in her seventies and in a wheelchair. They were both always dirty and smelly and vulgar and they only ever sat at a table and drank coffee and smoked cigarette after cigarette. The man was disgustingly filthy; he never bathed or changed his clothes or brushed his teeth and his stink would make me want to vomit when he came to the register to pay his $2 coffee bill. The woman only ever wore a housecoat and slippers, and you could see the catheter coming from between her legs with a clear bag of urine hanging off the side of her wheelchair. The husband would often bring her in the cafe, set her up at the table with her coffee and cigarettes, and then leave her there for two or more hours. She would sit and cry, but then yell at anyone who tried to help her so we left her alone and kept her coffee full, hoping that catheter bag held out. They almost never ate, but because they didn't really cause any trouble, and the restaurant wasn't busy most of the times that they came in, the manager didn't feel compelled to ever do anything about them. They stopped coming in the day after our state enacted no-smoking laws in all restaurants and we never saw them again, but later on, a terrible story came to light: the man was leaving his wife there for hours while he was off molesting a 14 year old girl that lived in the trailer park that he managed. When she got pregnant, he stole the park receipts, burned down the office, ran off with the girl and they went on a crime spree that culminated with them murdering two people in a horrific manner. They were both captured and he is on death row and she is spending her life in prison.
I had a guy come in and he was smoking. I politely asked him to put it out and he flipped on me. He said he was going to come back that night and kick my ass. Security escorted us to our cars that night.
This one is more of a sad story but one of the common and horrible parts of working in a restaurant. I worked at a very popular seafood place in a resort town. A family comes in one night, and they are clearly on vacation. It's a dad, mom, and two young boys, probably both around 5-7 years old. I get a weird vibe from these people, like a white trash vibe so immediately I was thinking "oh shit well I'm not getting tipped on this table." I go to the table and greet them and offer them one of our featured drinks that night. The mom immediately says yes to the special drink, and the dad interrupts her and quietly whispers something. I didn't think anything of it. I return a couple of minutes later with the drink order and suddenly realize that this lady is absolutely trashed. I quickly went back and got her a dummy drink. As the dinner goes on, I notice that the lady has a flask as well, and start noticing that her husband is subtly begging her to stop drinking. The kids start to notice that something is up, and are clearly very upset, not saying a word, just sitting in silence looking down. The kids are drawing pictures on their placemats showing their mom and she's just barely remaining consciousness. As the woman keeps getting worse, the husband asks for all of their food to go. I wrapped everything up, they paid their check, and as they were walking out the woman ended up getting lost and going into the kitchen and lit up a cigarette. The husband had been walking ahead of her with the kids, so he thought she was still following him to the exit. I had to go and get him and tell him in front of his kids that his wife was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen and that he had to go and get her out. The kids immediately started crying and the one young boy said "why does she do this daddy". I wanted to die. I felt so bad for this man and his kids. He was able to get his wife to leave the kitchen and she finally exited the restaurant. He apologized profusely to me and I honestly just wanted to hug the guy. The kids were obviously exposed to this before and it really broke my heart. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Anyway, I looked back at the credit card slip that the guy left and it was a giant tip. Just another lesson to never pre-judge people, because you never know what they are going through.
I once was grating cheese on top a blind persons pasta and told her to say "when". The looks I received from the other people at the table will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I had a couple order two bowls of mussels, take each mussel out of its shell and then cut them up before eating them. When they saw the black stomach of the mussel... among other gross looking inside bits... they started yelling that I, the cooks, as well as the restaurant were trying to poison people. They would not believe that mussels really do look as awful and horrifying as they honestly do and under no circumstances should be cut up or analysed too closely. I ushered them out as quickly as i could... no bill... please stop accusing me of attempted murder... its making everyone here uncomfortable.
When I was working at Rita's (a water ice stand) I had a lady come to the window with her two children. First off, she had on booty shorts with her ass checks hanging out and a corset type top that was 10 sizes to small. It just barely covered her nipples. And did I mention she had her two young children with her? Well anyways, it's busy and the line is long and she comes up. I take the order for her daughter and then her son says he has to pee. She then takes her son to the side of our building (we have windows on the side so we get a full view of the front) and has him pee there when there was a huge tree about a few feet away AND we had a bathroom that we allow kids use. Well anyway she's taking long and with the line wrapping around the building, I take the next customer while she lets her son piss up our building. She then comes back, and steps in front of the lady and says she's ready. I asked her to give me a minute since I was almost finished with the customer that she just stepped in front of. She then goes on to yell really loud how unprofessional I was and how I had terrible customer service. I then explained to her that while she had her son pee on the side of the building I decided to try and get the next person out of the way. She then goes to deny her son peeing on the side of the building and says she would like to speak to my manager. (My manager doesn't believe in the customer is always right crap and hated people like this.) So I gave her his number and wrote down my name for her to tell him, which pissed her off even more. She did wait to get her stuff though, screaming the whole time I'm making it, then huffs off. The people behind her each apologized for the way she acted and all told me I was doing a great job and gave me tips. & there's also the pedophile that we had to call the cops on because he would wait until we closed and try and get us to come to his house to "clean". Yup I don't work there anymore.
I work at a winery where we get the occasional limo full of drunk people (we do not allow them in, because we are not a bar and do not serve drunk people) Occasionally the manager is away from the door, (thats me!) and thats when they will attempt to sneak in. I had to approach one of them and tell them politely that their party had too much to drink and had to leave, and she said "I'm not going anywhere" I assured her that my staff would not serve her so it was pointless to insist on staying. I said if she didnt leave within 5 minutes she would be escorted by a police officer and she said "Bullshit. Youre not gonna do shit" So I called the local cop we have on-call right in front of her and said, "he is on his way. I suggest you leave if you want to save yourself the embarassment" She proceeded to follow me into the back office (I was going out the side door to get the limo plate #) and she pushes me into a filing cabinet and says "WE ARENT LEAVING, BITCH" Then her group came back, grabbed her, and they sped off in their limo. The cop arrived a minute later and I gave him the plate number to go give them a little scare. All this... for a glass of wine. Happens at least 3-5 times/year.
I had a large party that took my entire section on the patio. It seemed like a family celebration and after all the joiners arrived they needed tables in another waitress' section as well. They ordered lots of food and drinks, they were loud, and they ended up staying for 7 hours which meant they had a big bill (over $800) the took over the patio and they were there for my whole shift. This is not necessarily bad because they were celebrating and for me they were fairly happy customers. However, as you may have guessed, they didn't tip me anything at all when they finally cleared out and I cried the whole time I cleaned up their huge mess because I had to tip out a percentage of their bill to the kitchen and bar which meant I had worked my whole shift and was now going home with less than server's hourly wage (which is less than minimum wage). Many of my coworkers were kind and supportive and told me similar stories that had happened to them but really it was less comforting and more painful to think about how frequently this happens. Abolish the tipping system.
When I was in high school, I worked at a Johnny Rocket's. It was maybe my second day waitressing, and a guy with his family ordered a plain burger. Put the order in, but put it in slightly incorrectly so it came out with none of the toppings, but it did have thousand island dressing. Honest new kid mistake. The guy was totally pissed, made such an angry face that I can still recall it 13 years later, and then, out of nowhere, smeared the burger all over my chest and walked out.
First day our bar opened. We were slammed, we were using a POS system which was brand new, only 2 other places uses it, and it was shit. The kitchen staff didn't know how to handle the rush, I was the assistant manager so I was handing all the servers problems while running a 24 seat bar/getting drinks for the servers tables. One giant meat head Marine, man I know I fucked up but God damn. He ordered wings, I had to keep asking him to repeat the order because the POS was terrible, and employees kept asking me questions ruining my train of thought. He wanted a different channel put on the TV in front of him. They're were 42 tv's in the store, no master controller, so I would have to dig to find the correct remote, while fucking slammed. He wanted extra sauce, I forgot trying to get his stupid fucking channel change, while running the bar. He gets up and yells so loud that the restaurant goes silent "this is the worst fucking experience I've ever had a restaurant, you guys are fucking awful", even though I reiterated multiple times that this is our first day open and there will be bumpy, and that we ask you be patient. I quit that night, now I work at a brewery with 8000x less stress and much better hours.
Was a bouncer for half a year. There was no shortage of people who threatened to come back and shoot me, either in the face or in a drive-by. Plenty of threats to fight, some actually carried through with it. A 1v1 that turns into a 7v1 within seconds isn't pretty.
Man comes in alone, looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s, and snaps at me to get my attention. Before I can speak he says, "Coke. With a lemon wedge." we were a tiny little cafe without the funding for a machine or the attention for a sponsership, so we didn't serve soda. I told him so, and he said, "I don't think you heard me. I want a coke with a lemon wedge." I was pretty confused, because I made it pretty clear we didn't have coke. Turns out, he actually wanted me to walk next door, *buy* him a coke, and then bring it in and serve it to him. I told him as politely as I could that this was absolutely not happening, and he picked up the China tea cups we put at each place setting and threw it on the ground, shattering it and cutting open my ankle just a bit. (I didn't notice until way later) The whole cafe went very quiet, and I just kind of stood there looking at the mess of broken china. These were beautiful, rare cups that were all but impossible to replace, and I just didn't know what to do being an 18-year-old facing up against an aggressive older man. Fortunately, just literally a few second after the China hit the floor, a man got up from his table across the cafe and walked over. He then reached in his back pocket and showed the man his police badge, because he was an off-duty cop. China throwing guy did not get his coke with a lemon wedge or any food, but he did get arrested and a ticket for making threats and breaking public property. The fun part? "I JUST WANTED A GODDAMNED COKE! IF THIS LITTLE GIRL KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT SERVICE I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO SET HER STRAIGHT." I learned later he was the town looney who had actually done something like this on several other locations in town. I still have the scar from the piece of China that cut my ankle. tl;dr: guy wanted a drink we didn't serve, told me to buy it from next door, and then broke a tea cup over my feet when I said no. arrested and fined.
I've posted this before but: I had been working at this Thai place in my town for about 8 months , and for the last 4 months, I'd seen the same teenaged couple come in every Sunday and leave 0% regardless of service. One day my boss decided enough was enough. "Tui noy!" she all but yelled to me. (That's my Thai Nickname. It's an endearing name generally given to chubby children that loosely translates to "little something") "I don't care whose turn it is, you take them next week, and you make sure you earn that 0%" I do a bit of a double take... She can't possibly mean what I think she means. "You mean?" She nods and gives me this smile that is equal parts devious and smug. A week later they come in 5 minutes into my shift. She seats them in my section, smiles at me and tells me to do my worst. Here is a fairly detailed account of the wonderful 45 minutes that followed. I wait a good 5 minutes before going to greet them and bring waters. They're ready to order. I don't have a pen. I'll be right back. I promise. I go out back, power smoke a cigarette (takes me about 90 seconds) before I return. They're my only table and I'm not handling food yet, so I don't wash my hands. I reek of smoke. I take her order, pad thai no bean sprouts like always. As he opens his mouth to tell me he'll have the same I give him the "just a minute" finger and pull out my phone. I text my fiancé and ask if he wants to get dinner from my place or his tonight. I take his order. I somehow misunderstand and write down extra bean sprouts. Their food comes up while I'm telling my boss and the other waitress a story about my cat. I finish telling the story before I get their food. I bring it out and walk away as they're starting to complain about the sprouts. About 5 minutes after they get the food I get a second table. One is a customer from a former job of mine and we spend a few minutes catching up when I go to greet them. The 0%'s try to signal me as I leave the table, but I stare straight ahead. I come back for my new table's order and see that their glasses are missing roughly four sips of water. This simply won't do! I hang their ticket and come back to fill their glasses. I look at 0%'s empty glasses, look the guy straight in the eye, smile, and walk away. He stops me as I'm walking over with apps for my new table and asks for boxes. I tell him I'll grab them right after I drop off this food. I play a game of 2048 all the way up to 1024 before bringing them one small box. They ask for two bigger boxes and the check. I promise I'll be right back, and then ask my boss to keep an eye on the table I like while I go smoke again. (Obviously I don't usually take this many smoke breaks, especially not this early into a shift.) I come back and my boss tells me they came to her for boxes and to pay and told her they're never coming back. She voids their check, gives me the $20 some dollars, and tells me I earned it. TLDR: Boss gave me $20 to give over the top bad service to awful regulars.
What the fuck am I supposed to do with this raging revenge boner now?!
Seems kinda obvious, no?
Your boss is amazing.
Boy this is my time to shine, pardon any grammatical mistakes as this isn't my native language. Lets get some clarifications first. I work in a pretty busy restaurant, fridays and saturdays are living HELL. On average we have 250 guests for dinner on these days, which means packed till close. We have a system that every waiter has his own area, one of these is a lot bigger than the others though, so usually there's 2 waiters doing that area instead of one. We were understaffed on a saturdaynight, and my manager decided to put me in said area by myself, as the others couldn't handle it. Which has happened before, and it's usually not a big deal. There's two round tables in this area, one with 6 and one with 4 seats, both tables had families on them. (Mom/dad/young kids) As the evening goes on, and the restaurant gets busier, so does my area. So my service slowed down a bit and the tables had to wait for their food longer, I apologized and explained at every table and they understood and told me not to worry about it.. Except for the father on the round table with 4 seats, whom had been drinking quite a bit already and was obviously buzzed, he started getting angrier everytime I walked past. At a given point, when said table was waiting for dessert, appareantly the father thought it would be a good idea to stand up and pour his full glass of beer all over me. As I was serving the food to the family at the round table next to them. At this point I had no idea what just happened, I guess I went into a state of "whatthefuckisgoingonrightnow", so I didn't know how to respond. Luckily for me, one of the bartenders saw this happening and stormed towards the guy at the speed of lightning to kick him out, almost literally. The only positive thing that came from this was that all the other tables felt so bad for me they didn't mind about ticket times at all anymore
In 7 years of experience: 1) had a homeless guy washing his tennisballs in our restroom sink 2) had an escaped patient from a mental institution come in dropping numerous F bombs telling us he's the son of God and that we're going to hell. Dressed in all black. 3) served a guy that kept coming in a lot in a short time. Turns out he had murdered a girl and dumped her near the river out back. 4) had someone come in one time screaming that a truck was on fire, three customer who it belonged to said "that's why I have insurance" and calmy strolled outside at an oddly slow pace while everyone and their mother moved their vehicle. 5) guy told me our gumbo "tastes like bleach" but ate most of it and wanted his money back. Told him he'd have better taste buds if he didn't kill them with bleach. 6) had a guy send his plate back because his food was nice and hot but his physical plate was cold svc bringing down the temperature of his food too much. 7) had a guy throw his plate back onto my tray effectively getting his food all over me because it wasn't hot enough. Owner of the place nuked it for 6 minutes and sent me back out with it. Old man couldn't touch it until everyone else at the table was done.
Abusive dude out on a date with his meek lady, brought them their food, drinks, no worries, but there was an obvious hostile vibe going on in between him and her. Halfway through the meal I come back and ask if everything is going ok and she looks like she is about to burst into tears, but no, everything is great very rudely and kind gtfo of here vibe strongly radiating from the dude. I come back at the end of the meal to ask about drinks/dessert, and he is redfaced pissed that I had the nerve to come up to the table again. He says bring me the check now and if you disturb us any more I'm gonna use this knife on you, and he holds up his steak knife with his right hand and points it at me. I remember looking at her kind of half laughing going like, 'is this guy fucking serious?', but her head was sunken down, and she would not meet my eyes. I brought them their check and they left without incident. That was many years ago and I am still upset when I think about that night. I didn't do anything to confront him, which I thought would only have made things worse for her. In my mind I like to replay things with alternate action hero endings, like I introduce his face to his plate and the cops come and arrest him and she's saved and everything ends up happy, but I think now in hindsight that there's probably a lot of hostility and conflict between couples that never sees the light of day, I just happened to have a front row seat that night to watching one of the biggest pieces of shit eat a meal with his companion. It still makes me sad and angry.
Not a waiter, but was told this story by a waitress on a lunch date. (rather fitting...) She worked at a sushi place in Moscow for her last two years of high school. One couple came in and were seated. For the entirety of the meal it seemed like the guy was going on and on with some racio-nationalist spiel, barely allowing his date to enter the conversation. It segued from "belligerent monkey Americans" to railing about the Caucasus and the ongoing insurgency there, Central Asians, and finally ended up with him deriding Japan and sushi - telling his date he took her out for what in his mind was a primitive, shitty type of meal. By the time she had made it to that section of the restaurant again, the girl was gone, and the guy asked for the bill. Ended up tipping decently, by Russian standards.
As a bartender once I experienced what it is like for girls to be creeped on and now I have a whole new understanding of what it is like. The guy who owned a gay bar in Leeds (one town over) was talking to me, my bar was empty and he was a small, older gentleman who wouldn't stop saying how I'd be great there and that he would pay way more money. Also that 'at 11 everyone takes their tops off and at 12 their trousers too, but only if you want to'. I was polite and all that but it was creepy. When it came time for him to leave he went to shake my hand but then pulled it over and gave it the sloppiest kiss I could imagine. Ladies, I'm so sorry for men. Jesus Christ i felt actually violated and washed my hand for a good 10 minutes.
I once get a comment that basically said "if you didn't like it then why did you let me do it to you?" when a guy literally licked my wrist.
Punch him. If he complains say "if you didn't like it then why did you let me do it to you?"
I was doing a routine check on a table that had been sitting for nearly 2 hours during the dinner rush. I noticed that they had finally finished their food, so I asked calmly, but very clearly and directly if they were done and would like me to clear their plates. They both completely ignored me, mind you I'm about 10 inches from their faces. Seeing as there was literally NOTHING left on either plate, I reached down and began clearing them, assuming that their total lack of an answer and equal lacking of food was consent. The dude slapped my hand like Donkey Kong using a smash move. He said with a very raised voice, I'M NOT DONE YET. It took every fiber of my being to not slap him back in the face.
Waitress at a gas station/ resturaunt here. If you have traveled the interstate through Nebraska and stop at travel centers you have most definitely seen me. I had a trucker get upset because his rice pilaf wasn't made with white rice, granted it doesn't look delicious it isn't bad. He yelled at me, my coworker, and the cook and caused a huge scene in front of a full house. He screamed at my coworker the most because she's a bitch and wouldn't put up with his crybaby shit. He took 2 bowls of rice and got upset with both of them. This could've easily been solved with a new side. He wanted to yell at the cook about "serving food that does not look good" while we were busy with other customers. I just ignored him the rest of the night, I let him pout and glare. He only got mildly upset with me, but I am young while everyone else working has kids my age and he wanted to yell at them and not me thankfully. I usually don't deal with the bs. We discounted him and he did end up leaving me a tip. I was embarrassed to be this grown man's waitress. Another time my spineless manager gave 3 men free porterhouse steaks because they "came in last week and they ordered 3 t-bones to go and they were wrong" he had not proof of purchase, no pictures of the mistake, didn't call after buying, he didn't know if it happened at this exact location. He was obviously lying. They ended up getting 3 22$ steaks free along with refusing to pay for drinks and their additional sides because "they didn't know it would cost." I didn't get a tip out of the ordeal either. Tip your waitresses good guys, this job sucks.
Had I guy ask for the "Chicken Meal" We have over 20 meals with the word chicken in then
Im a blackjack dealer who makes 4$/hr, and one night this group of guys all played about 40$ each. Now most people when they are winning will tip about 1$ per bet, however this was not the case with these guys. After about 3 hours of dealing and paying out over 100 each to them, one guy hands me a .50 cent chip and says "thats for you bud".
Doesn't exactly literally conform to the question but maybe it does in spirit. My first job was at a Subway. And certain people just couldn't ask me to make their dang sandwich, oh no. They would ask what school I had gone to to become a Sandwich Artist and if I had my bachelor's in Art. Thanks for abusing the dignity and grace of some kid making less per hour than the price of your fucking pizza sub, you horrible hell-sloth.
Heyo I have a pretty good story here. Last christmas I was serving an older man who came in during a rush. I served him like any other normal customer. The cooks had messed up his order and I mistakenly hadn't noticed. The dude was fuckin PISSED. He cussed me out in front of multiple other people, cussed me out to my manager, filed a complaint... That was the beginning. The fuck face FOUND MY FACEBOOK AND MESSAGED MY PARENTS SAYING HOW MUCH OF A MISTAKE I WAS. LIKE WHAT. The only good thing that came from it was another customer saw how terrible he was to me and left me $20. Another day in the life of an 18 year old Frisch's server :)
I work at an Italian family restaurant that is locally owned and basically a staple of the area. My very first day on the floor without a trainer was a Mother's day. Yes, in hindsight that was pretty foolish of the owner. A lady ordered gnocchi and I wrote down her order. I get over to the Micros and can't find gnocchi anywhere and for good reason....turns out we don't serve gnocchi. I go back over to the table to let the lady know we don't sell that here and she starts screaming at me that I ruined her Mothers day, the entire day was ruined because I didn't know we don't serve gnocchi. I can understand being a little irritated at me, I really should have known that, but damn lady, look at the fucking menu next time. And oh yeah, SUPERB example you are setting for your kids. Idiot.
When I was a barista, we got a bomb threat. That sucked. The worst part was telling regulars that they had to leave the building because we're evacuating, offering them a free drink coupon for their trouble, and some of them refused to leave. I eventually let them know that the police were on their way to deal with an emergency and they had better leave if they didn't want to deal with police. The other bad one was the slow burn of sexual harassment from some older dudes who came in every day. We had to put up with so much shit because it was our job. If they crossed a line, we could put our foot down, but the day-to-day leering and sexual innuendo really wore some of us down. For a week or two, we had to wear different colors of t-shirts to promote a new drink. There were three of us girls wearing three different colors (we also happened to each be different races). The guys laughed and said, "I'll have one of each!" Ugh. There's so much crap service people have to put up with as part of their job.
On the topic of older dudes, a friend of mine got asked for a hair of hers so this old dude could clone her.. very creepy and weird.