A couple of short restaurant stories, since it's been a while.
Monday, a table of five came in. They were spending money at the bar, running up a $400 dollar tab before they even sat down for dinner. Everyone in the party was very nice except for one man, obviously the host of the party, who was condescending at every turn.
These are the people who feel they can crap loose diamonds, and still kick you in the balls when you are trying to refill a water glass.They placed their dinner order with the bartender, then went to their table. The hostess, who is new to the restaurant and 16 years old, sat them at their table and placed menus in front of them. The man grabbed her arm and said, "Do you even know what you are doing? We've already ordered. I think you are confused." She apologized, though she'd done nothing wrong, picked up the menus and left.
The waiter took over the table, and was met with a similar condescension. He's a fairly even-tempered personality, however, and he was able to blow it off without too much of a fuss. As the table finished up, and people's plates were empty, he began taking them off the table as he is supposed to.
The man grabs him by the arm, and says, "What are you doing? You don't clear plates until every one at the table is done? How long have you had this job? Did you even finish high school?" The waiter apologized and walked away, then told me and one of the other managers about it.
In retrospect, it was a good thing that this particular waiter had that table. There are any number of other waiters, good waiters normally, who would have shot back with something they shouldn't have said. I might be included in that group... it's hard to say.
After dinner, they moved back to the bar. Several other members of the party made it a point to compliment the waiter, and tell him how great everything had been.
When it was all said and done, they ran up a $780 dollar tab. When the man paid, he rounded it up to $800.
A $20 tip on and $800 dollar tab. What. A. Douche.
The bartender and the waiter were at the point of laughing about it, but the other manager and I weren't. We were pissed. The other manager called our owner to ask some advice, and then went down to talk to the man, asking if something was wrong with the service.
Luckily, we found that, while we'd been making phone calls, one of the other members of the party went up to the bartender to ask how much he'd tipped. She then proceeded to take the tab down to the man, hit him on the back of the head and say, "You know better than that," embarrassing him in front of his entire group. He made it a $120 dollar tip, which isn't great, but still acceptable, considering how much wine they'd ordered.
Sometimes pricks get their due.
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Yesterday, as the shift was ending and we were waiting on a couple of tables to leave, one of the waitresses I work with and I were joking around. She did a little dance at one point, acting like she was a Supreme's like back up singer.
At that moment, a male guest walked by, followed by a few other of his friends. The waitress was embarrassed and stopped. We laughed a little bit about it, and then one of the men said, "I've got a $100 dollar bill, if you keep that up," and they started walking away.
"Classy," I said. The man turned around and looked at me, I looked back, blankly, and then he walked on.
"I hate it when people have no respect for women," I said to the waitress. She gave me a big hug. I was a hero for the rest of the night.
i had the unfortunate experience of being a waiter for about 10 years and dealing with assholes like that...i can totally sympathize..by the way i love your site and will post a link on my blog...be well
Posted by: kevin | December 10, 2005 at 02:51 PM