Yuppies and High Maintenance--An Issue Forever Unresolved

A waitress friend of mine passed a story along to me recently that I couldn’t pass up an editorial on. When you have been blessed by the bizarre circumstance of having to wait on a weird family whose minds have been poisoned by paranoid America, then God help you.

As servers, we all fear those who have way too much to fear.

She brought her family into the restaurant and instantly summoned her waitress.



Instead of listening, she immediately made a few demands. She asked specifically for bizarre vegetables for her children that most restaurants don’t have. She wanted things like cauliflower, asparagus, green beans, and (wait for it) “Steamed kale.”

She was the kind of hippie that made regular hippie’s highs come down. Imagine a 40-year-old artsy old bag who wished she had a hand in planning Woodstock. Now imagine the kind of dominance she had over her husband. Note - He was wearing a toupee that looked like a cross between Nick Nolte and a barrel of illegal fireworks. Within five minutes of entering the restaurant, he left suddenly to accept a phone call. Presumably from his wig sponsor.



As my waitress friend approaches, the mother is inconspicuously throwing her family’s belongings into a trash bag.



So besides being extremely needy right off the bat and having a husband with weird fake hair immediately accepting phone calls, there weren’t too many warning signs. But the fact that she immediately started putting her family’s coats and gloves into a trash bag underneath the table that she brought into the restaurant with her was a bit odd. That’s something homeless people do.

We have to assume she wasn’t homeless however. How do I presume to know? I am fairly sure homeless people and their families don’t have three distinct sets of allergies. And judging by the trash bag? She was probably a paranoid germaphobe.

My waitress friend found out about all of the allergies when the health-conscious mother of the family asked that there be no salt, pepper, seasonings, garlic, oil, butter, gluten, or anything that results in there being a flavor of any kind. At this restaurant, if anyone gives any indication that there may be hazards with any of the food, the servers are required to ask if anyone has any food allergies.

Now the children (who were around 12, 8, and 6) then started shouting out of turn what their allergies were.



The mother’s response to the question was that “there were too many to name.” In my opinion, if you are a halfway responsible parent with children that have life-or-death food allergies, you wouldn’t leave something like that to chance. Unless you’re just an overbearing hypochondriac health nut.

Before my waitress friend could even ask about a basic beverage order, the hippie woman interrupts to introduce herself and her children to the waitress. According to my friend, she had “some yuppie name like Bridget, and her kids were like ‘Flower‘, ‘Zodiac‘, and ‘Starship’ or some shit like that.”

By this point, my waitress friend had given up on the idea of suggestive selling, and resigned to bringing them iced tea or lemonade. In typical hypochondriac fashion, the woman grilled her for all of the ingredients in both of those things (I’m betting there isn’t another person on the planet who doesn’t already know what two ingredients compose ‘iced tea’). After shooting those down, the woman decided she wanted water instead. Simple enough?

Wrong.



After resolving it with a round of bottled water and a couple reassuring lies, they finally get around to ordering dinner. They didn’t hold back--appetizers, enormous lobsters, filet mignon, very nearly the entire menu. Prepared with careful regard to all of their individual allergies, of course.

By the time the food arrives, the husband with the indescribable hair is still on the phone somewhere in the restaurant. The woman asked my waitress friend to “go retrieve him,” and that it didn’t matter if she interrupted his conversation.

Sure enough, the woman started complaining about her food and sending things back. After eating half of a lobster, it was “too tough.” The salad dressing which she was enthusiastic about ordering was suddenly “terrible” and didn’t “go with the lettuce.”

In keeping with her bizarre demeanor, the woman pulled my friend aside and said "look at those ladies over there. they look so wise and refined, do you think we'll look like that one day when we're old?"

(My response would have been; “If you live that long. You’re depriving your body of countless essential nutrients you claim to be allergic to. They‘re ‘wise and refined‘ enough to know better.)

Besides being flabbergasted (and probably nervous), my waitress friend was getting uncomfortable. The woman wanted the names of the people sitting at the next table, because she “thought she might know them.” My waitress friend actually decided to go bother them and ask who they were, but the real surprise was that she didn’t actually know who they were. I could have called that one too.

When dessert rolled around, she ordered desserts for her family that contained many of the things she claimed to be allergic to. She ordered a piece of cake for her daughter’s birthday, and as we may publicly acknowledge, cake often contains gluten, dairy, sugar, eggs, and all sorts of other things. Because as a birthday present, I would want my parents to give me death through anaphylactic shock.

It turns out that she wasn’t actually allergic to most of those things; she was just “a little sensitive.”

The whole ordeal took about three hours. To those who think that restaurant work is easy or undignified, imagine a day where you’re taking care of party after party just like this one.

The Rules of Booze

In the service business, there are guidelines. Not only are there rules you have to follow within the restaurant organization, but there are often laws which dictate how you are to do your job that are regulated by some level of government. Exactly how you have to navigate these rules varies when you’re confronted with restaurant guests who are not only ignorant, but irate becomes tricky.

First exhibit; An unruly old bag.



The woman of about sixty approached the bar from one of the tables in the restaurant, and in what was later determined to be her most polite tone of voice, demanded four glasses of champagne for her table. The problem? Everyone at her table had just received beverages, and they hadn’t been touched. The state law where this restaurant is located strictly prohibits having more than one alcoholic beverage at a time on the table.

Her response?



Of course she hasn’t heard of that law. So by no means is she obligated to follow it.

The woman kept crooning over and over to the bartender about how someone at the table recently got engaged, and that it was absolutely ridiculous that she couldn’t have the champagne. The reason she left the table and went up to the bar was because her server told her the same thing the bartender had just finished telling her. Instead of embracing this new knowledge (that was reaffirmed by two separate people nonetheless), she continued being irate.

If you've "never heard of a law," it doesn't make you exempt from obeying it. Just because you're celebrating, it doesn't give you a free pass to demand that a server risk his or her job to placate you. If an officer stops you in your car for running a stop sign, it wouldn't quite pan out in the field to say that you've "never heard of any law" that says you have to stop at a stop sign. You'd get a ticket.

The bartender walked away and proceeded to take care of his other patrons, because those were the ones who were paying him, and as an added bonus, not ridiculing him.

She shouted for him again.



So the bartender did what any level-headed server would do. He approached her again and greeted her as if they had never spoken.

Eventually, after complaining loudly and apparently ruining someone's engagement party, she returned to her table. The cranky bitch was approached by a manager, which is the next step in the issue-resolving process. Instead of four glasses, the manager suggested that he could bring over a bottle when they were finished with their current beverages (running the total number of people reaffirming the existence of this law to 3).

Her response?



....my God.

"Just give us the fucking champagne."

The fact that this woman sunk so low as to not only demand her needs be met, but to order someone to violate a state law, and then swear at someone who was trying to help her makes her in a class of her own. The type of evil bitch this person is deserves to be locked away in the deepest pit of special Hell to be tormented for all eternity. On a celebratory occasion like an engagement, you ruin everything when you get carried away forgetting that you are not the center of the celebration.

The rules and guidelines of the restaurant business as well as of the state and country leave you few options for dealing with scum like this. You simply have to placate them as they continue to scream, cry, and throw fits like infants until they get their way. Any retributive action on your part, such as telling her to "shut her pie hole," flipping over her table, or using violence to teach her a lesson would get you arrested, or more likely, even fired.

There must be something we can do. For those reading this? Don't be that lady.

The Classic Dine-and-Ditch

A lot of things I write about are severe annoyances to restaurant staff, but what happened to me recently really tests the limits of what most servers are trained to address with any amount of optimism.

I definitely had the worst day in the history of restaurant work on this particular day. Not only were there no English-speaking people around for me to take care of, they all conveniently used cash to pay for their checks. This means there was no possible way I could get any kind of a tip greater than two bucks and thirteen cents worth of "keep the change."

But then this gem of a human being came in to eat. Something wasn't quite right about him, but I don't think I could have decisively said what it was. He was an older bloke, not terribly perceptive, prone to conversational redundancy and verbal self-contradiction.



On second thought, I'm completely convinced he was retarded.

He asked for his bill, and I gave it to him pretty quickly. The convo happened like this;

Crazy guy; Hey, don't go anywhere sonny! I've got money for you I think.

Me; Ok. I'll wait right here.

Crazy guy; (Rifles through wallet for about two excruciatingly long minutes) ...Urmarm...I guess I don't have the money I was going to give you for the food. Oh wait, can you change this hundred dollar bill I just found?

Me; Sure can. Leaving now.

After I went and broke his hundred dollar bill, I considered my options. In any other circumstance, I would have take the cost of his food out of the change, but I thought in this particular instance that he wouldn't have quite understood what I did. Which actually could have potentially turned out in my favor, come to think of it.

Instead I did the opposite of what made sense, guided by my compassion and concern for this man's ever-weakening grasp on the world around him. I walked back with all $100 dollars of change and proceeded to count them out right in front of him. I finally concluded triumphantly with "...99, and one hundred! All there sir. I'll pick up the check in just a second."

I returned several seconds later to find that he had left three of the dollars on the table, but not any money toward the actual bill. I instantly got angry. Did he NOT see me give him back all of the change? Is he really that far gone? Why wasn't I not stupid and why didn't I just do what I would have normally done?

The worst part was, given the horrible 5-6% tipping on the other three tables I had, I now was indebted to the restaurant for this particular table. Coming into work yesterday for six hours actually COST ME MORE than if I had stayed in bed eating graham crackers and watching Maury issue paternity tests to deadbeat fathers.

In most restaurants, there is a specific policy for what happens when people ditch you on a check. In the last restaurant I worked in, the Chinese people in management made it clear that if someone leaves without paying, the waiter was charged with paying HALF of the bill out of that night's tips. If it happens again? The waiter pays the WHOLE bill. I didn't even want to imagine what the third offense was.

In a corporate chain, I imagine the rules are slightly different, but I suppose I'll find that answer out soon enough.

Let's Blame the Kitchen!

Servers usually have six or seven thousand things on their minds at any given time. Throw in the fact that their performances are uniquely rewarded with gratuity. Also, throw in the happenstance that sometimes, the people servers wait on aren't the most understanding people, nor have ever had to work in a restaurant.

When these things all come together, you find that on a nightly basis, waiters, bartenders, and support staff can get very crafty when it comes to diverting the blame for their individual screw-ups.

Here's what I mean;



So naturally, the server in this picture forgot something. Harmless enough, but in order to sustain the belief that the guest has the best waiter in the whole world and would never tip that waiter less than 20%, the waiter resorts to;



The guest is then somewhat pleased that his or her order will be arriving soon, and that the waiter is now going to tear someone in the kitchen a brand new set of assholes.

In reality, this is what is usually happening;



This is a strategy I share with new people to the business. It saves you from being yelled at by irate guests, it familiarizes you with procedure in the kitchen, and it absolves you from blame coming from all directions.

Of course, there's always the possibility that you did everything right, and the kitchen actually bastardizes your order.



In that case, it's karma that rears its ugly head. You did everything right, and no matter how much you tell them that the kitchen fell right on its face when it sent out her order, you have become the restaurant Satan right at her table. You're basically out any amount of tip money, can't go back and fix anything, and may as well have someone else close it out for you.

True enough, I tell everyone that a good waiter is only a good waiter if he or she is good at damage control. If you constantly fuck up orders and are too slow, you'll do decently enough if you can make all of your guests love you and forgive you for everything. Even if the kitchen has to take one for the team every once and again.

A Breeze in the Kitchen

As funny as it could possibly be, I feel that self-inoculation should "rear" its ugly head in my disservice again. I keep "brewing" these unorthodox tales, and will gladly "expose" my problems within the restuarant's "business" at my own "expense."

Every so often, a waiter has to fart. Really badly.

It happens often enough. A waiter often requires caffeine in order to work twelve straight hours a day (every day). In order to sustain that high, an artificial supplement must be ingested. The situation usually starts like this;



After that, a caffeine binge will occur at the restaurant's expense.



The waiter begins to feel great, being extra friendly, running all needed items over to his tables, running all the needed things over to EVERYONE'S tables, explaining things on the menu without being asked, doing more work than necessary, stepping outside to do a backflip, and many other things. Most often, instead of guests saying, "Wow, that guy was very helpful, thorough, and informative," they usually say, "So. What the fuck's up with that guy?"

There's always some twatty co-worker or passerby who, without asking of course, volunteers his or her opinion about why you shouldn't be drinking taurine or yerba matte or whatever the hell is in what you just bought from CVS ten minutes ago.





The problem with caffeine is that it tends to run right the hell through you. Energy drinks cost money/are bad for you, so you avoid them. You decide to deal with the first of the two situations because although everyone seems to know that energy drinks are not only bad for you but will kill you A LOT ALL THE TIME, nobody's going to ridicule you for a somehow socially acceptable caffeine overdose.

So this tends to happen in the middle of your busy day;




But by that point, you're too busy and the employee bathroom at the restaurant is too gross and too frequented to permit you to take a generous crap. Even if you could get two or three people to cover your tables and begin to tolerate the fact that the employee bathroom looks three seagulls short of being an actual garbage dump, you would die if someone came in right after you and said "Dear God this smells. Seriously, who takes a crap at work?"

So you spend the rest of the evening finding safe places to let one rip. You quickly walk through the kitchen where there are constantly fans blowing and strongly-smelling food being concocted, hoping that #1 - Your fart doesn't suddenly become actual poop, and #2 - There are enough X factors to either disguise that you farted really hard or maybe even dissolve it completely before anyone has a chance to smell anything.



It makes the actual moment terribly climactic.

People say that waiting tables is one of the hardest jobs in the world, but I doubt that this is one of the well-known reasons. Still, remember it when a server suddenly has to leave your table while you're ordering and cites that he or she "forgot something at another table."