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This could get ugly . . . I was serving a party of five - two grandparents and three children. There were two trays of food. I couldn't even set the first plate down, because the woman was trying to discern which plate had the *crisp* bacon. The kids were playing checkers; the couple was trying to find out if the bacon was acceptable for the boy. The kid in question said the bacon was okay. The woman was looking at the bacon and eggs on his plate saying, "Is that all he gets?" I pointed out the grits and biscuits on the other end of the table (where I had placed those heavy dishes to pass out the food that was in the tray on my other hand), and the woman said nastily, "Well I don't think he can reach it way over there." I think her husband told her to be nice and she said, still nasty, "Well if she's gonna serve it she should serve it." I was fuming over her flaming rudeness, and I had to get away! Over my shoulder as I departed to the kitchen I said, "I'll bring ya'll some more tea." I asked a fellow server to run that out while I breathed and tried to calm down. I rang up their ticket - charging them would help me feel better - and saw an order for toast that I had forgotten. I asked someone to put an order in the toaster for me. The server who had poured the tea told me that the woman had snapped her chair back in a huff, stood upright and announced, "Ma'am. We ordered toast for him, and we didn't get it!" The manager was already getting it. I finally worked up the nerve to go out there. She, pouting, wouldn't take anything else. I'll point out here that I didn't mind serving - that was my job. But to be talked to like a dog is another thing! I have had people raise their hand up, snap, and point at their table and bark "Tea!" What kind of way is that to talk to anyone? Also in the Ugly and Angry Category was a couple that visited fairly regularly. I had even waited on them before and they left me a five. ( That's good for a couple - that's good for a party of ten for me!) One particular evening, they'd come in and the man ordered breakfast. It was taking longer than he thought, I guess, because when I held up the coffee pot to offer him some he said, "Where's my d@*n breakfast?" I quietly said I'd go see. It had been about twenty minutes, and the cooks were just putting it in the take out window. I looked for a manager to carry out the food, but while I was on a manager hunt, the hostile man's food was still not with him. I bit the bullet and carried out the tray. He turned to glare at me and say, "Do you want to get a manager, or should I?" I went back to the kitchen and saw Tommy (a manager) about to round a corner. I was about to bawl and squeaked out, "I need a manager to table 31 please!" and I got me to the break room. I did not go back into the dining room until they had left. Months later, I saw them standing, waiting for the hostess to seat them. We were very busy, all the other tables were full, and I knew a table of mine was being cleared off. I thought, "I know they are not waiting for my table." But, there they were. I asked someone else to wait on them. They had the nerve to ask one of our veteran servers why I wouldn't wait on them; they had requested me. One of my fellow servers was waiting on them some time later; I happened to know they were at table 53. She was going to smoke and said, "Can you take 53 some coffee?" I said, "I don't talk to them." She said, "Oh yeah, they were telling me how they were joking around and you took them seriously." They weren't joking! That pompous redneck man was mad and decided to be angry with me - like I'm the one not cooking his food as well as not giving him good service. Normally, I wasn't so affected by one or two rude tables, but that last incident happened after a long string of obnoxious ones. And speaking of obnoxious, one of our regular customers, an older lady, was sitting at one of my tables. I'd greeted her and her party and taken their drink orders. I turned to the table across the aisle from hers and she said, "Hey" rather loudly. I smiled politely to the people, excused myself, and turned back to her. She wanted to make sure her dining companion's baked potato got butter and sour cream. I was delivering their food a bit later and had placed her plate on the table and was handing her companion his plate and she snapped, "Apples." We always put our "fried apples" on the side, so I simply hadn't set them down. Not too long after that, I'd turned to that same table across the aisle from hers, and she took that as her cue and said "Hey!" I forget what she wanted that time. In her defense, that time she said, "Excuse me."  There was a party of four. I'd placed their check in the middle of their cluttered table (I'm sure I offered to remove dishes they were through with.). I had no checks left on my ticket book that needed to be passed out. The manager came to me saying, "Table 24 needs their check." I insisted, "All my tables have their checks." He stalked off to find who had served that table. I went to help the bus boy clean table 24, and I saw the check still laying where I'd left it. I thought they'd walked out (without paying) and went to the cashier's counter to find the man standing there glaring at me and looking very impatient. He said, "We waited as long as we could." I said, "It was on the table," and I walked off. One would think that holidays would be better. Wrong! One Easter Sunday, I was about to lose the very good mood I was in, after the umpteenth customer was barking about something. I got to another table and asked, "What's wrong with everyone today? This is supposed to be a HAPPY day." The response? "I'll be happy when I get my dessert." He could be happy because Jesus Christ arose from the dead but NO! He wouldn't be happy until he had his baked apple dumplin. Later that same day, I was waiting on a party of five regulars. One had ordered water with lemons. I'd set the *first* drink down and she said "Oh, are you out of lemons?" I had them on a bowl on the side of the tray I was carrying. If she'd waited two seconds ... We were having our busy after-evening-church-service rush. I greeted a couple and their baby. They looked real thrilled to be there (sarcasm here) and I was about to cheerfully try to lighten the mood when the woman started barking out what she wanted "... with ranch *and* honey mustard dressing on the side." Not much later a fellow server came to me saying, "Table 41 wants their food; they said it's been a long time." Their food wasn't in the take-out window (i.e. ready). I went to their table to explain that it would be a few more minutes. The man asked what was going on. I considered sarcastically looking around me at the store full of diners and telling him, "Gee, I don't know. We're not really doing anything." I said that we were just really busy. The guy looked at me real disgusted-like and said, "How long can it take for soup and salad?" It wouldn't have taken nearly as long if he hadn't gotten a *grilled* chicken salad. Oh yes, the woman had said, after my inquiry before the food came, "We sent someone else back to get it." Like she thought their food was ready and I just wasn't bringing it or something. She had it figured out! (Sarcasm here.) As a tipped employee, I made most of my money by upsetting the customers!
Menu Lost in the Translation? ~ Was it something I said? |