Restaurant workers don't get enough credit. They work their tails off and do the best they can to make sure their customers have the best dining experience possible in hopes that their efforts are rewarded with a nice tip at the end of the night. Sometimes, however, servers are faced with a table full of rich, entitled patrons who think they are better than everyone else in the joint. They don't care how hard their server is working and even though they have the money to tip generously, they don't because that would require them to think of someone other than themselves.
These restaurant workers took to Reddit to swap stories about the most outrageous behavior they ever witnessed from an insanely rich customer. All stories have been edited for clarity.
It’s Just 25 Cents!
“This happened a few years ago when I was working part-time at Panera Bread. I worked as a cashier for most of my time there, but after a few experiences like this I quickly got myself transferred to the line.
It was a busy Saturday morning and I’d come in at 6 am, which for a high school student, was pretty early. I was working a long shift, so I was already over it. We were extremely busy, but I’d finally been given permission to go on break. I went to grab my bag as quickly as possible so I could get in line and buy myself some food.
Unfortunately, as I’m about to press the break out button one of the new cashiers calls me over. I walked over, and was face to face with a livid middle-aged woman. In my customer service voice, I asked what she needed help with. She was quick to inform me that we’d charged her a quarter for extra cheese (which is normal) and that her sandwich still wasn’t cheesy enough.
I asked if she wanted the sandwich remade with more cheese, and she said no. She just wanted the 25 cents we’d ‘stolen’ from her. Now refunding wasn’t a long process, but I knew that the managers were on the phone with corporate, and it would be a pain to get them up front.
So, I explained that it would probably be a while before a manager could help her. Now shame on me for thinking that she would be logical and not worry about 25 cents. She had her hair done, was wearing nice clothes/jewelry, and carrying a Kate Spade bag, so I knew she wasn’t struggling for money.
She proceeded to get even more mad, so I clarified and said that she could sit down to eat and someone would come and get her when the managers were available to do a refund. At this point, we had a line out the door and only three cashiers. People had started to move out of the line of that register to others because they saw it was gonna be a while.
Nothing seemed to appease her and she said that she would stand right there until a manager came to help her. At this point, I was ready to cry frustration tears because I was so tired and hungry and just wanted to go on my break. I also knew I needed to get the line moving before more people started getting angry.
So I turned around, grabbed a quarter out of my purse, and held it out to her. She looked confused, so I explained that she was holding up the line and that I was late for my break. I knew I didn’t look so nice anymore, but I couldn’t help it. I was so mad that a grown woman would be so childish over 25 cents.
Of course, she snatched the quarter out of my hand and walked off.”
Their Behavior Makes Them Real Human Trash
“It was a slammed night. We were understaffed, but they weren’t getting bad service.
It was the night of the US Open, and this woman wanted to express how rich and important she was to everybody. Every time I went to the table, she made a snarky, mean remark toward me. The party of four kept drinking for hours. When I was clearing their plates, she asked me what was in her drink. I told her Tito’s and soda. She said it didn’t taste like Tito’s, so I told her we measure the shots but I’d be happy to replace hers.
That was not good enough. She wanted all four remade, even though everyone had finished theirs but her. And she wanted a bottle of vino. I told her I’d talk to my manager and grabbed the bottle. My manager said fine to the whole round. I dropped them off, and she asked, ‘And the bottle of vino is??’
‘One moment,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be right back with that.’
She demanded to talk to my manager. She didn’t have any specific complaints; she just wanted to let her know they’re platinum members, so we better kiss up.
We took care of them, got them all they asked for, first priority. When they were ready for the bill, I dropped it off and my manager helped me clear the glasses from all the rounds of beverages. The woman said thank you very loudly and my managers responded, ‘My pleasure.’ This hag came back with, ‘I wasn’t saying thank you to YOU.’
She gave less than ten percent tip, of course. These are the kind of people that think just because they have money they can treat others like garbage. They see that the place is packed and I’m running as fast as I can, but it doesn’t matter to them. The funny thing is, they like to treat us like this to feel good about themselves, but don’t realize that their behavior makes them real human trash.”
So Disrespectful
“The pub I worked at was in tourist town but with a lot of students. We were close to [insert major city here], so we also got a lot of… I’m struggling for a better way to say ‘entitled rich scumbags’ here. You know the sort, Mr. Arrogant, the major businessman commuting from the ‘burbs.
This particular night we had been pretty slammed (I think it was a week night, so not a lot of staff). Closing down was taking a while. We called last call and gave everyone the twenty-minute warning to drink up and leave. This one group ordered a round for last orders, knowing that they’d have twenty minutes to drink them. Mr. Super Entitled Wanker ordered a pint.
We merrily go about cleaning up and that, and notice that, half an hour over last orders, this group hasn’t left yet. Mr. SEW still has most of his pint as well. We give them a quick heads up that they really need to leave, as we’re almost done and will be locking up soon. We’re super polite, and they all nod and say sorry they’re just finishing up. All good.
They are now the only people in the pub, minus a couple of our coworkers who stayed after their shift for a drink (they’re still in uniform and are helping with clearing up the floor, so are clearly colleagues-I promise this is relevant).
FORTY FIVE minutes after last orders, the group is still there. Mr. SEW still has around a fourth of a pint. I walk over and start saying I’m sorry, but they need to leave now.
Mr. SEW: ‘But I haven’t finished the pint I paid for.’
Me: polite customer service speak for ‘tough spit’
Mr. SEW: ‘You can’t just serve us and then kick us out when we haven’t finished.’
Me: ‘With all due respect, we gave you plenty of notice and have actually given you more time than we should have to finish up.’
Mr. SEW: pointing to my coworkers ‘Why are they still allowed here?’
Me: ‘They work here and are helping with shutting the place up. We were a bit understaffed.’
Mr. SEW: ‘Well, I’m not leaving if you’re not telling them to leave too.’
By this point, his friends are clearly uncomfortable and are trying to get him to leave, and he is belligerently refusing because he hasn’t finished his pint.
Mr. SEW: ‘I tell you what, if you won’t let me finish my drink this is what I’m going to do with it…’
He then pours the nearly full pint over my head.
Setting the scene more, I was a five-foot nothing college student at this point. Mr. SEW was easily a foot taller than me and clearly had no trouble with wasting money on one pint.
I wish I could say I dodged the stream and roundhouse kicked him in the throat, but I think I was too shocked from someone being this much of a dirtbag and sort of just stood there. He put the glass down and laughed. Then he realized none of his friends were laughing and sort of booked it out of there.
He didn’t get very far because he didn’t reckon with my battle ax of a colleague chasing him out of the pub and down the street. I have an image of her dragging him back by his ear, but I think that’s wishful elaborating on my imagination’s part. But she did drag him back and informed him he was barred for life, and to crawl in a hole and die, or words to that effect.
I worked service for years and have so many more stories, but this one just sticks in my head I think because of how unnecessary the whole situation was. I teach now and people who say they don’t know how I do it have obviously never dealt with entitled and wasted adults.”
Even Management Was Furious
“I work in a movie theater bar. It’s my first restaurant job, been there since the place opened, but I’ve learned the ropes quickly, know all the drinks, and I especially know the laws when it comes to serving drinks.
So, we will set the scene. A guy with what looks like his 9-year-old son comes in and is eyeing our draft selection. I immediately ask if he would like a brew. He says yes. I kindly ask for his ID and wouldn’t you know it, it’s expired by three months. I explain that I can’t accept it because it’s expired. He’s visibly annoyed saying ‘I’m obviously forty.’
I just reiterate that I can’t help him with the drink, but would be happy to get him anything else. He immediately gets his phone out to make a call, smugly, and put a finger up to tell me to stop talking. I don’t think anything of it and help my other customers. After they are settled, I ask if he needs anything else. He says no but that I’ll be ‘hearing from his friend’ to verify his age. I kind of laugh and say I can only accept physical forms of identification.
Cut to me going to my managers to give them a heads up that I might need them because this guy is being weird. I felt stupid going to the office for such a small thing, but not after what happened!
He goes to his movie with his son, I don’t think much of it.
Later, I see BOTH of my managers come out from the office asking me to get them some brew and they start pouring it themselves. I joke asking if we can drink on the job now? Then it hits me. HIM.
They are both furious.
But not at me.
Apparently, this rich moron is friends with one of our owners and called above FOUR LEVELS OF MANAGEMENT just to get a drink.
My managers were so mad that this guy did this because it puts everyone in jeopardy, including me, my supervisors, and even my GM.
I asked if this guy was really that important. Bless my manager’s hearts, they were so mad, they said ‘not enough for this nonsense.'”
Why Are People Like This?
“We have a policy at my work (fine dining) that for larger groups we take a credit card number and if they don’t cancel before noon the day of, we charge them $30/head. As a result, we rarely have cancellations. In fact, we have never had to charge anyone.
Yesterday, someone called around 2 pm to book a table of 10 people for that evening at 8:30. We took the credit card and explained that they had until 5 pm to cancel because that’s when service starts. We called in the on-call person specifically for that group.
At 5:30, they called to cancel. By this point, the server had already arrived and service was well under way. My manager (with the permission of the chef/owner) informed them we would have to charge their card.
As you can imagine, the person was mad. He became incredibly verbally abusive, calling my manager a freaking hag and all that good stuff.
‘THIS IS GOING TO BE WORSE FOR YOU THAN IT WILL FOR ME,’ he yelled.
And my all time favorite. ‘I’M GOING TO PUT YOUR RESTAURANT ON BLAST ALL OVER SOCIAL MEDIA.’
This guy was so unreasonably terrible, it actually motivated us to go ahead and charge him. Had he been a decent human, we likely would not have.
I think it’s the lowest form of humanity to threaten social media. Also, I hate that people actually get away with things if they just yell louder and ruder. Not today, Satan.
The best part is I googled his number and I know the guy. He’s the poster child for rich, entitled, my-daddy-is-a-lawyer dirtbaggery.
Good riddance.”
When Life Gives Lemons…
“I knew this table was going to be a lot as soon as I started taking their orders. They asked to be seated in the cozier back room. They also requested lots of changes to menu items. Alright, some people have specific tastes, that’s fine. I’ll just work extra hard to make sure they have a good experience, since they probably have a hard time eating out if they’re picky. I leave detailed notes for the cook (who nails it), run them their food, ask if I can get them anything else. He says no, they’re all good. Great.
I start busing the table right next to them just as another table walks in, so I stop busing to seat them in the front room and take their order (we don’t have any other servers, and we’ve never had a host/hostess or a bus boy, so I’m literally doing everything except cooking). The new table orders quickly, I send it through, and am on my way back to the first table to double check to see if they liked their food. It’s been like five minutes tops since I left the table next to them. As I’m on the way back across the restaurant, the phone rings. I pick up, thinking I’ll just quickly take this reservation and ask the table how they like their food in a sec.
It’s the dude at the first table. He’s ‘been waiting like 27 minutes for someone to come by.’
He needs more lemons for his fish. I cut some fresh ones and bring half a lemon’s worth of slices to his table. He says he needs more. ‘Of course, sir,’ I told him. ‘Right away.’
I bring the other half of the lemon sliced. He needs even more. I cut up another lemon and bring the whole thing to his table. I run the food to the nice couple. I check in a few more times with the picky table. Everything is fine.
The dude leaves me $10 on a $300 tab with a note that says ‘Worst ever.’
Rich people can rot.”
“But I’m Leaving NOW!”
“I work at a country club, full of totally entitled rich people who refuse to believe that just because they are members, they do not receive anything they want from the servers when they walk in the door.
I was working a party outside under the pavilion and the people were all leaving. I’m rolling a cart out and pushing it UP AN INCLINE. This bleached-blonde woman (who is not a member, her husband is) runs up to me and asks in a very sweet tone (around a wad gum) if I could ‘get her a Pepsi from inside, there wasn’t one in my to-go bag.’
I respond, ‘Of course, please just let me park the cart first.’
She acted like I had just called her something offensive. Her face dropped, and she SCREECHES, ‘BUT I’M LEAVING NOW.’ She then proceeded to physically shove past me and walk inside to tell my manager that I told her ‘No.’
The woman proceeded to talk to her friends for 30 minutes under the pavilion while I cleaned the tables.”
Servers Are People Too
“Years ago, when I was first getting into serving, I worked at a private yacht club. This was a private members club that the richest of the rich went to in my town. Politicians, businessmen, executives, the works. They also ran their own board and voted that tipping wouldn’t be allowed. So ‘those’ kind of rich people.
I got this gig because I didn’t have the experience to get a real serving job, so I sucked up the minimal pay with no tips to get the experience on my resume. It was not a great job. It was not even a good job. The members were pushy, rude, and extremely demanding. Never mind the way they talked down to you.
It was a normal night – regular dinner service, busy enough to keep me moving, but not enough to stress me out. Then, a member I hated serving got seated in my section with his family. He’s a local politician and acts like a class ‘A’ pompous prick. He’s a man with power, and he shows it.
He sits at the end of his table in my aisle like a ‘proper head of the family.’ This, of course, is a giant pain for me as it blocks off my access to other member’s tables. Hoping he’d be reasonable, I politely ask him if he wouldn’t mind moving.
‘Oh no! I always sit at the head of the table. Your manager should have told you this, we’ve been members for years.’
Then he shoos me away with a flick of his wrist.
I can feel my face burn red as I walk back into the expo station to talk with my manager.
‘You know Steve always sits like that,’ they said. ‘You’ll just have to work around it.’
Of course, I knew, and Steve knew that I knew, but I’ll be darned if I didn’t try to make him act like a normal human every time he came in.
So I worked around it.
As usual, he was very demanding, making me ‘pour out’ a $350 bottle of vino because it was ‘corked’ (I didn’t, I stashed it in my bag) and doing that annoying thing where he asks for one thing at a time continuously making me run back and forth and back and forth because he couldn’t order everything at once.
Anyway, I’m pretty annoyed at this point and am trying to wrap up this table, so I can go home and drink my ill-gotten bottle. Then as I’m rolling cutlery, waiting for them to finish their digestives, he wants yet another thing. But this time he doesn’t flag me down normally. He calls out, ‘Boy! Boy! Oh, Boooy!’ while snapping his fingers.
His snapping snaps my patience and I can feel my face flush again as my anger rises. So I walk up to his table, point right in his face and almost scream, ‘I’m not your freaking slave!’ Then turn around, walk into the expo, right past my boss with his stupid look on his face, and right out the door of the yacht club. Of course, not forgetting to grab my bag with the bottle.
I never went back to see if I still had a job. I just used the experience I gained to put ‘two years’ on my resume and get a real job serving normal people.
The bottle of vino was pretty good. Not amazing, but definitely not bad.”
Are They Sure That’s Not Their Coat?
“I work as a hostess at a ridiculously upscale steakhouse in Manhattan while I’m in college. We have some of the most demanding and exclusive clients come in daily and I have a lot of stories. Our guests range from Michael Cohen, Steve Madden, Anderson Cooper to lesser known Real Housewives stars and just filthy rich business men and women.
Last winter while at work, we had three hostesses at the podium. One for seating people, one for checking in, one for checking coats. I was checking coats (tips are unbelievable, un-freaking-believable). It was around 7:00 pm, our busiest hour. We usually do around 300 covers per night, and we have an entire bar apart from the restaurant side, so it is always hectic. Well, a lady checks in with her husband and hands me her coat. I hand her the ticket number for her coat, then proceed to hang it up and mark it with all the other coats in the closet.
In the closet, was mainly mink coats during the winter (easily upwards of $15,000 and more). Brands like Moncler, Burberry, and Gucci. Her coat was a Moncler coat. It’s easy to remember in the moment who had what coat, but after checking in 200 other coats, I totally forgot what kind of coat this woman had and she was not a regular client, so I didn’t make a special note. Fast forward two hours later: they’re leaving, she hands me her ticket and I go to get her coat. When I come back, I hand it to her. She looks at my absurdly and goes ‘that’s not my coat’ with a glass of vino in her hand.
I go, ‘Oh okay, are you positive? What did your coat look like by chance?’
She snuffed and said, ‘Seriously? Isn’t it your job to know that?’
I asked her to come to the coat room with me so we could locate her jacket. She wrinkled her nose and told me I was a joke for not being able to do such a simple job! I apologized and walked her to the coat closet. We searched high and low for about an hour for her coat and at that point, she was screaming at me, every name in the book. I stood there calm as could be because the money is worth it.
I finally decided to involve the manager because I just did not know what to do. He didn’t know what to do either. He said we would reimburse her for the cost of her coat and we would write a check, but she refused. She must have tried on all 200 coats in our closet and claimed all were not hers. I was petrified at this point that I had given her coat away to someone else as many look the same. She had told me she had a mink jacket (there were hundreds of minks in the closet that night) and I didn’t remember she actually had a Moncler. Well, she told me I would be getting a bill personally from her lawyer, and I was actually scared because I knew how expensive those coats were. She berated me and degraded me in front of the manager and told him I need to be fired!
Finally, SHE had enough and said well since you gave my coat to someone else, give me the coat you initially gave me because I can’t go outside with no jacket. And at that point, I was like ‘Forget it. Take someone else’s coat – I don’t care anymore.’ She takes the coat I initially gave her, puts it on and says ‘Wow, it fits perfect.’ She reaches in the pockets and says, ‘How did this coat happen to have my wallet and keys in it too?’
I looked up and literally had no words. I wasted about two hours now being belittled by the woman when I was right the whole time. The lady was like ‘I don’t know what to say’ and my manager said ‘you owe her [me] and apology.’
The lady handed me her glass and a $1 tip. No apology and left like nothing happened!
I sat down on the closet floor and poured my eyes out. I had been awake since 5:00 am for school and was the closing host that night, which meant I wouldn’t be leaving until 2:00 am and getting home around 3:00 am and then waking back up at 5:00 for school! She wasted what little energy I had left and made me feel so worthless. My coworkers were awesome though. The bartender made me a drink and they all gave me a hug.”
The Private Event
“I worked at a nice restaurant in downtown Portland, and one day a lady called to make a dinner reservation for a large group. But first she starts asking all these questions about ‘security’ (we had none) and how I thought the staff and patrons would handle a ‘celebrity’ dining there. Is there enough space to be private? They like to be private. Would it be okay if they brought their own security, to stop people from taking pictures and such? But of course, she couldn’t name names. I rolled my eyes, told her whatever they need to do, and booked the date and time.
Yes, I was super curious who it would be, and stayed past my shift to see who walked through the doors when the big night came. The group arrived, and it was…no one. Not one of us who worked there recognized a single member of their party. They sure acted like they were someone, but all we saw was a loud group of 20-somethings. They actually did bring a ‘bodyguard’ who stood in the corner with sunglasses on the whole time. The only attention they got from other diners was the occasional side-eye because they were being such rude and obnoxious people.
Shock of shocks, they treated our staff horribly, and tipped even worse.
We even tried to add 18%, but the party threw a massive fit about that, complained about the service (which I’m sure was fine, it was a well known place) and refused to pay it, so the manager took it off so as not to create a bigger scene. Left the server in tears. I think everyone just wanted to get them out by that point.
Will never know who that person thought they were.”