Sometimes we just can't avoid crazy, even when we are just trying to have a nice meal! These stories about the craziest things a waitress or waiter has done to a customer will make you want to avoid dining out for a while...
A “Stingy” Tip
“A little background, I’m currently living in Washington, DC. I ate at a fairly nice restaurant and left 20% tip as I always do (I’m also a pretty easy customer). This server chased me out of the restaurant and asked ‘Was there anything wrong with the service tonight?’ I told him there wasn’t, that’s why I left him 20 dollars on the 100 dollar bill. He said that most of the people who eat there are Senators and it’s customary to tip 30% at that particular restaurant. I asked him if he’d rather give me back my 20 and he left in a huff, calling me a cheap jerk” (source).
Hiding a Plate of Food
“At a Swiss Chalet, six of us at a table. Five plates come out. We wait a couple minutes for the sixth plate. We inform our waitress that we didn’t receive our sixth plate. She responds with ‘Yes, you did.’ After a bit of a back-and-forth, she accuses us of hiding the last plate somewhere” (source).
Not Everyone Can Like Fried Chicken
“I ate at a restaurant that was owned and run by African Americans. It’s customer base happened to be predominantly white. I ordered the fried chicken and got a lecture about how not all blacks like fried chicken and if I came there just to be politically correct I could leave. So, we left and told the manager what happened and he seemed pretty upset. We are weekly patrons and that was our first time with that waitress. Why is it not ok for white people to like fried chicken….” (source).
Grieving Waitress
“We took my wife’s father out for birthday dinner one night. He chose the Olive Garden, so my parents and the in-laws met us there and we were seated at a big round table in the back of the restaurant. Our waitress came bouncing up and introduced herself, asked a few questions, and figured out that it was Bill’s birthday. His 60th birthday. I noticed that she seemed to pause when she heard this, but she took drink orders and off she went. Dinner progressed, but at some point she came back and dropped the bomb: her own father had just died two weeks prior at age 60. We were all a little flabbergasted, but we offered our condolences and she turned it around a bit by reminding us all how precious we should be to each other, etc. Not 5 minutes later she came back, and proceeded to fill us in on HOW he died: battling aggressive cancer for a year, he died a long, slow, painful death. Very sad. Again, birthday dinner and all, we managed to console her a little and ordered desserts. Desserts come out, and she brings an extra-happy surprise: a printout of an email that her father sent her. You see, during his time in hospice, he sent her multiple emails daily telling her that he loved her, writing poetry and inspirational sayings. She saved them, leaving them all unread to go through after he passed. She proceeded to read this poem to us, which was very sweet I’m sure, but I could barely hear it over the blood pounding in my ears out of sheer embarrassment. I was staring at my plate by this point; I can honestly say it was the most embarrassed I have been since middle school. As she had brought out the desserts, a bus/run guy had come through to clear a booth from the now empty section of the restaurant. About two lines into the poem, he stood up, looks over at her and said, ‘You’re kidding.’ I glanced over at him and he gave me the most sincere ‘I am SO sorry look.’ She finished the poem, we paid up, left a decent enough tip (probably around 20% because the service–grief aside–was good), and went home. The next day, my wife gets a call from a manager. He asks if we had had any issues with our waitress the night before, and my wife very kindly explained that the woman was obviously still grieving and just happened to get a table that rang her like a gong. He explained that it was her first shift back since taking time off to grieve, and that we were her first table of the night” (source).
Good Old Pizza Hut Flirting
“I’m from Denmark, but I’d gone to London to visit some friends. Having looked around, we decided we’d go to Pizza Hut. We sat down, and a waiter comes up to our table and asks for our order. One of my friends decides he wants a small pizza, and the waiter stares at him for a bit, then goes ‘Okay sweetie, I’ll make sure it’s extra crisp just for you.’ Our friend is bi, and we teased him a bit, telling him to get the waiter’s phone number, and just generally messing about with him. He was not amused. So, Kapil–as we found our our waiter was called–delivers our food to the table. He gets my friend’s plate the last, and gets up very close to him, and puts it down with a hearty ‘Here you are, love’ (all of this is is in an incredibly stereotypical gay voice with one heck of a lisp), winks at him, walks off to the kitchen. This was repeated, with several implied gay jokes when he asked for strawberry ice cream, as opposed to the chocolate the rest of us had. He kept coming back, ensuring we had our drinks re-filled for the entire night and kept joking with our friend. We ended up having a picture taken with him, emptied out our pockets of change and dropped it in his tip tray. We later added him as a friend on Facebook. He’s straight, and has a girlfriend” (source).
When a 40% Tip Is Not Enough
“Me and about 5 or 6 of my friends went to Denny’s after a concert one night and we all ordered food. The service was fine and the food was good. At the end of are meal we all paid and was getting ready to leave and we all put the tip on the table it was a good tip something like 30% – 40%. So we all were getting up from the table and the waitress came over and said in a pretty smug way ‘I know a tip is not mandatory but you guys could leave something.’ We all kinda took a look at each other and then I said ‘Yeah your right a tip isn’t mandatory.’ And then went back to the table and picked up the money. The look on her face was priceless as we walked out the door” (source).
Cancun Scamming
“I was in Cancun recently, and we felt like jerks because most of us were poor college students and didn’t tip the bottle service guys very well. Bottle service is pretty cheap in Cancun BTW. The last night we decided that we would tip well that night. We probably gave him a combined 300 pesos ($20) over the course of 2 hours. He basically brought us 2 bottles and some mixers. We then asked for a third bottle and he said that we’d need to tip him much better to get a third bottle. He gave us this whole line about how he worked hard to get that table and it’s the best table (it’s not) and that he is losing money because we’re not tipping high enough. He then said we could buy another bottle and brought us this list of overpriced drinks, we say no thanks we’d like the drink that was included in the bottle service. He made this huge thing about it and said that there had better be a big tip at the end of the night. We obviously didn’t after getting the whole song and dance” (source).
Double Date Gone Wrong
“I was out on a double date with the woman who would become my wife and another couple. My order alone was not simple but other girl’s order was pretty complex. The waiter was just listening and going ‘uh huh’ after every few words when I said, ‘Don’t you think you might want to write this down?’ to which he replied ‘Nah, I’ve got it.’ Well, surprisingly enough, he didn’t have it. He brought me a dish completely unrelated to what I ordered. By the time my order was corrected, my pre-wife and friends had already finished their meals. Then he brought the bill, which included being charged for the original, incorrect order. I ask him to get the manager since he would not change the bill. The manager comes over and apologies profusely. He tells the waiter to create another ticket without the incorrect order and offers me some gift certificates ($30 worth, not bad) for the inconvenience. The waiter brings me the new ticket and I notice there’s an 18% automatic gratuity tacked on. I look at the previous, incorrect ticket…and there is no automatic gratuity. In other words, this jerk waiter tagged on a tip hoping I wouldn’t notice because he sure wasn’t getting one from me. I pointed it out to the manager and the look on his face said everything. He took the ticket from me and said, ‘Dinner’s on me, sir, enjoy your evening.’ I’m pretty sure somebody got fired that night’ (source).
Is it clean enough for you?
“My wife and I once went out to eat at a restaurant near where we lived. We were both seated fairly quickly and opened our silverware while waiting for our server to arrive. I noticed my fork was slightly dirty, like the dishwasher hadn’t completely cleaned off all the old food. Now, I didn’t for a moment think that I was intentionally given dirty silverware. When the server came to take our drink order, I politely said, ‘Excuse me… but this fork is dirty. Could I please have another?’ She smiled, said, ‘Sure!’ and left. She came back a minute or two later and placed another set of cutlery on the table. ‘Here you go,’ she said. She then put a glass full of hot soapy water on the table, and said, ‘That’s if this set isn’t clean enough for you.’ My wife and I looked at each other, got up without saying a word, and walked out” (source).
“a limp and four holes in your hand”
“My father and mother went to a popular Chinese restaurant (similar to PF Chang’s) in DC one Friday night in the 80’s. This was a fancier-style place; my dad was in his Naval Officer’s uniform, and my mom was in a nice dress. When they went in, the host showed a bit of disdain for my parents and sat other people for almost 20 minutes before finally getting them a table. When they got the table, it was a cramped table in the corner next to the kitchen. The waiter that took care of them also was pretty rude and dismissive throughout the night. At the end of the night, they got their leftovers to go, and my dad paid the bill. My dad gave him a decent tip, even with the crappy service – 15%. My parents, however, were staying at the table and finishing their drinks. Meanwhile, he sees the waiter talking with the host, and gesturing angrily at the bill. The host comes over, and asks if there was something wrong with the service. My dad tells him that the service was not good, but felt that he tipped decently regardless. The host explained ‘sweetly’ that it was customary to tip 20% at the minimum in their restaurant. My dad offered to change the tip on the bill, and reached for the credit card slip. The host jerked the slip back, and said that would not be necessary, and left. My dad saw the host go back and argue with the waiter. He then gestured towards them, and my dad guessed that they were going to try and take the leftovers back. My dad palmed the fork from the table, and waited to see what happened. The waiter walked by and leaned towards the table, and my dad growled, ‘Try it, and you’ll walk away with a limp and a four holes in your hand.’ The waiter made a quick about-turn from the table, and my parents left a few minutes later” (source).
Strong Stalking Skills
“I had a waitress look me up on Facebook by the name on my credit card. She sent me a message letting me know she was my waitress and that we should hang out sometime. And no she wasn’t attractive” (source).