That reminds me, I’ve just remembered that I’ve actually done it twice.
The first time was when I was seventeen. I was working as a washer-upper and KP at a pub restaurant. I earned next-to-jack-shit and I washed every single thing by hand. The management were this ob-fucking-noxious couple. She was the chef and he ran the bar. She was miserable to work with and did things like drop the chef’s knife under the suds without telling me, then bitch me out for bleeding into the sink. He had one of those horrible nasal British voices and was a boring, racist, sneering twerp. I hated them.
My school crush had enquired if I was going to such-and-such new year’s party as she’d be there. This was a huge deal for a young lad - so I told them I couldn’t work that night. They begged me. I refused. They offered me double-time. I still refused. Then they offered me a cut of the tips, which I never normally got. That would be a huge chunk of change for me, and I was saving for a car, so eventually I conceded.
New year’s eve was busy as hell and the night was long and terrible, and I didn’t get home until 4am. When I got my pay packet later that week it was only single time. I asked about the double-time and they said that my extra wage would be made up from the tips. That hadn’t been our deal but I was too naive to argue about it.
The tip jar was a gallon bottle on the bar and it was nearly full - notes too. I asked when they would count it but they were “too busy”. This went on and on for several weeks.
After about two months I finally realised that I would never get the extra money I had been promised. And my crush was now with someone else. I was so, so angry, in the way that only the impotent rage of the jilted adolescent can achieve.
Then I heard that the school rugby team was having its annual dinner at the pub. Being at school with these hoodlums, I knew how badly that evening would fare for the pub. So I plotted my revenge: I didn’t turn up.
The rugby team trashed the joint, had a food fight, tipped pints of beer over each other, and played frisbee with the owners’ antique plate collection. The kitchen was chaos because nobody was washing up, and one of the players reduced the chef to tears by lifting a fillet steak from the plate with his fingers before it was even on the table and swallowing it whole.
I never went back. Petty, I know, and I regret never telling them why I’d “rather left them holding the baby” as the owner whined when he called to complain.