Where I work we serve lunches and breakfasts mostly to businessmen/women. Not all of them are assholes, but because I have to respond to them calmly and politely (thank you sir, may I have another?) you get to hear the rants about the assholes.
Almost every other tuesday a group of 12 business men come in for breakfast. Usually they call ahead of time for reservations. They don’t tip well, perhaps that is why I despise them so much. Or it could be because when they want more coffee, they shake the coffee pot above their head. Or maybe its the one guy who constantly insists that the cook make him something off the menu, dispite my assuring him we dont have the ingredients.
I hate those guys.
Another table of business men yesterday asked if I could turn up the airconditioning. (Its in the 90’s here and pretty hard to cool and old building with a kitchen.) I told the man that the cooling system was operating as well as it could. He then suggested I walk back and fourth a few times so that I could experience how hot it was. I politely informed him that I understood how hot it was and that there was nothing I could do about it. I then asked if he would like me to lite a fire in the fireplace or if he wanted some tobasco for his eggs. I also suggested that if he thought it was hot he could stand in the kitchen for a few minutes then return to the table which would seem cool in comparison.
I can empathize with you, racerx. I used to be a waiter at an Elias Brothers. I would have to say it was quite stressfull when the patrons treated me like crap. On Tuesday evenings a group of Amway distributors would come in and fill up our entire greenhouse section. They would never tip and they were always standing in the aisle… they would never sit in their seats. And they were rude to the servers all the time, making them work their butts off just for coffee. The servers who were assigned to that section would cringe when they started coming in.
I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but my younger brother did when he was in high school.
At an Oregon restaurant that shall remain nameless, he worked about for about 2 to 2 1/2 years.
I asked him once how he dealt with awful customers.
He told me that if the the customer was really out of line, it would not be unheard of for the waiter/waitress to have a little accident. Usually the accident occured when the waiter/waitress was handling the water picher used to refill the customer’s water glasses.
My brother admitted to intentionally soaking a few people. He also said that the manager was usually aware of these “incidents”, and tolerated it.
He hated working there, by the way. Absolutely hated it. There was a time that whenever an advertisement for the restaurant appeared on the movie screen during that awful slideshow prior to the actual movie, my brother would give it the one-finger salute. With both hands.
Me? I’m always nice to the waiters/waitresses. Thanks to my brother, I know they have a very tough job, and it’s hard enough already for them without some jerk adding to the burden.
