So I go to the Olive Garden in Bolingbrook, Illinois for a late dinner. It’s getting near closing but there is still plenty of people in the restaurant. We’re not even the last group in. But our waitress apparently felt we had specifically chosen her section just to keep her there longer. First she comes up and accuses us of asking the host to start the fireplace. Um, no, he did it himself. I say as much and, since its fiery warmth was apparently too much for her cold black heart to tolerate, she shuts it off while still giving us a glare. Alright, maybe she’s had a bad day, and maybe better still, she won’t be our actual waitress.
Uh uh. After about five minutes she comes up, audibly sighs, and gives the little ‘welcome’ speech with all the enthusiasm of Christopher Walken getting a curdled milk enema. She takes our drink order with a gaze that would have withered an SS Officer. Me and my companion just exchange surprised looks. Wondering if I had unknowingly anally raped a figure of her deity or something accidentally, she returns with our drinks and menus which she tosses on the table without a word. After about 30 seconds for us to determine what on the menu would offend her the least, she wants our order. I ask if we could have some more time to look. Looking at me like I was a retarded kid in Burger King trying to see how many fries I could fit up my nostril, she rolls her eyes and flies off on her broom back to the kitchen.
I suppose as punishment for our insolence for being unsure which identical $15 pasta plate we wanted, a good fifteen minutes went by before she graced us with her presence again. At this point, the restaurant really was staring to empty out. Perhaps as a token of appeasement, this time she came bearing gifts. At last we were bestowed with the tasty breadsticks (which, truth be told, was the deciding factor for us in going to Olive Garden). She takes our order with a nod and an “Okay” because their paper is too good to soil with words from the likes of us. My dinning partner starts to regret that she ordered a salad since we had failed to been properly equipped with utensils and she feared drawing the pentagram necessary to conjure up our waitress again. Meanwhile, I’m cursing myself for not having the foresight to have brought silver bullets. Once more our waitress makes the supreme sacrifice of dealing with us mere customers and brought my friend her salad.
There was a slight fiasco when, due to her timidness with our disgruntled food service employee, my friend failed to speak up when the salad had enough cheese. Fortunately, in a rare, gesture of concern for our arterial well-being, without our prodding, when our waitress felt we had enough cheese, she stopped with a curt, “I was waiting for you to say ‘when’”. That she may have wanted more cheese was not even an option our waitress even considered. And thankfully so, since in her eyes were we barely competent enough not to shit ourselves where we sat, so what’s to indicate we’d have any clue as to what the proper dairy to vegetable ratio is for a salad. When propositioned for silverware they we might eat without rummaging through our meals like hogs, she vanished into the kitchen again without a word. Reappearing a moment later with the needed utensils and white paper napkins. See, we lowly peons didn’t rate the green cloth napkins that everyone else who partakes at Olive Garden gets to enjoy. To be honest, I didn’t even know they had paper napkins. As she departed from our table of the damned, she also took with her the tasty breadsticks we had not finished. Once again she showed that small glimmer of concern for our nutritional well-being, bless her heart.
When the meal itself arrived, she did go out of her way to mumble something about “plate” and “hot” before passing a scalding platter into my hands. To the disgrace of my people, I nearly dropped the dish as the top three layers of my palms blistered away. Giving a mechanical, “will there be anything else,” she immediately turned to depart where I obviously surprised her by indicating there actually was further humiliation she could rain down upon us. See, in her rush to supply us with silverware, she had overlooked that fact that I now had in my possession three forks, and nary a knife. She called out to another waitress to serve us as the fetch quest I lay before her was beneath her dignity. Without another exchange, she vanished back into whatever neither region had spawned her.
After some time to sit and think about what we’ve done, she did pop up to cheerfully ask if everything was alright. Honestly, she smiled and asked in a kind manner. Immediately I wondered who was this person before us and where had they buried our waitress, because if they hadn’t put a wooden stake into her, she’d be back. After expressing our gratitude, she didn’t reappear until we had finished gorging ourselves on the bounty she’d risked life and limb to bring us from the perilous kitchen. After deterring us from considering desert as we were cutting into her angst time, I passed over my credit card in the proper pouch of the little meal book. Being a former waitress herself, my friend commented on how often people she had severed would just lay the card in and it would slide out as you picked up the book. Our waitress brightened up and enthusiastically agreed before leaving to process my card. I honestly tired, but I could not work up any surprise that our only bonding moment occurred over bitching about customers.
After returning with the ticket, she took off to gossip with the other restaurant personnel who were cleaning up the now nearly empty restaurant. (As I recall, there were only two other tables still occupied as we left.) The bill was under $30. Rounding up, I left a 10% tip of three dollars. My companion had wanted to leave five, but I worried lest that encourage our waitress. As we left, I heard behind me, “That’s bogus!” Imagine it could easily have been something else, such as an emerging hell beast from her stomach. Oh no, as we were exiting the restaurant, she yelled quite loudly enough for us to hear all the way in the front her displeasure over “Three dollars?!” We drove off, both disappointed that a nice evening we had planned for a few weeks now had turned out so poorly.
So, to the young girl who felt the need to make us feel like when we were there we’d betrayed the family, I will say this: while I’ve never waited on tables before, I have worked in sales. In fact, I worked for a good, close friend of my family. Even still, if I had ever treated a customer like that, my boss would have fired me on the spot and I wouldn’t have blamed him a bit. Don’t try to make me feel bad that I didn’t leave as many pretty presidential portraits as you had hoped. You’re lucky I only shaved off five percent as any more would have made me feel cheap with myself, regardless of your performance, or in this case, lack thereof. Besides which, it was a small dinner for two. With a bill of under $30, you only ‘lost out’ on $1.50. Are six quarters really going to mean the difference between paying the rent or being forced to work at a seedy night club where they’d pay you to put more clothes on? Did that parting shot make you feel like you’d gained a final victory on these vile customers that invade every day just to take up your free time? Your service was deplorable. Had I thought of it, I would have complained to your manager/necromancer. Whichever applies in your case.
P.S., Fuck you.
