I’m a waitress a place that serves mostly breakfast, and for some reason… how should i say it… elderly people are attracted by breakfast food, which is how I am going to start off my rant, keep in mind this is mostly old people I’m talking about because the few young people that come into our restaurant do not act like this!
I’ll rant about one specific instance, probably in my top 5 of worst customers ever… I was working a breakfast/lunch shift on valentine’s day (I had also just recently broken up with my fiance of 3 yrs so that made it even better being valentine’s day) The restaurant was PACKED, we had people waiting at the door for tables because every table was taken… we had 3 cooks scheduled for that day, one just didn’t show up, and the other was on her lunch break so there was 1 cook for the entire restaurant, and probably 4 servers, including myself…. I see a table being sat as I am taking the order for another table, I make a mental note to go to them as soon as I get this order put in, which I did.. and they probably waited there 2-3 minutes tops before I got to them to ask their drink orders. Very smug they told me what they wanted to drink and shooed me away, I returned with their beverages in good time considering how full the restaurant was and took their orders, they wanted me to stand there and wait while they decided what they wanted to eat, I asked if I could come back for their orders but they said no and proceeded to look over the menu for a few minutes while I stand there watching my other tables get angry. (needing refills, napkins etc) I once they finally spat out what they wanted I put their order in… the woman ordered toast with her meal, i put the toast in right away as well… skip ahead about 45 minutes (which i agree 45 minutes is too long to wait for your food, but that’s what happens when you have 1 person cooking for around 150 people)… Anyway the food comes up and I was there just as soon as it did, however one of the other servers stole my toast and didn’t replace it so I had to make new toast.. I put it in the toaster and let them know what was happening and told them I would be back with their food in just one minute.. In the time it took for the toast to get done their food cooled off a little bit, there wasn’t anything I could’ve done about this. Anyway toast gets done and I bring them their meal… the husband picks up his hashbrowns and slams them down on the plate and says “This is cold! I am not waiting 45 minutes to eat cold food!!” I say “sir i am very sorry and I agree that is a long time to wait, but as you can see the restaurant is very full right now and we only have 1 cook, he is trying to prepare everyone else’s food as well”… He said “Well that’s not my problem that you’re understaffed now is it??” I said, “No sir, but I hope you’ll be understanding to the situation, can I get you a discount, or have him re-make it?” He says,”NO.. We’re leaving.” they get up in a huff and leave my table completely trashed with nothing to show for it.. as they are walking to the door I yell to them “THANK YOU FOLKS, I HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL VALENTINES DAY!” …”Yeah you too..” he says…. hah right. It threw me off for the rest of the day, he made me feel like a failure even though looking back I know I did everything I could’ve done. I had to hold back tears from my co-workers and other customers..
The moral? Please be nice to your server, s/he does have feelings you know.