One word is all it took to send my blood pressure through the roof. I'd just returned a credit card and thanked my table, then turned to clean the one next to it. After about thirty seconds I hear..... "Waiiiiiiiiiiiitresssssss!"
I hope they saw me go stiff with irritation before I turned around. They're regulars, they come in two or three times a week, and I know they know my goddamn name. But the woman chose to be demeaning. The "problem" turned out to be that after paying their tab, she'd looked at the bill.
"There are two drinks here for fourteen dollars!" she said, tossing the receipt at me and sitting back smugly.
I took a cursory glance at the bill; I already knew what she was talking about. "Yes, the merlot is $7 a glass." All three people at the table stared at me, so I elaborated. "The other cabernet is on happy hour, the merlot is not."
Again, they're regulars -- they know this! So when their friend asked for red wine, and I offered him cabernet or merlot, and he chose merlot, they should have known what was coming. Instead, they all looked back and forth at each other for a moment. The woman finally stared into my soul and said, "We didn't know that!"
I let her stare me down. They didn't get a reduction in price.
6 comments:
I hate people like that, but I'm glad that you stuck to your guns and they had to pay for what they drank.
If I don't know - I will politely say "Excuse me miss/ma'am/sir." I have memory problems and even where we are regulars I constantly have to ask Pooldad what our servers' names are before I ask for them.
Then again do I rarely call out from a table.
Good for sticking her with the stare down. Lack of knowledge is not your problem - that is why they make menus and table tents listing happy hour specials.
At least they actually said something instead of giving you the "Snap-snap". I once had a guy at my bar that gave me the double whistle usually reserved for Fido. I dropped everything, walked down to him and informed him he was about to die of thirst if he ever did it again. I got a round of applause from the rest of the bar and $20 from his wingman for the beat-down.
Oh, and there's a place in Napa Valley where the servers all wear "nametags" with things like "Waitress", "Oh, Miss...", and "Hey you!"
purplegirl - Kudos for staring right back. It's not your responsibility to walk her through the menu and pricing. If she didn't know, she should have asked.
nativenapkin - Badass. I'm going to do that the next time someone whistles at me. I usually ignore them. If someone snaps and then waves, I just wave back.
...well now you do.
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