Pizza girl, babysitter ... whatever.

FEAR THE PICKLES

One thing I've learned in my pizza tenure is that it's not generally a good sign when someone has their kid answer the door. Occasionally it's just because the kid wants to play grownup and help, but usually it's because the parents aren't going to tip and don't want to look me in the eye - kind of like the people in a restaurant who throw down their money and bust out of the place like their asses are on fire. Still, it's not usually a big deal. Kid hands me the money, I hand kid the pizza, done.

Oh no. Not this time.

I rolled up to this house with seventy dollars worth of pizza, and when I knocked on the door it was promptly flung over by a five year old chubby-cheeked little cherub of a girl and her diaper-clad, penis-fondling, binky-sucking little brother. They were immediately joined by a tiny little bundle of black and brown fur that I soon learned was named Mister Pickles.

Just as the little cherub started squeaking about her dog and how they were watching Frozen, an older girl (maybe ten) came rushing up. She took the pizza, then took the credit card slip around the corner. So far, so good - pretty normal. Binky Boy was still staring at me with his hands in his pants and Cherub was blathering on about something about a snowman. The older girl came back with the slip signed, but with no tip or even total written in.

Nine times our of ten, when I point that out to people, they tip me. So I politely told her I needed her mom to fill in the whole thing, and I even circled the tip/total lines. So she took the slip back around the corner ... and that's where everything went terribly wrong. For the next ten minutes, I stood in their doorway waiting. The older girl kept walking by saying "I'm sorry it's taking so long" and "just a minute" and "my mom is checking her bank balance" and "just a second."

Meanwhile, another little girl and two other boys have materialized and are standing around staring at me. Cherub is still trying to get me to tell her my favorite part of a movie I've never seen. Binky Boy has wandered out the door past me and nearly faceplanted right off the stairs, except I caught him. Two of the other boys started wrestling and I intercepted one of their heads right before it met the doorjamb. Mister Pickles was the best of the bunch - he kept licking my ankles and then making a break for freedom. At one point I chased him out to the street and retrieved him.

Ten minutes later - actual time, I checked my phone - the girl comes back with the clipboard and says, "My mom doesn't understand what you need her to do." I almost just let it go but I felt like I'd come too far to give up at that point. So I told her the tip and total needed to be filled out and away she went again. Another five minutes went by; another girl of maybe 12 had appeared and was restraining Mister Pickles at that point, but the rest of the herd of children was still wrestling and screaming.

Finally, finally, the girl comes back with my clipboard .... with the total only filled in. No tip. Fifteen minutes of basically minding this woman's kids and dog, and no tip.

I gave serious thought to snatching Mister Pickles as a tip and running away.

Mexican Munchkin Bomb

Yesterday I was absolutely thrilled to have a table of eight. With four kids. And I'm sorry to engage in stereotyping, but they were Mexican so add that all together and I was sure I was getting screwed. They were very friendly, happy people, and they ran up an absolutely enormous bill. Lots and lots and lots of alcohol. Their bill was $260 bucks, and only $60 of that was food!

Of course that was over the course of three hours. Three hours during which they took up half of my section, ordering more and more drinks. Three hours during which the four children were absolutely unsupervised. They were crossing the restaurant, hollering back and forth, running in front of servers, trying to get into the kitchen, and one little girl of about three thought it was hilarious to block the aisle and just grin at me. Through all of this the adults were clustered at one end of the table, laughing and talking, completely oblivious.

Other tables were muttering and giving them dirty looks, and of course taking their irritation out on their servers. Especially me, since naturally it's my fault I got sat with them, right? Basically it was an absolutely shit night – my other tables were unhappy and tipping poorly because of it, and the cause of the unhappiness stayed for three fucking hours and left me a little under ten percent. I guess I should be grateful for that ten percent. And I wasn't too irritated about it, I was fairly philosophical about things evening out.

When I really got pissed off was tonight. You see, they came back …. with a friend of theirs, George, who's one of our cooks. Four of them plus the littlest child sat at the bar for an hour – by which I mean the adults sat and the little girl wandered around unsupervised, even going outside at one point – and tipped the two bartenders $40. Each.

Then they moved out to the patio when more of them arrived, and spent another two hours …. and tipped their server $80. $160 in tips they spent tonight. Motherfucking fucker. Why couldn't George have been with them last night?

Not a babysitter.

Summer is here, and of course that means that fucking crotchspawn are everywhere. Or maybe it's just that parents are more likely to keep the little bastards out later, so it seems like there are more of them.

I was cleaning up my section last night, and there was a quite cute little girl there with her mom and grandma. She was probably three, chubby and big-eyed with super curly blonde hair. I was sweeping up crayons and ripped-up napkins left on the floor by a bunch of teenagers when I saw her crawl over the back of their booth and start staring at me. I waved – I didn't have to clean up after them, they weren't my table, so I wasn't irritated with their presence. The little girl giggled, then clambered down and came over to investigate the sweeper. Her mom called her and she ran back to the table laughing. I went to do something else and when I came back, the little girl saw me and came running full-tilt at me laughing. I scooped her up and tossed her into the air, figuring if her mother wasn't paying any attention she wouldn't mind me playing with her.

I sat the girl down by their table again and went back to filling sugar packets or some shit; the little girl kept climbing back and forth between the booths, roughly following me. When I got to my last table I had to clean, I was on the opposite side from before, and she climbed into that booth. The other one was empty; this one had some dishes on it.

“What's that?” she pointed at something.
“That's trash,” I said patiently.
“What's that?”
“That's sugar.” I turned to check the ketchup bottle on my table, and when I turned back the little girl had picked up a glass and was about to drink out of it. I think I let out a little yelp as I snatched it away as gently as I could – because it was a fucking half-full pint of beer! Meanwhile, her mother and grandmother were chatting away, totally ignoring her.

But of course, if the kid had chugged down some backwashy Fat Tire, I'm sure they would have sued the restaurant.