It wasn't a very busy night; Cali Girl was supposed to close with me, but she gave her close to Dallas, which of course just thrilled me. She wasn't as annoying as usual, actually. We were both eating our dinner when the first post-cut table came in--at 9:30. I decided I'd offer to take it, because it seems like whenever I convince the other closer to take the first table, restaurant karma catches up with me and I get screwed by the tables I end up with.
Anyway, I scurried over to greet them, and right away I just got a weird vibe off of them. The woman wouldn't make eye contact; the guy had his headphones in. He still answered me right away, though--but was one of those annoying slow talkers. "Well! Hooooooooow are yooooooou tonight?" he asked, looking at me very intently. After about five minutes I managed to get a drink order out of both of them (a tea and a water), so I meandered back to the kitchen, thinking longingly of my rapidly cooling hamburger.
When I returned with their drinks, they were too busy arguing over something to acknowledge me, so I made a lap around the (empty) restaurant and came back. This time, the guy had a stupid question for me: "Where's that pick three appetizer thing?" he asked, flipping his menu to the next page. I politely flipped it back to the page he was just at and pointed it out. The next hurdle was the fact that he'd forgotten his glasses. First he tried to use his wife's glasses; then he tried to, uh, use his wife's glasses by holding them backwards--what? I don't know. Eventually, he trundled out to their car to get his glasses--headphones still plugged in--but was gone for about ten minutes.
Then he was bemoaning the fact that there weren't enough chicken items on the appetizer trio. "Oh, that's beef. No, everything's gotta be chicken." He then stared at me with a befuddled expression and told me to come back in couple of minutes. So I did, and got the same thing. Eventually I got frustrated and told him I could substitute chicken in one of the items--even though we're not supposed to. I figured it was late, there were no other tables, the cooks could deal with it.
Of course, he was just sooooo appreciative--so of course I wasn't expecting a tip. Half an hour had passed since they'd sat down, and I'd finally pulled an order out of them. During this time, they had not touched their drinks at all. So I rang in their order, I did some other little errands, I glanced over at my table, and I sat down to resume my dinner.
A couple minutes later, someone at the bar started waving at me. She was there with a girl who used to work with me--who doesn't like me--and she yelled at me that "your customer over there needs something!" I looked over my shoulder to see the guy at my table sitting there, holding his glass of ice straight up in the air and staring up at nothing. I felt bad for a second, before I realized he'd let his tea sit there for thirty minutes before drinking the entire thing in less than two minutes.
Of course, I jumped up and grabbed the iced tea pitcher. He continued sitting there, glass in the air, holding his arm up like a kid does in school, looking pissed off. When he saw me approaching, with the damn tea pitcher, he started rattling the ice at me. I about poured the entire pitcher on the asshole. From that point on, I was absolutely fucking obnoxious with the tea refills--I made sure to come by with the tea every two minutes. He didn't drink anything until the end of the meal, at which point he slurped down another entire glass and rattled the ice at me.
As I came by way too frequently with the iced tea, I noticed she was fiddling with his fingers. I didn't think much of it until I was clearing their plates and saw a cuticle stick on the table. A few minutes later, I was walking by and heard a distinctive snapping noise. My head swiveled a
round slowly, like I was in a horror movie and didn't want to see. She was trimming his nails. Seriously? In a goddamn restaurant? Who the hell does that?They sat there until thirty minutes after close, his headphones in, her manicuring tools out. When they finally left, I was pleasantly surprised to find there were no fingernails on the table. I'd like to think they were just polite, but after the rest of their behavior I doubt it. They were probably afraid I'd do voodoo or something with them.
