Bastards, and I told 'em so!

Yeah, I'm still employed! It's not as awesome as it sounds, but it's pretty amusing.

At about ten last night, I had one table and so did my fellow closer, Ann. My table was three people about my age, who were a bit goofy but seemed fun. They were sitting in the corner table, by the door, so when a coworker (Jay) came in with her husband and son she saw them, and apparently they were friends, so they sat down next to my table to wait for their to go order.

It'd been a slow night--except for a little rush when we first cut to closers, so we were a bit behind on our closing stuff. The fact that we had a coworker there didn't help, as we were all about the chatting. Finally at about 10:40, twenty minutes to close, we started to get motivated and bust out our work.

Aaaaand that's when the phone rang. Ann and I were in the back, cleaning up the kitchen, when the bartender came up to us with a sick look on her face. Someone had just called and said they had fifteen people and would be there in about ten minutes. All our heads swiveled to the clock, which read 10:42. That's when the swearing started. We couldn't finish putting things away, because if the group actually showed up, we couldn't turn them away. We could get a table ready, but if they didn't make it by 11 we'd just be taking it apart again. We were pissed.

Anybody who's worked in a restaurant can probably imagine it--"what sort of asshole does that! They even asked when we closed!" "I'm locking the door at 10:59, if they roll up at 11 I'm not letting them in!" "This is BULLSHIT!" We told the cooks and the manager, and then we went out front to anxiously watch and hope they didn't show. Both our tables were still hanging around; my table of Jay and her friends had spread across a few tables and were having a good time, and my coworker was sympathetic when we told her about the phone call.

The next fifteen minutes, we jumped any time we saw headlights coming our way. I stationed myself by the door so I could lock it the instant the clock clicked over to 10:59. A couple of cars approached but turned into the next parking lot, and with vast relief I locked the door. Ann was talking to Jay when I walked by; she asked if I locked the door and I saw "Yep, fuck 'em!" I was three tables away when I heard them all laughed and Jay say, "It was them, they called!"

I wheeled around. The three original customers were laughing; there was one guy (who was kinda cute, actually) who was bent over in half laughing. Jay repeated that they were the ones who called and without even thinking about it I yelled "YOU BASTARDS!"

They were all stunned for a second; Ann looked like she swallowed her tongue. Then Jay and her friends started laughing and one of them said something like "that was a good one!" I was so freaking irritated! "You guys suck! Bastards! I can't believe you!" They continued laughing at us.

That was about when I remembered that we still had another table, and they had probably just heard me call other customers bastards. Oops. Laughing despite being seriously annoyed, I went over to the bar to explain to the bartender (Aubrey) why, exactly, I'd just called my customers bastards. Then I decided I was going to pass the humor along, dammit. I trotted to the office with Aubrey following me.

Pot Smoking Manager was on that night; I sidled in to the office, fiddling with my card and not making eye contact. "Um, I need you to talk to my customers."
"What's up?" he wasn't really paying attention.
"Well, they're pretty upset."
"What happened."
"Uhh ... well, I sort of lost my temper." Out of the corner of my eye I could see Aubrey trying not to lose it. "I called them a bunch of bastards."
PSM laughed. "You did not!"
I cringed dramatically. "Yeah, I did. They're pretty mad."
"Is it the people who called?"
"No, they didn't show. It's people at 64 who've been there for a while. Can you please go talk to them?"

He totally bought it! He was getting up to go talk to them, and I was going to let him--I knew the guys would play along, and it was going to be great! Unfortunately, Aubrey started busting up laughing, so the joke was off.

It was still oddly theraputic to call customers bastards. And probably still inappropriate, even though they were friends of a friend.