Bitches of the day.

One of my first tables was a big pain in the ass. All three of them thought they needed to tell me they wanted separate tickets--as if I couldn't comprehend it the first time. Every time I passed by the table, they wanted something else. They were loud, and sort of commanding, and generally just not a pleasure to wait on. When I asked if they wanted dessert they started making all sorts of noise about how full they were, so I dropped the ticket off and said I'd take it when they were ready.

When I came back, they'd decided to have dessert. Then they sat there with their tickets for another half an hour, and then I saw them wandering across the foyer to the host stand. Any idiot could see there's not a cash register there, but plenty of idiots just can't comprehend the words "I'll be your cashier when you're ready". I rush over to explain it to them; one hollers to the other one across the foyer, they get granny and her walker wedged back into a corner, and they give me three separate modes of payment. One was cash, two were cards. One card went through fine; the other was declined twice.

I fucking hate telling people their card was declined--most of them act like it's my fault. I grit my teeth and head back over. The lady whose card was declined is babbling, so I hold out the credit card book to grandma--to takes the card and leaves me with the book in my hand. The other woman then turns to me and says, "Did it work?"

"No, I'm sorry. I tried it twice."
"Oh, I didn't think it would work. It's a new card and I haven't activated it yet. Try this one."

I wanted to scream. Why the fuck did she waste my time like that? Who the hell hands a card they know won't work to somebody, and then just sits there? GAH!

When I came back after running a card that was, you know, real, the woman was signing grandma's form, and saying "I don't think this is right." Well no shit, you dumb bitch, why are you signing a credit card slip when yours didn't go through?

They were mostly just annoying though. The real bitch was the haggard-looking old woman and her son/much younger husband. They looked familiar, but I couldn't place them. When they ordered, the woman informed me that she wanted a house salad, no bacon, no cheese, extra ranch, and only iceberg lettuce. I politely told her that we have a mix of greens, and both of them immediately got huffy. "Well, they always give us just iceberg, and we come in all the time."

So I passed the order along to the cooks, who then had to pick all the offensive colored lettuce out of the salad mix for these finnicky fuckers. They had ordered an appetizer as well; they got their app, and then I took their salads out. As I put the salads down, the woman says, "Oh, I forgot to tell you" and then said something really garbled that it took me about ten seconds to unscramble as "make sure we don't get our food until we finish all of this". Fuck. Naturally, they'd ordered an appetizer that takes eight minutes (minimum), plus the special salads, and then food that takes about eight minutes too.

The way our system works, we can mark appetizers and salads as "first out", which delays pushing the main order through to the cooks until the appetizer is cleared, or four minutes--whichever comes first. So at this point, their food was about half done.

"I can tell the kitchen," I said very politely, "but your food is probably already started, so I--"

"WELL THAT'S JUST RIDICULOUS. They shouldn't even start your food until you've eaten your salad!" She yelled/grumbled something else at me, and I just said I'd do what I could. I remembered them at that point; managers have bought their meals more than once because they threw such a goddamn fit about getting their meal when they haven't finished every last bite of their food.

I'm sure their dinners were a little dry from sitting under the heatlamp while they finished licking the ranch dressing off their places; but I really just didn't care.