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?
4 comments:
At least you didn't get stiffed on a $130 tab like I did tonight. Cheap Oklahoman motherfuckers.
Still, I feel your pain. They always tip better if one of your coworkers is with them. It bugs the fuckin' hell out of me.
I think I would have had a word with George.
I waited on one of our cooks once and he was notorious for leaving shitty tips -- usually less than 10%, on an obscenely discounted tab. And he would rack it up. It got to the point where so many servers complained that management talked to him. After that, he started tipping *much* better.
Ugh. They don't have a grat system at your restaurant? I honestly feel that servers should be able to grat anyone who a. is in a party over 7, b. stays for more than 1.5 hours in their section, or c. runs a tab over 100 bucks.
I live in Spain. The South Americans are the same here, with children running wild and unsupervised in supermarkets, on the streets, around cafes, in the plazas...though they dont frequent restaurants much. But because people live much more out in public, we must deal with their unruly spawn constantly.
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