As many of you probably know, I am a waitress at an Applebee’s. Some of you might want to ask the question, “Do you have any interesting stories from your time working as a food slave?”
I am so glad you asked!
Yesterday my shift started at 4:00 in the afternoon. I was one of two people to show up on time. The other two (i.e. the people who were going to share the burden of the early diners) were both late. But more on that later. One of my first tables was a middle-aged couple. Nothing wrong with that. The wife was a little flighty. A little “Okay I want this but without this and with this thing on the side,” if you know what I mean. But it was fine.
Because we weren’t busy, their food came out in maybe five minutes. Because we weren’t busy, I checked on them intermittently throughout their meal, ran a drink refill to their table when they needed it, etc. But boy did they take their time eating. The husband eventually finished, but the wife was still going, picking at her potatoes like someone had bet her she couldn’t make one bite last half an hour. But whatever. Not a problem…usually. Except remember how some people were late? Yeah…I picked up two extra tables that I should not have had, and they came at about the same time. However, I had already dropped the check off at my middle-aged couple’s table, so I didn’t see the harm in quickly stopping to take the drink order of one of my new tables.
Apparently there was harm, because my couple didn’t like waiting two minutes for me to grab the credit card off the table. They actually flagged down the hostess and had her bring it to me. She interrupted me at the table I was at to tell me they were complaining. I was honestly baffled as to why. People have waited longer than that for me to bring a glass of water out to them – no complaints. Luckily the table I was at understood, so I ran off to run the credit card (and take off a $5 coupon mind you), and when I went back to their table….no one was sitting there.
At this point I was really confused. You’re not supposed to give me your credit card then attempt a dine ‘n’ dash. So I was spinning around in a slow circle trying to find them when the husband waves me over from a different table that is right by the door. I go and give him his slip and tell him where to sign. He’s already wearing his sunglasses and I guess he’s sent wifey out to the car to wait for him. He signs the slip and as he’s walking out the door I pick it up. A picture of it is below. Because I’m nice I blacked out all the semi-personal info. Please note what he wrote on the tip line and also the total of the check.
Yep, that’s a $2.00 tip he didn’t feel I deserved because….?? Um…I really don’t know. I have messed up before. I have. I left one table waiting fifteen minutes once because they weren’t in my section so I forgot all about them. THAT was bad. Really bad. But they still tipped me about 8%. This guy? His whole meal went fine. And both he and his wife were taking their sweet time eating. But I leave them waiting for three minutes at the very end so I can juggle a couple extra tables? What bothered me the most was that this guy walked out of the restaurant thinking he’d schooled me. So I decided to blog about it to make me feel better. Thanks for reading that rant. I drew a comic for you (unrelated to this story) as a reward for sticking with me this long.
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