Like a week after that, a (fairly normal-behaving) (meat-eating) (South Asian) (Pakistani?) couple who have been in to the restaurant multiple times before came in at like 9:28pm with two friends, and usually at that time you can just squeeze people in if you manage expectations, so I did my standard spiel and was like, “Hi, it’s getting late to eat in, but you have time for a quick bite if you order something like fried rice or noodles or stir fries, nothing breaded, no curries, and we need your orders right away, like in a few minutes,” and they seemed agreeable and sat down, and while my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker got water, I waited right there to get their order.
And, they sat there and talked among each other negotiating everything – most tables throw open the menus and order before sitting down and are like, “Okay, one pad thai beef and one pad kee mao tofu,” and get everything started ASAP, within less than a minute – but here it was going on like three or four minutes, to where it was like 9:32pm and the kitchen closes at 9:45pm, and then the one (previously normal-behaving) girl who had been in previously starts mentioning curry, and not just any curry, but a more labor intensive one involving multiple stages of cooking, and I had to repeat myself and be like, “Sorry, curry is no longer available if you want to dine in,” and then when they want some dish vegetarian that can’t be made vegetarian, the (previously normal-behaving) guy mentions something about a vegan stir-fry with tofu we’ve had, but can we do it with chicken, and I’m like, “I’m not sure about that and this is really not the time of night to request special orders,” and the guy is like, “Can you ask?”, and I demur and say I'd have to go to the back to check, and he asks for that, and at that point my one (older) (Thai) coworker who’s a whiz at the phones comes to wipe off a table near me, and so I ask her while I stand there and she’s like, “Okay,” so I confirm their two entrees and at that point they also ask for an easy deep-fried appetizer that they could have told me much earlier, and I run up to go enter it all in and get it to the kitchen ASAP, and then when I’m entering in their special mods and am trying to concentrate to get it all in quickly and correctly so the kitchen can start cooking, suddenly their friend is up by the front of the restaurant by my elbow interrupting me, and is like “Oh, and we want a papaya salad too” -- something in a part of the menu that I had directed them away from! -- and her interruption and request throws me and I tell her I’ll be with her, and so I send what they wanted in, and then I go back to the table, and I ask, and they want that vegetarian too only that takes making separate sauce and it’s late, so I tell them that that’s not really possible right now because of the extra cooking involved, so they’re like, “Okay, make it not vegetarian,” so without really thinking I go to send that in, and then they say something about an extra side of rice for them all, too, when I go back to pick up the menus.
Then, at that point the appetizers are already out and they’re wolfing them down, and the first entrée comes out – fried rice – only, because they did that special order that the kitchen had never done before, the cook got confused, and he put chicken in the fried rice instead of tofu, so I bring it out nonetheless and ask them what they want to do, is it possible to make the other dish tofu, then, instead of chicken, so they still have one chicken dish and one tofu dish, and they’re like okay, so I go tell the cook, but he’s tired and in the middle of closing up shop and making several take-out orders, and he makes that last entrée as it was listed (chicken and not the standard tofu) and not what I told him (tofu, versus the chicken replacing the tofu), so it’s chicken, and by the time we get it, it’s past the time when our kitchen is closed.
“What do I do?”, I ask my one (older) (Thai) coworker
who’s a whiz at the phones, when I see that it’s chicken and not tofu, and they have no tofu dish.
“Ask them if they want it, or if we take it off their bill,” she was like.
So, I go over and ask them, and it’s like this ripple goes through the table, and their (wide-eyed) (crazy-eyed) (non-meat eating) (presumably Indian) (female) friend who I’ve never seen before starts saying that they need it with tofu, and I’m like, “There are two available options now, it is late and the kitchen just closed, do you want this with chicken, or do you want it taken off your bill,” and the girl tells us to go make it in tofu and is like, “What am I supposed to do, sit here and starve,” and I repeat myself, and then they push back and say something, and I’m like, “It is very late here, there was a delay in placing the order, the table insisted on a special order that confused the kitchen, and now the kitchen is closed, which of the two paths forward do you want, do you want the dish, or do you want it taken off your bill,” and at that point their friend blows up and is like, “It’s your fault, you told us the restaurant was open and we believed you and we came here to eat," and she tells us again to go re-cook it, and then when I again reiterate the chaos-steps of their order and mention that there's language barriers too with the kitchen and special orders can be tough and it caused problems tonight, the (previously normal-behaving) guy slumps down in his chair and is like, “I don’t want to hear this,” because I guess it's okay for them to be pushy and chaotic and do whatever they want with no consideration at all for restaurant staff or what restaurant staff tell them, but they can’t bear the consequences of their own actions, or have the restaurant not be their perfect image of everything they need it to be exactly when they want it, even when they are explicitly told under what conditions a meal can be had at that time of night (limited menu, quick and decisive order, in and out).
So, at that point my one (older) (Thai) coworker shows up at my elbow and is like, “Go ask the kitchen if he will make it,” and I go back in and the (younger) (Lao) cook is looking so tired, but he says he will, and he does, even though it’s getting to be five minutes past when the kitchen is always closed
And, though the first entrée came out at 9:40-ish and then the tofu vergan stir fry afterwards, the *four* of them eat their *two* entrees just like any leisurely normal meal like nothing had happened, and it’s like 10:10/10:15 for when they finally leave – I don’t even look at the tip – and at that point they’ve probably cost the restaurant around $12-15 in staff wages and then the cost of the re-made special order, which wipes out any profit from their table, whatsoever, since it was just them there and everyone was waiting around for them to finish, when any other (typical of that time of night) table that had come in at 9:25pm would have been able to order something quick and been out by 9:50/9:55pm, even boxing anything that they had left at that point, apologetically.
Just rude all around – not even listening to when I specifically spell out that it’s a limited menu and it’s late and they need to order quick (meal negotiations among themselves! an ask for a curry that I told them could no longer be made! a request for a special order! a change to the order where someone interrupts me as I input their order! a second addition to the order, albeit for an additional rice which is no biggie! a leisurely meal when I had told them it’s late and I use the phrase “quick bite” like I always do!).
It's like they kept hemming and hawing and firing in "out of left field" demands and bent the whole restaurant around them and pitched fits and pushed, and they didn’t have a care in the world for us at all, even to listen with basic respect to the basic parameters of what I’d specifically stated as to what the restaurant can do that time of night immediately when they walked in and I told them it was late, and all of that happened for people not ordering all that much of a bill between them.
Later, too, when he clocked out, the (younger) (Lao) cook apologized to me for messing up the meal when he came out of the kitchen to leave, too, and I told him it was no biggie, the table was weird and crazy and insisted on a confusing special order and we gave it to them.
I also told my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker that I was never going to wait on that table again, because I didn’t like their behavior with me. She said that I shouldn’t have to, and that she suspected they would never come in again to eat late, but I told her it didn’t matter, I didn’t want to deal with the (previously normal-behaving) couple again, even if it was just the two of them during normal business hours behaving like they always have before. Just very, very inconsiderate people who were not even listening to you and just went ahead with doing whatever they wanted, although that didn’t surface in them until they were under the conditions of a situation in which limits were sought to be put onto their behavior.
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