Some customers one night this summer...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, on a (very hot) summer night that started out slow and then got very busy towards the end:

1) One (tight-bodied) (middle-aged) (white) woman out catching up on the patio with her (similar-looking) friend wants to know if we have cocktails, and I say no and direct her to other alcoholic stuff on the menu, and then I have a bright idea and I say that we can sell her a glass of plum wine and some soda water and she can make spritzers herself for $8.50 and she's up for it, so I assemble a glass of wine and a glass of soda water and a glass of ice cubes with a soup spoon and a little bright silver metal ladle that we use for tom yum soup, so she could ladle out of everything and into another little glass that I brought her, and, it works, and she's very happy with that drink option.

2) Towards close, a huge group of (lower-class) (African-American) customers come in along with a guy and his kids who are semi-regular customers -- extended family? -- and some have face tattoos and a couple even seem high, like a guy wanted clarification if pad see you had rice and I said no and he ordered it, and then he wanted to know where the rice was when it was brought out.

And, there was this (small) (skinny) (self-important) (woman) with a toddler who was always on her phone, and without really asking or caring she just ordered this expensive vegan dish that the semi-regular customer always gets for his kids, and after we serve the food, she's like, "I want something different," and I check into why, and it turned out to be some situation where she blithely ordered expensive food for her toddler, and would send back anything that he didn't like (?!). 

And, I tried to clarify if she was sending it back or ordering something in addition and still keeping the first entree, and the semi-regular customer volunteered that he would take it, and then the mom without looking up from her phone was like, "No, he was playing in it and spit up in it."

(So you order this unfamiliar expensive dish for a toddler without even checking into what it is, and then you not only want something different, but you let them play in the food and ruin it first, without even breaking out a small portion into a kid size plate or bowl or something like that and checking if they like it?)

And, I was like WTF and said I'd go check on the policy for replacements, and I send someone else over to take care of them, because I find the behavior so strange and weird to be around.

"You have to remember this isn't your restaurant," my one (Chinese from China) coworker said to me, after he took the order for replacement chicken satay, and oversaw taking the previous entree off their bill. "That's the policy and she wanted to send something back, so you send it back."

"I know," I was like, "But I just can't handle that shit."

. . . 

(I've only had a few encounters with behavior like this, but it does seem like a [lower-class] [black] character-type thing where women act like bitchy prima donnas and send things back at restaurants, it's like a respect thing where they're creating situations where it's a "battle of the wills" thing where they want to order shit around and set themselves up as fickle people who you have to please, where it's like paying money to go out at a restaurant and have people kowtow to you, that's their definition of acting superior and having money, even though it's a restaurant that costs just a hair above fast food, if you really get down to it, even if they maybe don't go out to these types of restaurants so often.)