...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:
1) There's three (late 20s/early 30s) (South Asian) women who I get samples of a wine for so they can try it, with one ultimately getting a glass, and who order their fried rice and curry with the larger mixed vegetable mix, and who want more rice and more sauce and less vegetables in each, since that's the way they prefer it, and please ask the kitchen to make it that way for them, and maybe there's something else at the table that happens that they want, I forget, and anyhow, I'm going to clear plates from the table while they're still sitting there and the receipt has $0.00 tip, and so I do the thing that the (Thai) (husband) owner suggested and I act surprised and I'm all like, "Oh! Was everything okay with the food and the service, because we got you the samples like you wanted and we tried to do the food like you wanted!", and when they said yes, I point to the tip and say the line, that the owner would see this at the end of the night and would want to know what was wrong with the food and the service, and they all begin looking me in the eye and laughing delightedly (nervously?), sometimes casting a glance back and forth to each other, and then one takes a pen and goes to revisit the receipt, and they all start bending over it, and I go away, and when I come back later to fetch it, the tip is now $5.00 (more than 10% but not quite 15%, but as my one [chubby] [Thai} coworker would say, "Not bad for Indian").
And, I guess my coworkers all saw that, because after the receipt gets filed, they're all like, "Good job, good job!"
2) Like the very next shift when I'm working, when a(n undergraduate-age) (South Asian from South Asia) guy on a (date?) comes up to the register to pay with ApplePay and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones takes care of him, he leaves a $0.00 tip, and she tries doing the spiel like I did.
And, on the $22.74 bill, he leaves a $0.26 tip, to round it up to $23.00.
3) During a very very busy Friday night dinner shift, this table of three (young) (white) (blonde) co-eds comes in as part of a rush of like five tables all at once where they also all keep sitting on the menus and no-one at any of the tables is ordering although we stop by each of them several times to see if they're ready yet, and finally all of the tables all order at once and there's a log-jam in the kitchen, and then this one (blonde) (short-shorts-wearing) co-ed sitting by the wall asks us if we can check where their food is, and so I say it's a busy night and also people weren't putting orders in and then all the orders came in at once, so I could guarantee that their food was in the roster and was going to be coming out as quickly as possible, and then it finally does come out, and a few minutes after I stop by their table and ask how their food is, and it's good, but then that (blonde) (short-shorts-wearing) co-ed is like, "Where are the vegetables in my pad thai?", and I tell her that we wait tables as a team and I didn't place their order but I can check on it, and I go and look in the system, and it's a simple chicken pad thai order, there's no mention of any additional larger mixed vegetable mix, and so I scurry back and tell her that it wasn't entered in that way and we can do two things, she can take it as-is or we can bring out the portion of vegetables for her, which costs the extra two dollars that it costs, and she's like, "I come in here a lot, and I've never been charged for the vegetables before," which sounds strange to me since that's not true and also that's a really weird thing to have happen with the pad thai, and so I'm like, "The vegetables cost two dollars, ma'am, would you like the vegetables for your pad thai, or would you like the pad thai as it is?", and she starts saying something about how she's never had to pay for it before, and I say that maybe she's thinking of another restaurant where she gets pad thai, and then she says something about how another table got served before them, and then I say that I don't know what has happened in the past, but in the future if she comes in to order pad thai, she should specify both chicken and mixed vegetables at the time of ordering, and to do that costs two extra dollars, and I'd go get the person who took their order, and my one (tall) (thin) (Chinese from China) coworker who took their order says he doesn't care, just get her the vegetables, and I say it's weird, she's trying to pull something over on us, since that's not a mistake that would happen in the past where suddenly there's just the mixed vegetables in the pad thai and it doesn't cost anything, and also I don't recognize her and neither does anyone else, and plus she changed subjects to how they weren't getting their food on time -- "It's busy, no-one is getting their food," observes at that point my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones -- and anyhow I don't like the vibe from the co-ed, I get the sense that she's on the sociopath spectrum and she's pushing boundaries to get the better of us through lies and sheer force of will, and anyhow I don't like any of this one bit at all, like, not at all.
And, my one (tall) (thin) (Chinese from China) coworker says he doesn't care, and he gets the vegetables, and suddenly the (blonde) (short-shorts-wearing) co-ed seems happy, like a switch switched off in her and her personality is bubbly again, she came out on top, hahahahaha, dumb restaurant people, she got the better of them.
"That's weird," the (Thai) (wife) restaurant owner said a bit later, when she overheard us discussing that customer's behavior.
"Yeah," I was like, "And I think she went into the bathroom, too. I'd go check if she stripped the copper from the fixtures."
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