A problem customer…

…at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

This one (darker-skinned) (Jewish?) (Latin American) (Latina) is known from a past table where we had brought out the two (smaller) plates of french fries and the requested number of ketchups only to be informed that the ketchup wasn’t enough, and when we ask how many more they need, she’s like, “Bring one for everyone!”, which would be 18 cups of ketchup since they had a huge group, and so we check who still wants some from the people who are eating the two (smaller) plates of fries which are only sitting at one end of the big long table, and it ends up being that they only need 2 more cups of ketchup.

And, this time around she’s there as part of another large group although not quite as large, and it’s her birthday, and people are drifting in and drifting in, and when I go to fill water and pre-bus and ask if they need anything, she says imperiously that someone hasn’t ordered yet, and so I go and take their order right away, and then I check with the point-person for the table and I find out that that person had just only gotten there a few minutes ago.

And, when I return with other stuff for the table, that lady makes a point of pointing out that this person never received any water, even though I had just been at the table checking if people needed anything else and had even gone so far as to take the dinner order for that particular person right away, at which point I could have gotten a water for her, too.

(It was one of those tables that was so big and with so many waters sitting around that you just didn't know which one was whose, especially because in situations like that friends tend to get waters for their other friends before they arrive and they just sit out there for them.) 

Later, too, she sends back her burger, and since she’s full on salad, she has the new one boxed up to take home with her.

“Please can you take over this table,” my one (middle-aged) (white) (remarried) mom coworker asks me with just tiredness in her eyes, since she was the point-person for that table.

And, I tell her that our one (skinny) (bearded and balding) (pun-loving) coworker had helped them last time when the ketchup thing happened, and he had said it was a table where you just “smile and say yes," a phrase he said with this big put-on shit-eating grin on his face.

(The next time I work with him I mention that table and I tell him that "that ketchup lady was in here again," and he’s like, “Oh yes, I remember her!”.)

During the last part of the night, too, I am back at their table to refill water, and I reach out to get a glass and one long curly wisp of her hair that was sticking out way way away from her head gets caught between my fingers as I reach out to get the glass of the person sitting next to her, and she kind of startles and looks but doesn’t say anything and I just keep doing what I’m doing and try to ignore it, hoping that it doesn’t turn into “a thing.”

(It doesn’t, fortunately.)