Two odd customers…

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

1) A (somewhat hairy) (college-age) (autistic?) (lesbian?) is in with two (Chinese from China) students and this other (white) girl she holds hands with under the table, and she wants “soda tonic,” so I ask her if she wants soda water or tonic water and she asks what’s the difference, and I say that I honestly don’t know, and the (Chinese) girl says tonic water is more bitter, and so she says, “Okay, tonic,” and then when I repeat their beverage order back to them, she says, “I said soda water,” and a bit later she also wants to know what kind of cheese is in the cheese curds and so I go find out and tell her white cheddar, and she says in a flat but also kind of perky tone of voice “We’re good!” and so I ask her if that means that she wants them or doesn’t want them, and she says no, she doesn’t want them, and later with her huge grilled chicken sandwich she asks can she have more bread since it’s too much meat and not enough bread and I go get her a toasted hamburger bun, and later she has very very specific questions on the desserts, too, everything is just like informational and oddly miscalibrated, interpersonally.

(Tip was in the 15-18% range.)

2) A (dressed-up) (slightly cowed) (African) man and a (fatter) (African-American) woman who must give him pussy come in and the woman pushes to sit at a big table in the window even though it’s just the two of them and I relent after she asks again when I say it’s usually kept for larger parties, and they go back and forth over appetizers, adding and then taking off stuff and skipping around from medium-rare to well-done to rare on the tuna, and they ask about some substitution on the special sandwich, and finally when it comes out she’s like, “It’s fried, and he wanted grilled chicken,” and so I bring the menu out and show them how it says grilled chicken right in the description portion where they had questions about substitutions, and the guy says to keep it and not throw it out, it’s fine, when I offer to replace it if they want me to.

(And, she totally wanted to send something back in the restaurant because that is how you behave at a restaurant in her mind, I knew that she would try something like that as soon as she pushed for the bigger table in the window and was pushing into all of the parameters of everything in the order, some [lower-class] customers are like that, it’s like it’s primadonna time and they get a sense of self-worth from it.)