Whiny Waitress

Heard Recently in a Restaurant #2

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 10:24:32 -0500

“Can you ask them to cut my son’s steak into small pieces before you bring it out? It’s just that he won’t eat it unless it’s cut into small pieces.”

Because you don’t have a knife. What do you do at home?

Waiting tables means you get to see the best and the worst parents. Also, I’m Judgmental Judy because I don’t have kids.

animalstalkinginallcaps: “MORE WATER TO TABLE SEVEN,...

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:46:29 -0400

animalstalkinginallcaps:

“MORE WATER TO TABLE SEVEN, LISA.”

“REMEMBER TO SMILE, LISA.”

“NEED WE REMIND YOU THAT THIS IS A NATIONALLY RENOWNED BAR AND GRILL FRANCHISE, LISA?”

DON’T TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB. YOU FUCKING SUITS HAVE NEVER WAITED A TABLE A DAY IN YOUR LIVES. IF THIS PLACE IS SO RENOWNED WHY DOESN’T ANYONE IN THE KITCHEN SPEAK ENGLISH? OH, BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL MEXICAN AND YOU’RE PAYING THEM NEXT TO NOTHING WHILE YOU VOTE FOR THE SAME ASSHOLES WHO ARE TRYING TO CLOSE THE BORDERS?

WHY AM I MAKING $3.85 AN HOUR AND GETTING STIFFED BY TABLES FULL OF INVESTMENT BANKERS?

PEOPLE ARE WORRIED ABOUT DIPSHIT REPUBLICANS REPEALING MINIMUM WAGE? TRY WORKING IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY AND HAVING TO CLAIM 85% OF YOUR TIPS BECAUSE NOBODY CARRIES CASH ANYMORE. THIS IS BASICALLY INDENTURED SERVITUDE.

I SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL.

Heard Recently in a Restaurant

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:04:40 -0400

Very Tall Server: Good evening, folks! How are you doing tonight?

DB Guest: Good, how are you.

VTS: Just peachy!

DBG: You don't look like a peach. You look like a giraffe!

Restaurant Real Talk : Scenarios That Have Actually Happened to Me #2

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:18:00 -0400

How on earth can a pair of human beings suck so much? The following is totally true. I honestly don’t think I could make up a story like this if I tried.

Also, remember that post about profiling? So applicable.

—————

Two guests sit at table five. They are wearing matching blue polo shirts. The man has beady little eyes - the kind that I only know how to describe as “inbred” eyes. That’s horrible and I know it. I’m just sayin’. The woman is overweight, but in that really unhealthy, puffy, greasy, processed food kind of way. Immediately I’m dreading my interaction with them, but since I’ve been trying to quit making snap judgments, I try to suppress my involuntary eye roll.

I walk up to the table to greet them. As I begin to introduce myself, the woman asks if they can have a few minutes. I respond with my standard serving phrase, “Absolutely!” and walk away.

After a few minutes I attempt to greet them again. Once again they ask for a few minutes, and this time the man has his iPhone out and is using his calculator. It looks as though he’s adding up the prices on the menu. My stomach sinks. That nagging judgment pops into my head again as I realize I’ll probably be working for free on this table.

From the side station, I watch them to see if maybe they’re going to decide to leave because the prices look too steep. They’re obviously arguing and she keeps pointing her finger in his face.

We’re at 30 minutes of this table taking up space without ordering anything. I greet them for a third time and the man interrupts me to ask, “Do you take discount name?” I apologize and explain that the discount he mentioned is only valid at lunch Monday through Friday. He pulls out the information card from his wallet, saying, “But it says here-“

“-Shut UP, Greg*!” his embarrassed wife/girlfriend/fiancee/sister/all-of-the-above chimes in. ”It says at lunch only!”

Greg points at the menu. ”How much is this?” I shift my eyes to where his finger is pointing, at the chicken dish. At the end of the description is the price.

“The chicken is $18.99.”

“No. But, I mean. How much is it all together?”

I’m confused. ”Do you mean with tax?”

He smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“Um. Well. I believe the tax rate is 6.5% … so I guess it’d probably be safe to round the price to about $20.”

“Okay. And how about this.” He points to a pasta dish, which is also $18.99.

“Well, that one is the same price. So it will be the same,” I say. ohmygod-is-this-really-happening?

“Oh. Okay then. I need a minute still.” At this point his wife/girlfriend/fiancee/sister/all-of-the-above is hiding her face behind her menu, looking rather embarrassed. I suggest bringing them a drink while they look at the menu and they both order water.

I walk away from the table, beginning to deflate, and go to the back to make their water. As I carry it out, the man snaps and points at me from his table.

“We’re ready. I’m gonna have the chicken. What does it come with?”

I recite the description (you know… the one that’s listed on the menu) and he says, “Okay, yeah. I’m gonna have that. And she’s gonna have that other pasta. The two $18.99 ones. That’s what we’re gonna have.”

I smile, take their menus, and head to the back to enter their order in the computer.

The rest of the meal was pretty uneventful. They made lemonade at the table with their water, lemons and sugar. They ate in silence and I cleaned my other tables. I was walking by with a tray full of dishes when the woman waved at me and yelled across the restaurant, “We’re ready for our check.”

Glad to have them leave, I went to the computer and printed their check. The total was $40.45. I dropped it off at the table and cleared their empty plates. When I came back, there was a fifty dollar bill in the check presenter and the man handed me twenty five cents.

“Is it okay if we short you twenty cents?”

I looked down at the black book that was holding $50.25. ”Um.. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You have $50 in here. Did you want change?”

The woman chimed in, “Yeah, we were hoping to get $10 back, but we didn’t have enough coins to make forty five cents.”

Flabbergasted, I stared back at the book and said, “Um. I don’t know. I’ll have to check with the cashier. I don’t know.” There is no cashier. I make my own change. But I was so shocked I didn’t know how to tell them I wasn’t going to front them twenty cents without getting myself fired.

Not only were they not planning on leaving me a tip at all, they wanted me to cover them for twenty cents? Twenty cents! TWENTY CENTS?! They wanted me to pay twenty cents to have taken care of them?! I headed to the back, wondering if it was worth it to find eighty cents to give them or just to give them a ten dollar bill and be done with it. One of my co-workers snapped me out of it. ”YOU ARE NOT PAYING TO TAKE CARE OF A TABLE. YOU GIVE THEM $9.80.” She made change for me and I went back to the table.

“I apologize. Um, the cashier wouldn’t give me a ten since I didn’t have the rest of the change to front you. Have a good night.”

I dropped the book and fled the table, sneaking into the side station to peek my head out the door and watch. Sure enough, the man took all nine dollars and freaking eighty cents out of the book and put it in his pocket. They gathered their things, taking the empty book with them, and handed it to the hostess on the way out.

IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO EAT OUT, YOU SHOULDN’T EAT OUT.

I don’t want to come across as a snob. I don’t think I’m better than those people because they couldn’t afford my restaurant. I work at a restaurant where things are ridiculously overpriced and the reality is that I can’t afford to eat there, so I don’t. The reason I think I’m better than those people is because I have enough common sense to know that if I can’t afford something, I don’t buy it. When you eat at a restaurant, you need to budget a tip into the final cost. You should budget 20% in case you have great service, though you might have horrible service and then you can adjust your percentage accordingly.

If you’re one of those scumbags that refuses to tip at all, I guess that’s your prerogative (though I hope you realize what a douche you are since the societal norm is to tip - another post for another day), but for the love of Ryan Gosling (yeah… I don’t know. I’m just in love with him lately), DO NOT SHORT YOUR SERVER MONEY. I do not want to pull money from my own pocket, whether it’s twenty dollars or twenty cents, to do my job! It’s one thing to make server minimum wage to take care of a table, but to PAY to do it? Not okay. What the HELL is wrong with people?

I almost wish they would have dined and ditched. It would have been less degrading.

*names changed to protect the not-so-innocent jerks.

Garbage Tips and the Art of Profiling

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:09:03 -0400

I don’t want to be someone who judges people. I don’t want to look at the guests at my table and immediately assume I’m going to get a shitty tip. I mean, I do it sometimes, but I don’t want to be that person. I’ve actively been pushing that person away and trying to train my brain to not judge a book by its cover.

Enter my first table tonight.

Suburban, middle class, white and American.
A little less fancy than some we see at the restaurant, but they had all their teeth.
They look a little nervous to be here - not a good sign, but I ignore it.
They are overly complimenting me on my service - not a good sign, but I ignore it.
The guy who ordered the bone-in steak picks up the bone with his hands and eats every last bit of meat off of it - not a good sign, dear God what have I gotten myself into.
I drop off the check ($140) and they all pipe down - not a good sign, effffff.
I pick up the check after they leave and thank me for the good service and I find… a FIVE DOLLAR BILL.

I don’t want to judge you. But then there you go, living up to your stereotype and I’M the asshole for profiling. Straight ridiculous.

Faux Pas #2: The Gesture Edition

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:17:17 -0400

Dear Restaurant Patrons,

It is not EVER acceptable to snap at a human being to get their attention. EVER.

A few days ago, I’m at work doin’ me. In this case, “doin’ me” means sweating profusely, running my ass off trying to keep my full section of tables happy enough to leave me some decent money because mama’s got bills. Inevitably, I have to walk past tables full of guests who are not technically my responsibility. I’m not the kind of server who will ignore a guest’s requests for assistance just because I’m not making the tip off of that table, but I’m also not going to seek out things to do in other people’s sections. Specifically when I’m as busy as I was that night.

So here I am, running through the restaurant, when some guy at a table that doesn’t belong to me makes eye contact, shakes his empty glass in the air, snaps his fingers and says, “NEED WATER.” As much as I wanted to ignore him, so as not to reinforce that kind of behavior, I just couldn’t. I smiled and said, “Of course. I’ll be right back.” I returned with a water pitcher and all was well.

I think we’ve found a theme. Servers aren’t slaves or servants. We definitely aren’t animals who require snaps, claps or whistles. De-humanizing waitstaff is NOT OKAY. The whole experience of eating at a restaurant is exclusively first world. Consider the fact with only ten dollars in your bank account, you can still find a restaurant where you will get to sit down and be served your food and drinks in a manner that only kings experienced in the past. The fact that I happen to carry the water pitcher and wear an apron doesn’t make me less of a person than you. In my spare time, I get to be the person at the table too! So just because during this certain block of time we happen to be at the same place and I happen to have a certain job that facilitates taking care of you does NOT mean that you are a more important human than me. And human beings do not deserve to be snapped/whistled/waved/clapped at.

Server =/= Slave. Learn.

jccoccoliispretty: I’m proud of most things I do. But the day I...

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:30:37 -0400

jccoccoliispretty:

I’m proud of most things I do. But the day I can get all the yelp addicts in a room and duct tape their hands to their bums, it’ll be one of the bestest days everz.

hellogiggles:

Just Because You Yelp Doesn’t Make You God

http://hellogiggles.com/just-because-you-yelp-doesnt-make-you-god

Conversation in the Life: The Gratuity Talk

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:41:00 -0400

old man: the young man up front said gratuity is included.
me: i apologize, sir. the gratuity is not included on any of our meal plans.

old man: what am i paying for?

me: the two glasses of wine are not included on the meal plan and if you’d like to leave a tip you can write it in on that line there.

om: but the man said it was included.

me: sir, i apologize but he was mistaken. the issue of gratuity is up to you. you may decide accordingly.

om: but the -

om's wife: dear, i understand what she's saying. you just -

om: be QUIET, mary.

Restaurant Real Talk : Scenarios That Have Actually Happened to Me #1

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:07:00 -0400

The following is journal entry I wrote on MySpace (ohmygod, who remembers MySpace?!) in 2006. It’s edited a bit from its original version. Enjoy.

The Sunday of Shit (and why I’m disillusioned with the food service industry)

I might just be the Ernest Hemingway of the restaurant industry. No, you don’t have to worry about me blowing my head off with a shot gun, but I am so disillusioned with waiting tables it is ridiculous. I used to have hope for humanity. I used to think that people are basically good underneath everything. Then I started waiting tables. I’ve been shit on by people so many times it it’s almost laughable. When I say it’s almost laughable, I mean one of those crazy “I’ve lost it!” maniacal laughs that serial killers and evil villains have when they’re talking about getting their next victim or taking over the world. Today started out pretty good. I got a $10 tip from my first table on a $32 check, so I thought maybe things would continue that way. Then Murphy stepped in.

I saw the host seating me at table 12. I was a little bit busy, so it took me a few minutes to get over to the table to get the drink order. Our policy is 60 second greet times, and mine was taking a little longer than expected. I could see the two girls sitting at the table, but I didn’t anticipate it being a big deal for me to take an extra minute to get to them. The minute I walked to the table, I apologized for their wait, thanked them for their patience, welcomed them to Restaurant Name and offered to get them something to drink. The response? “Well we got that girl (she pointed at the host stand) to get our drink because you was taking your sweet time.” Um… okay. I blinked, skipped a beat and replied, “Okay. Well I’ll be right back to take your order then.”

I walked to the kitchen to find the hostess so I could take the drinks from her and mentioned what they’d said. I told her I didn’t really feel like dealing with them, and I briefly thought about giving the table away, but decided against it. After all, I’ve been serving for a while. I’d just wait on them, get my “one dolla’ holla’” and move on.
I dropped the drinks off at the table and asked if they were ready to order. The girl on the left looked up at me, rolled her eyes and said, “If I order wings, can I get them without the sauce?” I told her yes, and she said, “Well, what’s the the cheese-steak? Is that like a normal cheese-steak, or does it have chili on it?” Out loud in my “server voice” (which is sickeningly sweet) I told her that it’s like a normal Philly cheese-steak. In my head I told her to fucking read the menu, since there’s a nice little description right under each item. She decided to order that, but she only wanted meat and cheese. Check. I looked to the other girl to see what she wanted to order, and she pointed at the menu and said, “The same thing, but I don’t want no mushrooms or bell peppers. What kind of onions is on it?” I explained that they were our fajita onions, which are basically just grilled onions. She crinkled her nose, rolled her eyes, and said, “Yeah. That’s fine. I want onions, cheese, and meat.” I politely told them if they needed anything to let me know, and I went to the computer to enter the order.

I tended to my other tables for a bit before I realized the girls at table 12 needed refills. I went over to the table to make sure that one of the girls was drinking sweet tea. She told me that she was, and said, “And put the lemon in it.” I returned with a sweet tea for one of the girls, and a strawberry lemonade for the other. The girl drinking sweet tea said, “I have a quesh’in. Do ya’ll have smoothies?” I told her that we don’t. Then she said, “Are you new?” Another blink… another missed beat. “Am I new?” I asked. “No. I’m not new.” So now the girl’s insulting my service? I mean, okay… I didn’t get to her table right away, but someone did greet her. What had I done to give her any impression that I was new? I answered all of her questions right away because I was knowledgeable about the menu, but that wasn’t good enough for her? I decided to let my manager know that we might have a situation with this table, because it was starting to become pretty obvious to me that I could not please these girls.

I went to the kitchen, explained to my manager what happened and how the girl was giving me attitude, and told her we might have issues later. She told me to keep her updated.

I went back to work on my other tables, and while I was running a check for a different table, I saw another server running my food to table 12. I dropped what I was doing and followed her the rest of the way to the table to put the food out, and saw that the girls were already giving her a hard time. I looked down at the cheesesteaks and saw that one was right, but the other had provolone cheese on the side, fajita onions on the side, and bell peppers and mushrooms on the sandwich. I took the plate, assured the very angry girl that I was going to fix it for her, and took it to the kitchen. At this point I was near tears anyway, but when I got it to the expo, she was pissed and said I’d rang it in wrong. Sure enough, I’d put the order in as *ON SIDE* instead of *ONLY*. To be fair, I did preview the check, but I only noticed the “O” at the beginning and sent it to the kitchen. The expo sent the Philly back to the cooks and they started working on it. I walked back to the office to get my manager and tell her that we had a problem and I would like her to run the food out to the girls when it was done. I told her what happened, and we walked back to wait for the sandwich to come out.

Get this. Sometime between when I left the table and walked back to the office, the phone rang. It was a girl, she was pissed and she asked to speak to a manager. Another manager picked up the phone and the girl explained that she was in the restaurant, her food had come out wrong, her server was rude and “don’t know how to do nothing”, and she wanted everything for free NOW. When he got off the phone with her, my manager came running out to tell us that she had called the restaurant from her seat. I looked at leaders and said, “I’ll be back, I have to go cry!” and walked back to dry storage. A couple of people followed me, I told them what was going on, and they assured me that I’d done nothing wrong (other than make a mistake ringing in the order, which could have easily been fixed). They even laughed when I told them that the girl on the phone said I was rude. I have never been rude to a customer in my life. I’ll walk to the kitchen and curse them until I’m blue in the face, but I will use my polite server voice when I speak with them and wouldn’t ever let them see me get angry.

The sandwich came up and a manager took it to the table. She tried to calm the girls down, but they were yelling about how incompetent I was. She walked away from them to take the sandwiches off of their check, and came back to tell them she’d taken care of it. They still wouldn’t calm down, and began cursing at her. She asked them to quit cursing and one girl said, “You can’t tell me what to do.” I am pleased to say I had a couple of bad asses on my side, because she stood up taller and said, “I dare you to curse again. Do it and I’m calling the police.” What do you think dumbass did? Not only did she curse again, but she made a threat.

Manager one went in the back and had manager two call the cops, and went to get change for the girls because she made them pay for their drinks. The cop showed up in a matter of minutes and walked up to the girls to ask them what had happened. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but from my point of view on the side of the restaurant there was a lot of teeth sucking, finger snapping and stomping. At some point, manager one walked out to give them their change, but made the fatal mistake of putting it on the table instead of into their hands. This apparently makes you a racist, because one girl LOST it and started yelling, “It doesn’t matter if you black or white, you’re RACIST. Why didn’t you put the money in my hand?!” She started throwing her fist into her palm, and he told her to get out of the restaurant. The cop went out with them and then took statements from my managers.

The girls sat outside for a little while longer making a scene. One of them called up her Daddy and told him what awful racists we are at Restaurant Name and how we treated her so badly, never once mentioning how she acted.

Why? I try so hard to not stereotype people. Let me tell you, it sucks to work your ass off for a table and be left a dollar. I try to not let it reflect poorly in my service. Sometimes I even get surprised with a nice tip, which is especially nice when you aren’t expecting it. But why should I work my ass off for these people who look down on me as their server? Is it that they’re better than me because they’re sitting in the booth and I’m ringing in orders and getting refills? I am absolutely positive I am a better person than either of those girls. I don’t care how dumb a server is, how much he or she messes up my food, or how long I have to wait to get someone to the table. It is never an excuse to pull the kind of shit those girls did today. I’m just happy I have managers that are on my side when that kind of stuff goes down, instead of people pleasing slugs.

Please, please, PLEASE, be respectful to your server. If she asks you how you’re doing, tell her. If she misunderstands you, be polite when you correct her. If she ruins your entire meal because nothing comes out at the right time, and things are screwed up, be polite. You can show your disappointment in your tip, there isn’t any need to be rude. That’s why we tip, to compensate someone for doing a good or bad job. If your server is rude to you, be the dignified one and just ask to see a manager and let them know what’s going on. Know that when you’re eating in a restaurant, the people who are serving you work hard for their money. And while they may make a lot of it in one shift, they worked hard for it and they earned it. And above all, NEVER fuck with people who handle your food.

For the Servers: Stop yer bitchin'!

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:29:52 -0400

I realize that this post is quite a contradiction. I’m posting in a blog called whinywaitress and telling servers to quit complaining. …riiiighht.

What I mean is, well, this job sucks. So you’re allowed to do your fair share of complaining. It should happen in the back side station as you burst through the door. Fair complaints sound something like this:

“Oh my GODDDD, I hate people!” - my personal favorite
“This guy is on his FIFTH coke! It’s a wonder American obesity is on the rise.”
“If that mother doesn’t make her kids sit down, I swear I’m going to step on their little hands and I’m going to laugh about it.”
“MAKING LEMONADE AT THE TABLE, HUH? ORIGINAL.
“I haven’t had a table in an HOUR. I hate when it’s slow. I wish they’d just send me home.”
“I AM IN THE WEEDS. AUGHGHGHGHGHHHHH!”

Short burst complaints are totally acceptable and should be used often. I’m a firm believer that if you hold them inside you’re apt to flip your shit on the next guest that asks for ketchup for their well done steak, so go ahead and let them loose while you’re away from guests and managers.

HOWEVER. You signed up for a job where you make straight commission and it’s not always going to be “fair”. And so, there are complaining DON’TS:

Do NOT go bitch out the seater for giving you a table with two adults and four children. Parents with four children need to eat too.
On a slow night, do NOT complain about how many tables you’ve had. Guess what? If you’ve only had 3 tables, odds are everyone else has had close to the same. If everyone else has a full section and you’ve got nothing, let a manager know and hopefully they can fix it.
Do NOT complain about another server to other servers. Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes they can’t keep up on running side work because they’re DYING in the weeds. So don’t bitch about them - out loud anyway. That’s not fair. We’re all in this together, right? And honestly, you could go find them and tell them they need to scoop ice because we’re out, or you could save yourself some time and just DO IT. It doesn’t help anyone when there’s discord among the waitstaff.

Guys, this job blows for skittles most of the time. But at the end of the day, you’re making a hell of a lot more than minimum wage for wayyyy less time invested than your friends who hawk coffee at Starbucks. Let out those short burst complaints and move on lest you have an aneurysm in the dining room, and keep the bitchiness quiet lest you get shanked by a co-worker in the parking lot. Don’t be a bad seed.

Faux Pas #1: "Don't worry about it, I'll just take it out of your tip!"

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:17:00 -0400

Imagine you’re at work doing whatever it is that you do. You’re an ad exec, a CEO, a teacher, an actor, a dog washer, sandwich artist… whatever. So you’re at work and you’re doing your job, and for some reason you make a teensy mistake (I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the reason is because you’re a human being and occasionally human beings make boo-boos, but that’s just an opinion). For the sake of the story lets say you told your boss you can make it to a meeting on the 28th, but then you looked at your calendar again after replying to the email and realized you were looking at the 28th of next month and this month you’re booked. You send another email to her and apologize, explain the situation and ask if there’s another date that works. It’s kind of annoying, but it doesn’t really mess up her day and if you’re not a repeat offender, no one says anything. I can almost guarantee you that you don’t get called into her office for it. And I will venture with 99.999999999999% certainty that no one threatens to dock your pay because you screwed up. Guess what? This happens ALL. THE. TIME. in food service.

I’ve got a section of four tables and they’re all full of hungry/tired/anxious people. Table one has menus and hasn’t ordered yet. Table two and three are waiting on their food to finish cooking and reach the table, and I’m dropping dessert off to the table four. I notice that a gentleman at table four needs a refill, so as I leave the table I say, “I’ll be right back with your iced tea.” I head over to the table one and take their drink, appetizer and entree order and make my way back to the kitchen. I make table one’s soft drinks, put their order in, pick up their other drinks from the bar, get bread, and let the chef know what my “See Server” is on the ticket. As I head out to the dining room with a tray full of beverages in one hand and a basket of bread in the other, I realize I forgot the iced tea for table four. I could just ignore it and come back with it in a moment, but since they can see me out there - clearly without the refill - I stop by after dropping off the bounds of bead and beverages at table one. At table four I say, “I apologize, Sir. I forgot your iced tea. I’ll be right back with it.” Some people just nod or smile. Some say, “Thank you.” Some don’t even acknowledge my existence. But some try to crack a joke and say, “Don’t worry. I’ll take it out of your tip!” They smile. I attempt to smile back but it isn’t funny.

I get that I’m working for commission and that my service and attitude are directly responsible for my income. I understand that you’re being inconvenienced by having to eat your cheesecake without iced tea to sip on. However, there isn’t another job in the world where if you make a single mistake (obviously I mean one that isn’t detrimental to the success of your company) that your income gets docked. If you’re a repeat offender, maybe. Let’s say I never refilled the iced tea at the table from the start to the end of the meal despite being asked several times and all I could say was, “I’m sorry, I forgot.” Yeah, go ahead and take it out of my tip. That’s the beauty of gratuity - you get to reward me based on how well I took care of you. But please, please, PLEASE, don’t joke about it. It’s not funny, I promise. Even if I was the worst server in the world, there’s no need to belittle me by telling me you’ll “take it out of my tip” because I made a mistake. It makes me feel small. It’s demoralizing. I’m left a lot more stressed out wondering whether I’ll be able to pay my bills because I’m such a terrible server, DAMN IT I have a college degree and a mountain of student loan debt and I’m concerned about forgetting an effing iced tea, I have GOT to get out of this bullshit job, I HATE PEOPLE. One comment. Total disillusionment with life and now I hate you and I hate my job.

You might think I’m being overly sensitive. Just be considerate. Think about what you’re saying before you say it. It’s the polite thing to do.