I regularly wait on large parties who come in after their AA/NA meetings. They show up randomly and have anywhere from 6 to 20 people in their party. They are loud and run me around a lot but they're almost always good tippers so I don't have a big problem with waiting on them. Except for this one guy. Every time he comes in, I have some kind of weird issue with him. It's never my fault. Now I know he's probably blown all his brain cells using something or other, and I don't have a problem being patient with people as long as they are nice. This guy is not nice. When his beetle-brain starts a'clickin' that something has gone wrong, it's always because I'm an idiot. He is incredibly condescending until he figures out that he's the one at fault and then just shrugs it off without apologizing. Here are the last couple encounters I've had with him.
I walk up and greet the table and start taking drink orders. I get around to him and he asks if I know what kind of hot tea we have. Like my silly waitress brain can't hold all that tea information in there or something. I tell him we have lemon, orange, mint, chamomile, black, and green. He pauses, then says loudly “GREEN tea? Do you mean MINT?” and looks around to his buddies for approval at how clever he is, calling out the dumb waitress. Like he thought I just looked at the color of the packages or something. As I open my mouth to explain the him that green tea is an actual type of tea, he realized his mistake and started “Oh, ah, I thought...”-ing. No apology for being a condescending jerk.
Next time I wait on them.... They're about halfway through their meal. The guy calls me over and starts loudly complaining that his cup of water is disgusting, there's little things floating in it, etc. Again, making a huge fuss and purposely calling a lot of attention to the problem while implying that I'm an incompetent who brought him a filthy glass. I quickly apologize and take the glass from him. I take a second to look at it as he's bitching me out, and the guy across the table from him asks, “Hey, didn't you put lemon in your water?” Sure enough, the “little things” floating in his water are lemon pulp and seeds. I set the water back in front of him. Again, no apology or even embarrassment at his mistake.
As I said before, I don't have a problem with being patient with someone who is polite, but this guy is making my brain melt out my ears. When he starts being horrified at finding broccoli in his chicken broccoli fettuccine or cheese in his grilled cheese sandwich I don't know what I'll do.
-Penny
6 years ago
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