It was a Wednesday, and I was excited to have my first closing shift at the nice Italian resturaunt that l work at. It was already a hellish shift. I had tables asking me what each wine I tasted like. I am only 18 so I had to explain that I was not legal age to drink but I could tell them which ones were popular, which was not satisfying.
I had a table of 5 who ran me back and forth proudly hand me a dollar, and a 10 top come in just before close and leave me $10 on a $150 ticket. But nothing was worse than my table in the corner. The first lady arrive just before seven, on the phone when I went to greet her, she said she wanted a dry grey Goose martini on the rocks, 4 olives. The bar tender was backed up so I took out a water and told her it would be a few minutes on the martini, she looked at me with a piercing look in her eyes and said ”FAST.” So I took the martini out and she was fine for about an hour, then a 2nd member of her party arrived.
I then offered them salad and got a drink for the second lady. The 1st woman was sobbing all night and making these awful crying noises. The third person finally arrived 30 minutes before close. They complain they do not have menus (because they asked me to get them out of their way when I brought salad.) Finally they are ready to order and the 1st lady tells me she will have fettucine alfredo with her chicken Marsala. I tell her it comes with fettucine Alfredo and she is sure it comes with potatoes.
At this point I don’t even bother showing her where it says fettucine alfredo on the menu and just put the order in. Finally at 10:00 we close and I run the woman’s credit card and everyone seems happy, and I go to close. I notice at 10:30 they are still here and my manager is asking for my credit card receipts. So I go to the table and ask to pick up the book and she goes to sign it. For 10 minutes she sits there with the pen in her hand talking to the other guests.
I finally go back over to the table to pick up the book and she still hasn’t signed it. She gives me a dirty look and I ask her if shed like me to give her another minute and she nods. I give up. She obviously wasn’t going to tip. So now it’s 11 and we have been closed for an hour. My managers goes to the table and politely asks them to leave since we have been closed for an hour and they just make dirty faces to her. Finally after 20 more minutes the manager has to tell them to leave or she will call the cops. They finally leave at 11:30, an hour and a half after close. I go to bus the table and She didn’t even leave the signed credit card receipt in the book.
Submitted by: Alicia
Our friend Cassie has them, do you?
“I literally have server nightmares. Yes i have had a number of awful experiences of being a server, but i literally have had nightmares. One summer while serving, the nightmares were so vivid and awful, i would wake up breathing hard and felt like i was actually really in my nightmare. All the stresses and strains, fears and anxieties from being a server, such as ringing in the right order, not falling behind, not spilling and etc, would catch up with me in my REM’s. It was terrible, i would never get a good sleep 
i talk to all my friends and they seem to have them too. My most repetitive nightmare is falling behind, and no matter how fast i tried to catch up to my tables, i just couldnt get out of the weeds ” – Cassie
I use to work at a well known restaurant when I was a teenager. This man and his wife (both with mullets) came in during lunch hour, the second busiest hour of the day for us, and demanded that we seat them by the window closest to their car so they could keep an eye on it (reasons to which I couldn’t fathom).
They had to wait about ten minutes for a seat to open up, and I just knew they were going to be a pain by the vicious look in their eyes. The first thing I said:
”How are you guys today?”
Answer: ”Ice tea and a sprite, put two lemons in the tea and don’t forget some straws because you always do.”
I have never served these people before….
But I do anyways, and the man ordered a steak well-done with three extra sides than the two that came with the meal. The woman had a pasta with a salad.
I explained that the extra sides were 50 cents apiece. He grunted and I assumed he understood.
I bring their food out on a rolling tray because I’m very a small person and couldn’t carry the heavy plates alone.
That’s where I went wrong.
He preceded to insult me for being small, saying that I had the body of a ten year old boy, and he thought I was a boy at first because I had a ”dyke” haircut and that real women are strong women, who could have brought their food out with no trouble.
I was embarrassed, but hey, I’m being paid right?
I hand off their check when finished, and he goes off the deep end because he didn’t grasp how a 2 for $20 meal was $28 dollars. I tried to explain that it cost a bit more with the extras, and the drinks and taxes on top of that, but he wouldnt hear of it. He accused me of cheating them of their money, of not explaining extra charges to him properly, refusing to pay for ”hidden fees”.
I defended myself; I told them I explained very well that the extra sides were a bit more money, and his wife retorted, ”You didn’t say s**t to my husband about paying more for his meal!”
I’m on the verge of a panic attack because I know they would tell my manager I was incompetent, but also furious. I had been nothing but nice to these people. I told them I would call my manager to talk to them directly.
He then told me he refused to pay for the entire meal.
I said that he would have to at least pay for the base meal….
And then… this man spit directly into my face, right across the bridge of my nose and right eye, and shouted that I was the stupidest thing ever.
I ran off and sobbed in the bathroom. Everyone saw what happened, and though they took my side in the situation, I was so mortified and hurt. My manager told me to take the rest of the day off, but it haunted me for the longest time. I have never been treated so less than human in all my life.
Submitted by: Lacey
I used to work at a family burger joint that was part of a large chain. We saw a lot of birthday parties and stressed-out parents.
This one afternoon, a smallish group came in to celebrate a toddlers birthday. There were two couples and five kids under the age of five. Now, anyone getting this table would think ”oh shit”. You’re looking at a bunch of kids meals, which means getting a bunch of drinks and refills for barely any cost and therefore barely any tip. But I figure, I’ll make this a fun party for them and maybe they’ll leave a nice tip out of gratitude.
Yeah, right.
The moment I get to the table, one of the women thrusts a bottle at me, saying it’s breast milk which she wants me to heat up with hot water. I smile and say no problem. Hungry babies are crying babies and it’s not like I’d be grossed out by breast milk, especially when it’s in a bottle. I’m sure she wants the milk quickly, so I hand the job off to my supervisor while I get the other 9 drinks for the table.
When I get back to my section with the drink tray, the lady stands up and YELLS at me
”If you have a problem with someone why don’t you say it to their face?!?”
It took me a moment to realize that she thought I’d handed the milk to my supervisor because I was grossed out by it.
”Oh, no!” I said, ”There’s no problem, ma’am. I just knew I’d be a minute with these other drinks and I figured I’d get you the milk sooner, so-”
”I don’t want to hear it! This is TERRIBLE customer service, I am just disgusted!” Turning to her friends, she told them (still yelling) ”I can’t even BE here anymore! I’m sorry but this party is ruined. I’m leaving!”
And she marched out, dragging her (now crying) children and leaving both my shift leader and I standing agape in the middle of the section.
The worst part was, her friends had to try and finish their poor child’s birthday party after this! The birthday boy was crying and his parents looked like they might want to join him.
And, of course, no apologetic tip or words were forthcoming.
Submitted by: Simka
OK so I had just gotten out of server training in the middle of summer (I was 15 at the time) and I was working early mornings at the breakfast place I worked. So these two old ladies came in, but they weren’t seated in my section. Since this was the middle of the week we only had 3 servers working the whole day.
Anyway they get seated in my assistant managers section. I could tell from my section that they were incredibly rude to her. she was walking by with five hot plates and one of them had the audacity to bang on the table with her butter knife and yelled out ”WAITRESS I NEED MORE COFFEE NOW!” as if no one else were in the restaurant but her. So I’m in the back of the house about to run some hot plates to one of my tables when my assistant manager comes in and just starts crying her eyes out.
At this point I felt sooooo sorry for her and i told her I would take care of the table the rest of the time they were here and I would give her the tip. So i run the plates out to my tables and I comeback to the counter and the table with the two very rude older women’s plates are ready to be ran.
So i take a deep breath, put on as good a smile as i could and bury my head and run the plates to the table. As soon as I arrive to the table, to my utter disbelief, one of them says ”well aren’t you a good looking young man” and winks at me (yeah I’m a dude). So they are super nice to me the rest of the time they are there, which I was kind of creeped out by. They leave me a $10 tip for a $20 bill (wow). and they even wrote thanks for the great service on the receipt.
my assistant manager let me keep the tip on top of it too! 
Submitted by: Chris