23. Nice try

I once had a family of 4 come in, a wife, husband and 2 kids, the wife ordered a cheese burger. Everything seemed to be going well, I asked if they like their food and if there was anything I could get for them, they said everything was fine. The wife finished her burger and got my manager, she told her that he burger was absolutely horrible and wanted a refund for the whole meal. My manager almost laughed at her and told her if she hadn’t finished the burger and had said something at the beginning she would have gladly gotten her another burger but there was no way she was getting a meal for 4 for free nor was she getting hers for free because she, at first, told me she liked it.

24. Damn…

I got dined and dashed by a priest on Good Friday.

25. Ugh

In the early ’90’s I was a waiter at Friendly’s. On Sundays I worked all three shifts: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sunday nights were particularly brutal: it was our busiest night, yet we were always undermanned due to staff not showing up, and I was tired from a long day.

Every Sunday night this large church group would come in, about 20+ people. They would come in at the tail end of the dinner shift, just as I was about to pull myself out of the weeds, and they would ask for me to be their waiter. Then, if they couldn’t get five tables near each other, they would spread out all over the restaurant into other waiters’ zones but still insist on me being their server. They would act disappointed (and in some cases annoyed) that I didn’t remember their drink preferences from previous weeks. They would place their beverage and food orders, then get up and change tables. Not to fuck with me, mind you; they were just being sociable with each other.

Then they would get fussy with their orders. This or that was wrong, this is undercooked, I didn’t think it would look like that so can I order something else, etc. It was hard for me to tell if I had gotten an order wrong, or if maybe I had the right order for the wrong guy because they wouldn’t stay in the same seat throughout the experience. It went on and on. They were, per capita, the neediest customers I had to deal with all week, and there were 20 of them all at once. Every. Fucking. Sunday.
Don’t even get me started on the asshole cooks who couldn’t get the orders right. Let’s just say Friendly’s doesn’t exactly draw the best and the brightest, and only the dumbest ones showed up Sunday nights. I was too poor not to.

So here’s the kicker: religious pamphlets. That’s what I got tipped every week, plus about $5 in change.