Waitstaff horror/funny stories

[Traab]

Just because I can see how easily the post about a guy asking about becoming a waiter can be dragged off topic, I thought id jump the gun and add this topic to try and avoid it. Post any funny stories or stories that let you complain about rude nasty or stupid people you had to take care of.

Now, im a busboy, so this was more second hand outrage than personal. I watched two little old ladies walk into the restaurant. They insisted on being sat in a big booth. They didnt want a table, or a small two person booth, they wanted a family sized booth. Ok, whatever. They then proceeded to sit there and order coffee. And stay in that spot talking for the next 8 hours straight. (no exaggeration, we kept track) All through the end of the lunch rush well into the dinner rush. They never ordered a bite to eat, didnt have anything but a few cups of coffee, took up a booth all day long that should be used to sit 6 person groups, and then left a 2 dollar tip.

People, waiters dont get paid any real money, they only pay the bills by tips. They can only get tips if people eat and leave so more people can be sat there. Hogging a big booth for no reason all day long, not even ordering a meal, and then leaving next to nothing for a tip is so far beyond rude that I cant believe it didnt even occur to them. You know what? My grandmother gets together with her equally old friends and drinks coffee all day too. The thing is, she does it at one of their houses. A restaurant is NOT a place to spend all day hanging out, unless you intend to order something. It may seem that way from watching seinfeld, but it really isnt. On a day like that one, that server would have expected to bring in 10-20x as much money in tips from that table in that time frame.

[Grinner]

I've been following the aforementioned thread, and I'm rather shocked. I thought the food industry was bad, but not that bad.

[OracleofWuffing]

My folks are the owners of a restaurant. While I'm not a waiter, I sometimes get stuck on cashier duty. That said, yeah, I get some of the vibes waiting people get. Catching people bringing in their own dead crickets to throw in their soup...

So, anyway, this party of 8 comes in during Sunday Afternoon Rush, without reservations and all that. We a bunch of small tables cobbled together and get them seated. Then four more people come in. Then two more people come in. Then two more people come in. All in all, that turned out to be a table of 21 by the time the day was over. Upon arriving home, we find out that the family put in an advertisement in the newspaper that they were having a party, and folks could come in uninvited to join them, at the restaurant.

On one of our thanksgivings, this old girl comes in with a brown paper sack. Containing a raw turkey. She goes around asking the waiters and I if she can sell this in exchange for a meal, 'cause it's too big for her to cook and she just wants a small meal. That one, we had to get my folks out to explain to her how doing so would violate just about every legal regulation known.

A blind girl and her husband come in for a meal. When they decide to pay their bill, the husband comes up with a check that is made out for the amount of the bill, and hands over twenty-five dollars in cash. He wanted me to use the amount on the check to pay for the bill, and then whatever leftover, he wants to pay with the cash. When I explained to the guy that the check pays for the bill, and that I don't need any more cash, he gets confused and starts screaming that I'm ripping him off. Eventually, a waitress gets my dad in, who grabs the check and the bill, says, "THE CHECK PAYS FOR THE BILL, WE DON'T NEED YOUR MONEY" and nudges him away. As the two walked out of the restaurant, I heard the wife say to the husband, "Well, they only needed one or the other, honey. They didn't need both."

Senior citizen phone call: *Ring* "Hello, (redacted), this is (Oracle of Wuffing) speaking, how may I help you?" "What's your special today?" "Our special today is our Fourth of July Special, it's a hot dog, a scoop of potato salad, and baked beans." "Are you sure it's not spaghetti?" "Sorry, I'm afraid that spaghetti is not our special today." "Well when are you going to have spaghetti?" "Looks like it'll be this day, next week." "So you have spaghetti now?" "No, that's next week." "But I want spaghetti!"

If cashier stories are allowed, I need to work up the energy to type out the Orphanum Story again.

[Whiffet]

These sort of stories aren't unique to waiters. Every customer service job includes dealing with the worst of humanity. Can people tell stories about, say, horrible retail store experiences or fast food stories?

[Greenish]

Just because I can see how easily the post about a guy asking about becoming a waiter can be dragged off topic, I thought id jump the gun and add this topic to try and avoid it. Post any funny stories or stories that let you complain about rude nasty or stupid people you had to take care of.

There're whole websites dedicated for the stuff.

People, waiters dont get paid any real money, they only pay the bills by tips.

Which is bloody stupid.

[SaintRidley]

My mother used to be a waitress. I can't even post the worst of her stories because they verge so closely to the pornographic as to make me leery of doing more than giving this brief answer: suffice it to say that customers will do anything in any part of the restaurant and sometimes they will be damn creepy about it.


I do have one of hers that I can share, though. My mother was pregnant with me at the time. Not so far along that she couldn't move, but far enough that people could tell. She has an older gentleman at one of her tables and he tells her that he refuses to have her serve him because she's pregnant. Her husband, he says, should be working instead of being some bum who makes his pregnant wife work for his living.

Yeah. My dad? He was the kitchen manager. Neither of my parents were very pleased that night.

[warty goblin]

I've been following the aforementioned thread, and I'm rather shocked. I thought the food industry was bad, but not that bad.

And I'd be very, very surprised if people were relating the worst or most outrageous things that they've experienced. I know I'm not, because actually doing so would certainly get me banned.

As bad as the customers are, it's really the actual employees who tip the entire thing over into the comically obscene. Suffice to say that after a year working as a cook, there's pretty much no horrific sex act which I have not heard about, usually via the implication that I engage in said act.

Also the health code is a farce.

[Marillion]

Suffice to say that after a year working as a cook, there's pretty much no horrific sex act which I have not heard about, usually via the implication that I engage in said act.

True story! We have a cook here who started working here 5 years ago when he was 16, and the chef was one of the most perverted people you'd ever meet. After three years, he said to the chef that there was nothing he could say that would shock him anymore. Chefs response? "I cry while pleasuring myself to thoughts of you." He never said that to Chef again

Chef is a man who once got caught trying to sneak back into the U.S from Mexico wearing nothing but a t-shirt he stole from a brothel and a luchador mask. His wife took the picture.

He was crazy, but really smart and amazingly talented, as a chef and a manager. I miss him

Also the health code is a farce.

Ok, THAT part my experience disagrees with. We actually take it very seriously where I work.

[warty goblin]

True story! We have a cook here who started working here 5 years ago when he was 16, and the chef was one of the most perverted people you'd ever meet. After three years, he said to the chef that there was nothing he could say that would shock him anymore. Chefs response? "I cry while pleasuring myself to thoughts of you." He never said that to Chef again

The chef I worked for once texted another one of the cooks that he had just finished a bout of auto erotic asphyxiation. At 3:00 AM. He also once asked, completely out of the blue, whether I had ever had sex with a sheep, and I believe he worked in some incest allegations at one point as well.

We never had the courage to even suggest we'd plumbed the bottom of his depravity though. After the two weeks he spent talking about the mortuary porn - and said porn's inauguration into our lexicon of horrible stock references, I can say with certainty there are some things a person is better off not knowing. He did confess to never being able to get into granny porn though, so he had standards.

Chef is a man who once got caught trying to sneak back into the U.S from Mexico wearing nothing but a t-shirt he stole from a brothel and a luchador mask. His wife took the picture.

He was crazy, but really smart and amazingly talented, as a chef and a manager. I miss him

Guy I worked for once ripped a guy's ear off in a bar fight and bit a large chunk out of another one of the cook's chest. At one point he was going out with a woman whose arm he had earlier broken when she tried to break into his house.

Can't really top the t-shirt story though. That's fairly epic.

Ok, THAT part my experience disagrees with. We actually take it very seriously where I work.

Some of it yes, some of it no. The dates on things I know for a fact are a joke often as not. We never served food there was any reason to believe was unsafe though.

[Traab]

True story! We have a cook here who started working here 5 years ago when he was 16, and the chef was one of the most perverted people you'd ever meet. After three years, he said to the chef that there was nothing he could say that would shock him anymore. Chefs response? "I cry while pleasuring myself to thoughts of you." He never said that to Chef again

Chef is a man who once got caught trying to sneak back into the U.S from Mexico wearing nothing but a t-shirt he stole from a brothel and a luchador mask. His wife took the picture.

He was crazy, but really smart and amazingly talented, as a chef and a manager. I miss him


Ok, THAT part my experience disagrees with. We actually take it very seriously where I work.

Yeah, health code was taken serious at my place too. In the kitchen area we have this single standing sink for us to quickly wash our hands. One day the damn thing just fell through the floor, no warning. The entire wood flooring underneath was rotted clean through and there were cockroaches inside it. (or some sort of swarm of bugs at least) The manager shut down the restaurant right then and there, and within a couple hours had a exterminator in there poisoning the crap out of all those bugs. Never saw another bug again. Next day we reopened like nothing had happened. We just claimed we had a broken cooking station and had to close down so repair crews could fix it. We didnt mess around with health codes or safety at that place.

[Starwulf]

My mother used to be a waitress. I can't even post the worst of her stories because they verge so closely to the pornographic as to make me leery of doing more than giving this brief answer: suffice it to say that customers will do anything in any part of the restaurant and sometimes they will be damn creepy about it.

LOLOL! Amen to that. I have one for everyone that happened to my wife. So, one day this 30ish guy, kinda creepy acting, came into the restaurant during the lunch rush, and had a very visible erection. He only ordered coffee, and just stared at the wait-staff(entirely women) for like 10-15 minutes. Then he got up, went outside, then came back inside with a fairly large wet-spot on his crotch, sat down, finished his coffee, leered at the wait-staff some more, then left.


I'm just glad that he actually left and didn't hang around and try to snatch one of them afterwards. Some pretty creepy **** if you ask me.

Also the health code is a farce.

Supposedly the owners of the restaurant my wife worked at had some kind of criminal connections that they took advantage of to know exactly when a Health Inspection came, because that place was a pig-sty 99% of the time, but it was always spic and span the day a Health Inpsector showed up. I mean, it was NASTY. Roaches in the kitchen and in the dining room, days old food being served to customers that wasn't properly refrigerated, mold being scraped off breads and served to customers. It was freaking horrific. My wife wouldn't eat anything she didn't prepare herself there(waitresses were allowed to cook themselves up some food).

Of course, that all happened AFTER the original owner died and his kids took over. Original owner was a great guy and kept the place in perfect condition. There's a reason why the place was mentioned in international Food magazines, despite being located in a town whose population is only 1300. The kids took that reputation and grinded it into pulp, burned it, then spread it on the winds, all the while squabbling over who had to do what and who got what when. Freaking ridiculous.

[Bhu]

When managing a pizza shop once i had this conversation (keep in mind I'm not always this terse, this came at midnight on one of the worst saturdays ever):


"Hi welcome to____ how can I help you?"

"I like sushi."

"We don't make sushi ma'am, we make pizza."

"I know I'm not stupid. I brought some raw salmon I sliced up I want you to put on the pie. Make sure the cheese is melted without cooking the fish.

"Ma'am...there are an astonishing variety of reasons I simply cannot do that, state and federal laws among them...and maybe physics..."

"Oh bull, I know you can do this people have done it for me here all the time. I want to see the manager."

"I am the manager."

"Bull____ I've never seen you before."

I should mention at this point due to outside reasons, I am a manager by default as everyone else has quit over low wages and I'm the only one left other than a driver. I also worked every saturday for the last 2 years, and have never seen this woman.


"Ma'am I'm too tired to argue, I can't do it. I'm not going to because if you get sick and die we're at fault."

"Where's the non-retarded manager? I wanna talk to him."

"He's dead, we've been serving him as ham for the last 6 months. Would you do me a kindness and gtfo of my store now?"

she then begins pelting me with raw fish and we close down after the police arrive. Never manage a chain restaurant, the grief simply is not worth it.

[Katana_Geldar]

What was stopping her in making her own physics-challenged pizza?

[warty goblin]

What was stopping her in making her own physics-challenged pizza?

Your common or garden restaurant customer seems incapable of doing, or understanding, anything involving food. A certain subset also holds to the belief that because there are people being paid to cook in the building, they are clearly available for any cooking task the customer wants done.

I never had anybody bring in food to cook. OK, the owner did a few times, but none of the regular customers. I did certainly see a lot of people who treated the menu as less a list of options, and more an ingredient list. I also had people order things off of menus we'd stopped using literally years previously. There were also the people with food allergies who would insist that whatever you fixed them still had whatever they were allergic to in it - even if everybody in the kitchen had checked all the ingredient lists. The worst we had was a couple who didn't like the new french fries, and for a while insisted that we maintain a stock of separate product solely for their consumption.

Public service announcement: Anytime your order has more than two substitutions and/or requires the stocking of an entirely different product than is actually on the menu, there is something wrong with the picture. Specifically you.

[Bhu]

^ what he said +1000

Seriously you get all kinds of weird requests.

"Can you melt some chocolate bars on the pizza for my kid?"

"You have ovens if I give you flour can you make a cake?"

"Why don't you sell whiskey? Can I drink in the lobby?"

"You waitress wont give me her phone number, I demand you give me a refund."

"I'll trade you a bucket of KFC for a pizza."

"Your ovens look dirty from here. I need you to turn them off, clean them, and restart my order."

I explain to him it'll take an hour for them to cool off enough to disassemble, the cleaning agents will need to soak overnight, an hour of scrubbing, and then an hour to reassemble. His response?

"What time should i be back tomorrow?"

[OracleofWuffing]

Oh, disgusting stories? Well, we used to have this one party... Okay, the layout of the restaurant kind of looks like this:

AAA...BBBBBCCCCCCCCCC
......BBBBB|CCCCCCCCC
......BBBBB|CCCCCCCCC
...........CCCCCCCCCC
...........CCCCCCCCCC
...........CCCCCCCCCC

A: Restrooms that belong to the adjacent airport.
B: Side room we have for small party reservations
C: Front of main restaurant proper
(Space between the As and Bs is also where the main entry way is)

Spoiled 'cause it's gross. Not as gross as a few other stories, but gross enough to leave it spoiled.

Spoiler

Show

One day, the party suddenly goes completely silent. The main people come by in a few minutes, pay everyone's bills, and the party leaves out through the door that doesn't connect to the main part of the restaurant. Curious as to what happened, the waitress goes to the room, and promptly runs back, with a pale face.

Someone in the party was apparently not wearing undergarments that day, and three "piles" of feces had been dropped between the side room and the bathroom. I was later told that the girls' restroom was in an even more soiled condition.

[Katana_Geldar]

Why don't people understand that the best way to have a custom order is to do it yourself, at home. Honestly, I'm not your Mum or Grandma, I'm just someone working in a shop that gets flustered with special orders.

Why us it that people don't understand what the deal us when you order from a cafe or take away shop? What they have on tge menu is often carefully costed in terms of weight and quantity do they make a profit, meet their overheads and have a reasonable price.

That said, I hate how $5 shakes are now the norm.

[Taffimai]

There used to be a webcomic about funny waiter stories, Sock Puppet Army, which was really nice, but it stopped updating a few months ago and I can't find a link to it. Does anyone have one?

[Bhu]

There used to be a webcomic about funny waiter stories, Sock Puppet Army, which was really nice, but it stopped updating a few months ago and I can't find a link to it. Does anyone have one?

it redirects to a russian website with an error message now.

I remember a few more from the pizza days

This guy comes in and wonders around for half an hour. We finally ask him if he's going to order because he keeps saying he's trying to make up his mind. He asks how much a large pep is and we point to the ginormous banner above the counter advertising it for 9.99. He says thanks, leaves, puts on a mask, comes back in wearing the exact same clothes and robs us. One of the guys knows him because he used to be an employee many long years ago, and we still had his address on file. Cops were waiting when he got home.

A few years later and I'm working for Donato's now. One of our delivery guys goes to a house and they beat him unconscious. He wakes up, goes to get teh police and they return. The main offender answers the door eating pizza, while his buddy can be seen inside counting money from a Donato's bag all the drivers carry. His response? "I ain't never seen this _____ before in my life, get of my land."

A few months later im a waiter and most of our cooks are on break and the only people in the restaurant are a mom and her little kids. They're laughing having fun pointing at the geese outside who come by the parking lot when migrating because the restaurant has an outside pond. I then see the cooks chasing down the geese, snapping their necks, and throwing them in a pickup truck to eat later. I honestly hope to never have to apologize that much again...

[dehro]

small notice for all americans traveling to Europe:

doggie-bags don't exist in many countries other than the US

if you order a perfectly grilled steak of 500g, eat only a few morsels and then ask the manager for a doggie bag, there's a good chance he'll understand that you want to actually feed your dog with his prized steak and he will then threaten to throw you out of his estabilishment, and throw the steak after you.
the principle that you've paid for it so it's yours to take home if there's any left simply doesn't hold true everywhere (certainly not in Italy where the concept of doggie bag itself is rarely even known to your average restaurant manager, especially in the not so touristy areas). if you didn't want to eat it all you shouldn't have ordered it in the first place.
People WILL stare, some places will actually pack the leftovers for you if you ask nicely, but they're doing you a favour..they don't actually have to. this is changing, but rrreally slowly

[Grinner]

small notice for all americans traveling to Europe:

doggie-bags don't exist in many countries other than the US

Most people here just ask for boxes...

[Greenish]

A few months later im a waiter and most of our cooks are on break and the only people in the restaurant are a mom and her little kids. They're laughing having fun pointing at the geese outside who come by the parking lot when migrating because the restaurant has an outside pond. I then see the cooks chasing down the geese, snapping their necks, and throwing them in a pickup truck to eat later. I honestly hope to never have to apologize that much again...

It'll do the kids good to learn where food comes from.

if you didn't want to eat it all you shouldn't have ordered it in the first place.

Sound enough principle, I should say.

Still, you can usually get a doggie bag in Finland (which is in Europe!).

[Traab]

I havent used the term doggy bag in a long time, I usually just ask for a to go package to put the leftovers in. I honestly dont understand why it would be a problem. I ordered it, I paid for it, let me take it home if I cant finish it for whatever reason.

[Katana_Geldar]

Honestly, unless a place already has take away I wouldn't think to ask for it to be wrapped up. At nice restaurants it just isn't done.

[Starwulf]

Honestly, unless a place already has take away I wouldn't think to ask for it to be wrapped up. At nice restaurants it just isn't done.

..... Note to self: If I'm ever in Europe, remember to bring baggies with me when dining to put food into to eat later. I often don't finish all of my meal at a restaurant, but do enjoy finishing it at a later point in time when I get home. I'll be damned if I'm going to waste a significant portion of an expensive meal just because the restaurant I'm in thinks I'm abhorrent for wanting to take the meal I paid for with me.

[Katana_Geldar]

Starwulk, prepare to be seen as a greedy and ignorant American.

There is a good reason why some restaurants won't let you do that: people leave them out all night when they get home, don't warm them up properly and blame the restaurant when they get food poisoning.

[THAC0]

I always get a box. Then again, the amount of food the restaurants serve is absurd, so the 'don't order if you don't want to eat it all' idea is kinda outlandish to me.

Not usually a problem at upscale places that have a la carte menus and reasonable portion sizes, but at "normal" restaurants if I ate everything on my plate in one sitting... ew.

[Starwulf]

Starwulk, prepare to be seen as a greedy and ignorant American.

There is a good reason why some restaurants won't let you do that: people leave them out all night when they get home, don't warm them up properly and blame the restaurant when they get food poisoning.

Lol, I'm not one to give two pence as to what people think about me, especially when I PAID FOR THE MEAL. I could see if I was demanding more then what I paid for, or something else unreasonable like that, but to view me as greedy(not you, the restaurants) and ignorant just because I want to eat the food that I paid for, well...that's pretty damn stupid quite honestly. Would the supermarket think me greedy for wanting all the soda in a pop bottle to be present when I buy it? What about if I actually wanted 5lbs of potatoes that a bag claims to have? Because really, that's pretty much the same damn thing.

Sorry for the rant there, but sometimes Europeans have some pretty strange views of Americans for the dumbest things. If I pay good money for something, I damn well deserve to get to enjoy all of it. Also, the people who would sue a restaurant because they left food out all night and then ate it the next day and got food poisoning, well those really ARE idiots(I'd say Ignorant Americans like you did, but I Imagine such a thing isn't particularly limited to just us Americans).

[Katana_Geldar]

From what I hear from my friends who have been to the US, portions are larger and it's more or less expected you'll take some home.

The only places down here where I have seen huge portions are steak houses, other than places like Sizzler where you pile your plate anyway from the buffet.

I have to say this: it does annoy me how you pay so much at upscale restaurants for so little food. The only place I've seen that doesn't do that is Aria, and it's one of the reasons my fiance and I loved going there.

[Dogmantra]

..... Note to self: If I'm ever in Europe, remember to bring baggies with me when dining to put food into to eat later. I often don't finish all of my meal at a restaurant, but do enjoy finishing it at a later point in time when I get home. I'll be damned if I'm going to waste a significant portion of an expensive meal just because the restaurant I'm in thinks I'm abhorrent for wanting to take the meal I paid for with me.

I read an article a while ago talking about the trend in the US to get a bag to take food home compared to the UK where it's just not done. I remember a head chef of some fancy restaurant was quoted as saying he'd be glad to give a customer a bag because a) they were his customer so he wanted to do what they wanted and b) it meant they liked his food enough to want to finish it even though they were full. No-one had ever asked though. I wouldn't be surprised if chefs are actually happy to give you a box or a bag.