Santa's 8 Douchebags

The holidays are over. All the love and joy people show towards one another at this magical time of year has ended. Unless you are lucky enough to work in the customer service industry, in which case there never was any love or joy displayed towards you, so you don't really have occasion to miss it. It may come as a surprise to you that rather than people being kinder and more understanding to service industry personelle around the holidays, customers are actually even bigger douchebags than normal. They are more demanding, less understanding and less generous about 80% of the time. Thank baby Jesus that the other 20% actually throw us some holiday spirit and a couple extra bucks, otherwise we might all flip our shit and go hunt bad tippers down, dressed as Santa and weilding a very pointy candy cane.

A couple years ago I had a table around Christmas time that was a two top, parents that had been out shopping for their kids. At the end of their meal they let me know that they wished they could tip more, it's just that they have 7 children and have to buy a lot of gifts, then left me like 2 or 3 bucks on a $50 bill. What I said was "oh my gosh, don't worry about it, I totally understand!" But what I was thinking was "oh my gosh, did I make you guys bone eachother without protection at least 7 times and refuse to let him pull out? No, I did not. McDonalds is across the street, go there if you can't afford to tip. And while you're at it, swing over to 7-11 and pick up a condom." The holidays are a tough time financially, yes. But you know what? Your server is also having a tough time. If you can't afford to tip, please eat somewhere without sitdown service so that they can have a table that does intend on tipping decently.

But hey, at least that table wasn't a jerk on top of it. To show you what I mean, I present to you the 8 douchebags that took over guiding Santa's sleigh this year, in chronological order starting the day before Christmas eve and ending last night. Ho. Ho. Ho.

1. A couple days before Christmas, someone breaks the window of one of my coworkers cars while he is asleep in his apartment, stealing all the toys he bought for his 3 year old son, which he was hiding from him in the vehicle so Santa could bring them Christmas night. DOUCHE.

2. A 5 top walks into the restaurant, hosted by a woman hovering around 500 pounds and including some children and an elderly woman. The lobby is packed. They are informed the wait for their party will be 40 to 45 minutes. 30 minutes later, she comes up to the hosts, stark raving mad, asking what is taking so long, stating that the elderly woman in her party can't wait that long, she can hardly stand, and citing other parties that arrived after them and were already seated. Of course they were two tops, which can fit at any table, while theirs requires a larger table since it's a larger party. The host explains this to her, and she yells that 5 isn't a large party. She can see an open booth, and requests they be sat there, the kids can all squeeze on one side. The host doesn't want to point out to her that a woman of her size definitely could not fit in a booth, and says that she cannot seat her before other parties of the same size that arrived first. The lady flips out, starts yelling for a manager, making a scene. When the manager (crazy GM) gets up to the lobby, angry lady demands the number for corporate, then delares "and I want your name! (points to GM) and her name! (points to a host) And her name! (points to another host)" and so on until she has pointed at every employee in the lobby, claiming they will all be reported. GM finds an emergency spot to seat them right away. The host takes them back to the table, and after getting the elderly woman seated, angry lady yells "Can't you see she's having a heart attack!! Go get her a glass of water, stupid!!" which the host does, it no hurried manner. They are rude to their waitress, their entire meal is comped, and they do not tip. DOUCHE. It's the busiest time of the year for retail, which spills over into restaurants that are located near shopping centers, such as we are. So you should expect it to be busy, and furthermore, if the host tells you it will be 45 minutes, it will probably be 45 minutes. If grandma can't hang, take her somewhere else. We can't just give exceptions to everyone who claims they can't wait and need to be seated right away. Then it would be "I have small kids,they can't wait!" "I have an old lady, she can't wait!" my son has a broken foot, he can't wait!" "I'm really hungry, I can't wait!" and then how do we decide who can't wait even more and should be sat first? That's why it's first come, first served. And don't act like we are withholding food from you or your loved ones, there are ten bajillion other places you can aquire food if you don't want to wait, get a grip.

3.Myself and another server have a 9 top, seems like maybe mom, her daughters, and daughters boyfriends or something. The adults at the table each have two drinks, and we're talking fancy martinis, 8 bucks a pop. One guy even gets a free margarita because the other server accidentaly rang it up and since it was made and would just be thrown away, we gave it to him on the house rather than waste it. The check was split 4 ways, each one with the 18% gratuity that is added to parties of 8 or more, which is written in the menu, and I believe to be common knowledge. Big party=gratuity. So I take the check from one of the guys, the one who got a free drink. His check is 82 and some change, he has a $25 gift card and $45 cash. I figure he must have thought there was more on his gift card, print out a check showing his payments and his remaining balance of $12 and bring it back to him. I discreetly show him the check and let him know he still owes some money. All douchebaggy and loudly, he holds up the check, points to the gratuity, which is $11 something and says "And what's this 11.58?" which really meant "I don't want to tip you so I didn't put enough money in to cover the gratuity and was hoping you would just realize that I didn't intend on paying it." DOUCHE.

Technically, the gratuity is optional. Technically, you can have it taken off, since we can't force someone to tip us (unfortunately). But I was already pretty miffed about the 3 dollar tip I just got on my 7 top's $85 dollar check, so I wasn't about to let it go that easily. And it wouldn't just be me losing the tip, half of that belonged to my room partner. So instead of saying what the management would probably require, which is "we add an 18% gratuity on parties of 8 or more for your convenience, however it can be adjusted or taken off entirely if you would prefer," I said "It's automatic gratuity." And walked away. My plan was to make my roomie go collect the rest of it from him, seeing as she's way more of a badass than I am and could probably have squeezed it out of him more efficiently, but luckily I didn't have to because he brought me a 20 and I got him some change. We didn't get anything extra on that table, but damnit we got our full gratuity, and I didn't let that douche nozzle push me around!

4. I am doing to go orders and the phone rings.

"Thank you for calling the Italian Restaurant in City, this is Waitress, how can I help you?"

"Yes, what is your wait for 5?"

"It's about 35 to 45 minutes"

"Okay, please put me on the list, the name is doucheface"

"I apologize, sir, we don't do call ahead seating."

"You're kidding me!"

"No, sorry."

"You don't take reservations?!"

"We do take reservations on weekdays for large parties, but if you wanted to come in now that is call ahead seating, which we do not do."

"That is rediculous. So, I'm out here in the parking lot in my car, and you're telling me I have to walk in the rain and come inside just to get my name on the list?"

"yes."

"I can't believe that. I want to talk to your manager!"

I let the managers know the situation, and crazy GM jumped on it. I thought she was going to put his name on the list, since she kisses guests asses (such as the angry lady mentioned prior, who she gave a free meal to for basically nothing other than the lady was a bitch), so I went and found her after she was off the phone to see what happened. She relayed that she held fast to our policy, he said that was completely insane and doubted that she was even the manager. When she told him she was in fact the general manager of the restaurant, he told her that she's "too young to run a restaurant" based soley on hearing her on the phone. And when she told him she is 40 years old, he still didn't believe her, and said he wanted to come inside and talk to her face to face. She said "If you want to come inside and have a discussion with me about our policy that's fine, but if you're going to come inside just to yell at me I will ask you to leave. I have heard your opinion on this subject already." He decided against coming inside, or eating there at all (thank god) but did make sure to tell her that she's stupid, selfish, and doesn't know anything before hanging up. And this was all because he didn't want to walk 50 yards in the rain in Washington state. DOUCHE.

5. I am on the phone taking a largish to go order when the other line starts ringing. Usually if i am towards the end of taking an order, it's easier to just let the other line ring a bit and try to finish up before I grab it. Sometimes one of my awesome coworkers will grab the other line and put it on hold for me. In this case, the other line rang several times and then they hung up. I finished with my order, and right after I hung up, the phone rang again.

"Thank you for calling the Italian Restaurant in City, this is Waitress how can I help you?"

"You can start by answering the phone faster next time!"

I start to apologize and let them know that I was on the other line assisting another guest, but they just hang up. That's all. I don't even know what they wanted. Maybe to place an order, maybe to inquire about the wait, or when we close, no idea. But whatever it was, they were so incredibly infuriated that I wasn't able to answer the phone fast enough that not only did they decide that they no longer wanted whatever they originally called for, but wanted to call back, presumably to make sure they had the right phone number, and then just to be a jerk and then hang up. DOUCHE.

I understand that a lot of people never work in the service industry at any point in their lives, and maybe don't have a lot of insight into why one may not be able to answer the phone right away in a large chain restaurant such as the IR. I would hope they would assume that the person responsible for answering the phone was very busy, or not near the phone, or on the other line, etc. I don't think that my first thought would be "They are lazy or don't care about my call" and become so infuriated that I decided to boycott them for the remainder of that night. Oh and also call back to make a snarky remark and hang up on them. seems like a waste of time and energy to me, but whatevs.

6. Same night as the previous 2, I am pretty busy with to go orders, and the restaurant is extremely busy. A little earlier I had been talking to a coworker about douchy to go people, and how sometimes people will ask me to bring their order out to their car, which is not a service we offer. I have done it before if I wasn't too busy and was feeling charitable, and the reason was always they had a baby or small child sleeping in the car and didn't want to disturb them by bringing them inside, an obviously can't leave them in the car. Oh, and once because a lady had her kitty who had just been spayed in the car and didn't want to leave her, precious. And these people had always, when placing the order, first let me know about their situation and asked if I could do carside service before placing their order. Anyway, I am trying to do like 3 things at once when the phone rings.

"Thank you for calling the Italian Restaurant in City, this is Waitress how can I help you?"

"Yes, I placed an order earlier for pickup? I'm here, but I can't get out of my car, can you bring it to me?"

"I'm sorry but I am very very busy right now, I really can't go outside."

"Oh, really...oh I don't know what to do then..."

Now, as much as I talk a lot of shit, I am horrible at saying no. Unless there is some policy for me to be backed up with (such as no call ahead seating for anyone ever) I am likely to cave under pressure.

"well...are you parked in a to go space?"

"There aren't any open, I'm going to park in a handicap space."

So I got the make and color of her car and told her someone would bring it to her but it may be a little bit, to which she said "okay" all bitchy like she was annoyed it would be awhile for us to give her a service we dont offer!! DOUCHE!

Eventually one of the managers took it to her, and she hopped out of the car and walked a few feet to take it from her, obviously not physically limited in any way.

7. Same night, starting to finally slow down. Phone rings. The lady says "I don't know if I need to talk to a manager or what but I have a complaint." So I grab a manager of course, and, of course, inquire after as to what the problem was. Bitch Manager (who is about to go on maternity leave thank God) said that they were upset because they forgot their boxed up leftovers and when they came back a few minutes later found that the table had already been bussed and reset and the food thrown out. She told them she was sorry that happened, but also happy that her bussers were doing their job so efficiently. She got their info to send them a gift card of course, and that was that. I was in the breakroom and telling a couple people about how dumb that is that people get mad at us because they forgot their stuff, and a busser that was in there said it was him who tossed the food, and that he's been feeling really guilty about it. Apparently, the Dad came back a few minutes after they left, after the busser had quickly cleared and reset the table, which is his job, and asked where their boxes were. He told him that it had been thrown out, and the guy was pissed. "My kids barely touched their food, and you just threw it away? Now they don't have any dinner!" He apologized, explained that we are very busy and must turn tables very quickly. Even offered to have the kitchen remake it for him, but he said he didn't have time for that and left, leaving the busser feeling responsible for his kids not having dinner. DOUCHE. Then after he made the busser feel like shit, his wife called to try and make the manager feel like shit. Hey, you're an adult, watch your shit. People leave boxes full of food on their tables constantly, we cant have some giant fridge full of boxed up food and try and keep track of what table and what time and what dish so you can come retrieve it when your brat child decides they want their noodles now. If you left a bag of potatoes on the bottom of your shopping cart at the grocery store, would you get mad if you came back later and they weren't sitting right where you left them, or tucked away with a note that said "3rd cart in on the cart return, 3:30" and furthermore accuse the cart attendant who put them back of starving your children? No, you would realize that you're an adult responsible for your own shit and if you lose it, that's your issue.

8. The final douche is a common breed. We only take reservations for parties of 8 or more. He calls and wants to make a reservation for 6 people at 5pm.

"I'm sorry, we only take them for parties of 8 or more, for a party of 6 you'll just come on in and put your name on the list"

"Okay, then I would like to make a reservation for a party of 8 at 5"

"Hold one moment please"

I just need a minute to decide what to do with this fucker, and consult a manager as to what they want me to do. If I could, I would tell him what happens when jerks like him lie and say they have 8 when they don't. I would tell him that each server gets three tables as their section, and on busy nights every section is assigned. If a party is 8 or more two servers have to be on it to ensure they get good service. Since none of our tables can seat more than 7 people, two tables, belonging to two servers, will be pushed together for his reservation, and when only 6 show up, they will have to decide which one of them is going to take it since they can't add gratuity and there is no point to sharing such a small party. This leaves one server with only two tables for the duration of your meal. And since a bigger party takes more time, and the restaurant is busy which means food takes longer, and tables take longer to turn, that server will have only two tables for at least an hour, or maybe two hours. And this literally costs them money in lost tips. Maybe two decent tables that they could have made 20-40 bucks from. So because you are rude and selfish and can't be bothered to wait for a table like the rest of the population, another person will lose money that they need to pay their morgtgage and feed their kids. And this makes you a DOUCHE. However, BM told me to just take the "reservation" because it's not worth calling him out, but I made sure to tell them it was really 6 so they wouldn't use 2 tables.

"HEY, PEOPLE! THIS IS THE EARTH CALLING! NEWSFLASH; I DON'T, I REPEAT, I DO NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU! THERE'S THIS FIREY BALL, MAYBE YOU'VE HEARD OF IT? THE SUN? YEAH THAT'S PRETTY MUCH MY FOCUS.HAPPY FUCKING HOLIDAYS ASSHOLES!!!"