I use to be a waiter at a local restaurant. I wasn’t very good at it though. It takes a special person to wait tables. And I’m not that kind of special. I’m too impatient and don’t respond well to being treated like a lesser person simply because my job for the next 30 minutes is to be your server. In all other instances I’m a people person, but not this one. And especially at the restaurant where I worked.
It’s sort of a fancy place, “fine southern dinning” is how they put it. The wait staff walks around in black pants and white shirts and I half expect to be asked for some grey poupon when I walk across the dinning room. Basically we get a lot of old women who come in and think the world revolves around them and a buck fifty is a good tip no-matter the price of the meal (it isn’t). I really don’t like them. They make me angry and they have the old woman funk. That’s a near toxic, if not lethal, combination of talcum powder, 1940’s perfume and moth balls (no wonder they are all dieing of cancer). When the stench hits your nostrils its sensory overload to your nervous system. What makes it worse is that they come in herds, so you don’t get it in staggered, mitigated intervals. No, they all come in at once. The moment the door opens its like being hit over the head with a two-by-four. Then, when you are taking their orders after repeating the specials to them fifty eleven hundred times you have to lean down real close so you can hear their old weathered voice and smell their rank denture adhesive as they ask you what the specials are. But then, when they want to ask for some decaf coffee you offered five minutes earlier, you can hear them holler half way across the restaurant. I shouldn’t be bothered by this ‘cause they’ll all be dead soon (because of the funk), but it still upsets me.
And if it isn’t the rotting flesh version of women you have to deal with it is their pretentious plastic contemporaries (who will also die of cancer but for different reasons). They are the ones that look like their jaws are wired into an awkward smile, their skin’s an off shade of melanin and the only part of their faces that can really move are their eyelids. They are all far less attractive than they think they are and far more demanding than even Jesus Christ has a right to be. They also believe that a dollar fifty is the appropriate tip amount, again no matter what. Their mothers have taught them well. Sometimes they bring along their businessman husbands who gladly wear them on their arm like a cherished prize; which is all most of the plastics really are (banker Bob is usually far more interested in lawyer Larry than he is in housewife Holly). The plastics have a different type of smell about them but it is no less poignant. It is the reek of arrogance mixed with the stench of Este Lauder. They are known to say grace before they begin their chatter about housewife Holly’s misfortune and other important social goings-ons (oh! the things I know about people in this town). They might even put Holly on the prayer list.
Off and on for three years now I have endured with often agonizing torture the routine of being the equivalent of a 16th century British wipping boy. Last week, I struck back. I could no longer withhold my tongue from the oppressive rule of the Talcum Tyrants and the Silicon Sorceresses who weld their power and cast their spells as nonchalantly as they attend Sunday School. Last week, I had enough.
This is what happened. It was Wednesday evening. This itself needs elaboration. In the restaurant business of the South, Wednesday evenings are notoriously slow. The aforementioned women are all at Baptist churches keeping up appearances. So I was braced for even more fruitless efforts and time wasted at the Deodera House (the name of the restaurant has been changed to protect myself). I had one table that evening. It was a party of four; three women and a man, all over fifty years of age. I should have known better, but I told myself to have faith. I’m not sure what I was putting my faith in at this point, but whatever it was I was wrong because I was about to have the most horrible experience in waiter history.
They seemed nice, at first, your typical southerners from Cordele, Georgia. They greeted me with a smile as they entered the door and I politely greeted them, though in my mind I was saying, “Welcome to The Deodera. How may I kiss your collective @$$es.” Anyway, the cordiality quickly ended. I think the chairs at The Deodera have special powers and can magically suck any kindness, love, and humanity right out of a customer the moment their rear lands in the seat (maybe if I had kissed it when they came in the door things would be different). Before I could tell them my name I was told exactly what each one wanted to drink: a half sweet half unsweet tea w/no lemon, a decaf coffee w/water, a diet coke w/ a glass of ice on the side and a water with extra lemons. This was followed by a volley of questions about serving portions of appetizers. They ordered one of each. I went to the kitchen and got their drinks, put in their appetizers and took a deep breath. This was the pattern for the rest of the evening. I waited on them hand and foot. I ran around that restaurant more that night than the previous three years combined. But, I got them everything they wanted, how they wanted it, when they wanted it. I was the epitome of a quality waiter. I would have made any conseur blush. After all, they were my only table. Their bill, after a round of appetizers, steaks, desserts and coffee was around $150. Like I said, “fine southern dinning.”
Now before I go on, I must explain that the minimum expected tip anywhere, be it Waffle House or the Sun Dial, is 15%, 18% is more courteous and 20% is generous. 12% of their $150 bill would have been $18, but they didn’t even leave that. Nope, after all my work I was left with $10. Let my clarify this. That is not even a 7% tip. Even if they were not feeling generous, which would have been okay, they should have left me $27. I got barely a third of the tip I earned (I was never any good at math until I became a waiter, now I can look at numbers and figure things out). This was beyond being impolite. This was down right disrespectful and rude.
So I had to let them know.
“Ma’m, I apologize if my service to you was below your standards or if I in any way offended you and prompted you to leave such a sorry tip, but if $10 is all you can leave, you need it a heck of a lot more than I do.”
And with that I turned and walked away (walk is a lose term here really, it was more like I bounded towards the back with a rage that even God would fear). They hadn’t just crushed my hope in humanity, they opened a sort of Pandora’s Box. They awoke my wrath and unleashed my rage upon that place. I could have spit fire (and I guess in a way I did).
I took care of my closing work for the evening and left feeling more than just disrespected and angry. I felt betrayed. There is far more at work here than just the snooty actions of a few aging tight-wads. It’s a statement of larger implications on the status of our society, but I’m not writing this to teach a lesson in sociology.
Now granted, my reaction was a bit overboard, and so I am no longer an employee of the Deodera House Restaurant (that’s a whole other story for another time). But, if you are reading this, please, please, please take a single point away from this: Its one thing to leave a bad tip if you’ve had poor service, but if your waiter (or waitress) has done a stellar job serving you, do not leave them a 7% tip. If you don’t have the money to leave a decent tip, you don’t have the money to eat out in the first place. There is no excuse. I don’t care about how it was in the 1950’s. It’s now the twenty-first century and it takes more than a buck fifty to pay for your groceries and college isn’t free, no matter what the government says. And please, “Christians,” never mistake a track for a good tip, as if your 50 cent comic book was equivalent to God’s gift of eternal life. It is not. And I already know Jesus.
It’s sort of a fancy place, “fine southern dinning” is how they put it. The wait staff walks around in black pants and white shirts and I half expect to be asked for some grey poupon when I walk across the dinning room. Basically we get a lot of old women who come in and think the world revolves around them and a buck fifty is a good tip no-matter the price of the meal (it isn’t). I really don’t like them. They make me angry and they have the old woman funk. That’s a near toxic, if not lethal, combination of talcum powder, 1940’s perfume and moth balls (no wonder they are all dieing of cancer). When the stench hits your nostrils its sensory overload to your nervous system. What makes it worse is that they come in herds, so you don’t get it in staggered, mitigated intervals. No, they all come in at once. The moment the door opens its like being hit over the head with a two-by-four. Then, when you are taking their orders after repeating the specials to them fifty eleven hundred times you have to lean down real close so you can hear their old weathered voice and smell their rank denture adhesive as they ask you what the specials are. But then, when they want to ask for some decaf coffee you offered five minutes earlier, you can hear them holler half way across the restaurant. I shouldn’t be bothered by this ‘cause they’ll all be dead soon (because of the funk), but it still upsets me.
And if it isn’t the rotting flesh version of women you have to deal with it is their pretentious plastic contemporaries (who will also die of cancer but for different reasons). They are the ones that look like their jaws are wired into an awkward smile, their skin’s an off shade of melanin and the only part of their faces that can really move are their eyelids. They are all far less attractive than they think they are and far more demanding than even Jesus Christ has a right to be. They also believe that a dollar fifty is the appropriate tip amount, again no matter what. Their mothers have taught them well. Sometimes they bring along their businessman husbands who gladly wear them on their arm like a cherished prize; which is all most of the plastics really are (banker Bob is usually far more interested in lawyer Larry than he is in housewife Holly). The plastics have a different type of smell about them but it is no less poignant. It is the reek of arrogance mixed with the stench of Este Lauder. They are known to say grace before they begin their chatter about housewife Holly’s misfortune and other important social goings-ons (oh! the things I know about people in this town). They might even put Holly on the prayer list.
Off and on for three years now I have endured with often agonizing torture the routine of being the equivalent of a 16th century British wipping boy. Last week, I struck back. I could no longer withhold my tongue from the oppressive rule of the Talcum Tyrants and the Silicon Sorceresses who weld their power and cast their spells as nonchalantly as they attend Sunday School. Last week, I had enough.
This is what happened. It was Wednesday evening. This itself needs elaboration. In the restaurant business of the South, Wednesday evenings are notoriously slow. The aforementioned women are all at Baptist churches keeping up appearances. So I was braced for even more fruitless efforts and time wasted at the Deodera House (the name of the restaurant has been changed to protect myself). I had one table that evening. It was a party of four; three women and a man, all over fifty years of age. I should have known better, but I told myself to have faith. I’m not sure what I was putting my faith in at this point, but whatever it was I was wrong because I was about to have the most horrible experience in waiter history.
They seemed nice, at first, your typical southerners from Cordele, Georgia. They greeted me with a smile as they entered the door and I politely greeted them, though in my mind I was saying, “Welcome to The Deodera. How may I kiss your collective @$$es.” Anyway, the cordiality quickly ended. I think the chairs at The Deodera have special powers and can magically suck any kindness, love, and humanity right out of a customer the moment their rear lands in the seat (maybe if I had kissed it when they came in the door things would be different). Before I could tell them my name I was told exactly what each one wanted to drink: a half sweet half unsweet tea w/no lemon, a decaf coffee w/water, a diet coke w/ a glass of ice on the side and a water with extra lemons. This was followed by a volley of questions about serving portions of appetizers. They ordered one of each. I went to the kitchen and got their drinks, put in their appetizers and took a deep breath. This was the pattern for the rest of the evening. I waited on them hand and foot. I ran around that restaurant more that night than the previous three years combined. But, I got them everything they wanted, how they wanted it, when they wanted it. I was the epitome of a quality waiter. I would have made any conseur blush. After all, they were my only table. Their bill, after a round of appetizers, steaks, desserts and coffee was around $150. Like I said, “fine southern dinning.”
Now before I go on, I must explain that the minimum expected tip anywhere, be it Waffle House or the Sun Dial, is 15%, 18% is more courteous and 20% is generous. 12% of their $150 bill would have been $18, but they didn’t even leave that. Nope, after all my work I was left with $10. Let my clarify this. That is not even a 7% tip. Even if they were not feeling generous, which would have been okay, they should have left me $27. I got barely a third of the tip I earned (I was never any good at math until I became a waiter, now I can look at numbers and figure things out). This was beyond being impolite. This was down right disrespectful and rude.
So I had to let them know.
“Ma’m, I apologize if my service to you was below your standards or if I in any way offended you and prompted you to leave such a sorry tip, but if $10 is all you can leave, you need it a heck of a lot more than I do.”
And with that I turned and walked away (walk is a lose term here really, it was more like I bounded towards the back with a rage that even God would fear). They hadn’t just crushed my hope in humanity, they opened a sort of Pandora’s Box. They awoke my wrath and unleashed my rage upon that place. I could have spit fire (and I guess in a way I did).
I took care of my closing work for the evening and left feeling more than just disrespected and angry. I felt betrayed. There is far more at work here than just the snooty actions of a few aging tight-wads. It’s a statement of larger implications on the status of our society, but I’m not writing this to teach a lesson in sociology.
Now granted, my reaction was a bit overboard, and so I am no longer an employee of the Deodera House Restaurant (that’s a whole other story for another time). But, if you are reading this, please, please, please take a single point away from this: Its one thing to leave a bad tip if you’ve had poor service, but if your waiter (or waitress) has done a stellar job serving you, do not leave them a 7% tip. If you don’t have the money to leave a decent tip, you don’t have the money to eat out in the first place. There is no excuse. I don’t care about how it was in the 1950’s. It’s now the twenty-first century and it takes more than a buck fifty to pay for your groceries and college isn’t free, no matter what the government says. And please, “Christians,” never mistake a track for a good tip, as if your 50 cent comic book was equivalent to God’s gift of eternal life. It is not. And I already know Jesus.
1 comment:
You're a very talented writer. Keep it up.
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