Dine, Dash, D’Oh!

I was a newly-hired waitress on the graveyard shift when I was barely eighteen. Being the low man on the totem pole, I got the worst shifts, including 10:00 pm to 6:00 am on Sundays. Despite usually being dead, this shift was scary for me because I was still learning and it meant being on my own except for the cook from 3:00 am to 6:00 am.

Six frat boys came in at 4:00 am, drunk and starving. They were my only table. They ordered a ton of food and told me they were having a last hoorah before two of them left for the military.

Everything was going well until they got the idea to dash. One by one, laughing, they got up and ran around the restaurant and out the door, with me yelling some version of, “Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!”

This restaurant was in a strip mall on a busy street, and there was a condo complex across the parking lot. The guys continued laughing as they trotted around in front of the restaurant before heading across the parking lot toward the condos.

I followed them outside, continuing to yell at them to come back and pay.

Just then, a cop pulled into the parking lot — part of his regular patrol of the businesses! The guys started running in earnest then, but the cop caught the last guy.

Once the cop confirmed with me what had happened and how much the bill was, he escorted the frat boy home to get money for the bill, brought him back, and made him apologize, pay, and tip me fat.

It. Was. Glorious.