Entitlement To Make One Lose One’s Lunch

I worked in the food service for a handful of years, so I know what it’s like when you’re short-staffed and the restaurant is busy and you’re working as fast as you can to try and accommodate people.

We get thirty minutes for a lunch break at my job, and we are allowed to eat at our desks, so many of us will leave the building and then head out to a local food joint and bring lunch back to our desks. This way we can easily make sure we’re not taking over thirty minutes.

One day, I venture out and go to one of my favorite Chinese joints. I’m standing in line, there are six or seven people in front of me, and a few more have joined the line behind me. I can see that there are three people in total working behind the counter and in the kitchen.

There’s one young lady who appears to be in her teens (maybe seventeen or eighteen), the store manager (an older gent who’s probably around forty), and one person in the kitchen who’s working hard at keeping up with all the food. The line is moving slowly because the manager is between helping in the kitchen and working the register. If he was busy in the kitchen, the young lady taking orders and filling plates would have to ring up the customers, so this slows things down some.

I’m patient, as is most everyone else in line. I can tell the staff is rushed and I can feel the pressure of the atmosphere weighing on me and I’m not even working there. About five minutes pass and the line has gone down by one person. As I continue to watch the young lady working behind the counter, it appears that she’s fairly new and trying her best to keep up. She has to check the menu boards behind her for some order requests because she clearly doesn’t know them by memory yet.

Three places in front of me is a lady maybe in her late twenties or early thirties. She’s been rocking from side to side, stepping out of line a couple of steps, and muttering for the past four or five minutes, and her muttering is getting louder. Eventually, she steps out of line and starts yelling at the young lady behind the counter:

Angry Customer: “I’ve been waiting here for over fifteen minutes! I can’t believe how slow you’re going! I’m tired of this s***! I deserve a free meal because you’re taking too long!”

Other people in line just kind of shoot glances at each other, but no one says anything.

Angry Customer: “I demand you give me a free meal for having to wait so long. This is f****** unacceptable! You need to go faster as I don’t have all day to wait for your slow a**!”

The young lady behind the counter clearly doesn’t know how to deal with this, and the manager is in the kitchen so I don’t think he can hear the angry lady over the noise. The young lady behind the counter is clearly embarrassed, her face is turning red, and I can see in her eyes that she’s on the verge of crying. Her hands are starting to tremble as she tries to go faster.

I lean out of the line and address the angry lady.

Me: “No one is making you wait here for food. They don’t owe you a f****** thing. If you don’t like the service they’re offering here, leave.”

Angry Customer: “I wasn’t talking to you, and I don’t appreciate you—”

Me: “If I was the manager here, I’d show you the door and tell you to get the f*** out for berating my employees. No one wants to hear you complain. Everyone else here is waiting patiently and not demanding free stuff, so what is your problem?”

The angry lady only gave an irritated huff and stomped out the door. That was a win for me and everyone else in line; now our wait would be shorter.

I got to the front of the line, and I told the young lady behind the counter that she didn’t deserve to be treated like that and that she was doing a wonderful job. I took my food to the register and the manager thanked me for standing up for his employee.

I guess he did overhear the end of things between the angry lady and me, and he told me that lunch is on him. I thanked him for the offer, but I told him I didn’t come in expecting anything free. I just wanted to pay and be on my way, so he rang up my meal and I left to go back to work.