Notes Of Citrus And Consequences

CONTENT WARNING: Vomit

I currently manage a wine-focused, just-under-fine-dining restaurant. It’s a busy-a** night, our town is doing an annual ‘Restaurant Week’. I’m running the door. There’s a table of four middle-aged women celebrating a birthday, and I assume we were not their first stop on the night. They all get the three-course ‘Restaurant Week’ option and share some wine bottles.

Somewhere between the second and third course/bottle, one of the women is overcome with nausea and proceeds to dip her head below the table and unload. Her server, a woman of similar age, brings her a champagne bucket and many napkins, trying to keep the situation as discreet as possible. The server quickly gets all the desserts boxed up, the checks dropped, and all seems well, as can be assumed.

The ladies stay at the table. Laughing, reminiscing, and enjoying their night for thirty more minutes! As though there are not two trash bags of vomitous rags surrounding them, and a pint of baby-bird food on the ground, under them.

I finally had to go and ask them to leave. The scent was in the air, and their table was en route to the bathroom.

As these debutantes made their way out the door, they found the need to complain to my seventeen-year-old hostess that “We’ve never been treated this poorly at a restaurant.” Which begs the question, where do you go on a normal Friday?