Revenge Is Sweet, Even When It’s An Accident

When I’m nineteen, I am hired on to open a new restaurant in our area. We go through the process of training in hotels while it’s being built, and I am going to start out as a hostess to get the feel of the inner workings at this particular place.

On our second night of cold opening, where you basically have to be invited — food is free, half charge on the bar, and tipping is required — it happens.

I have seated a table of a well-to-do man and a couple of his equally well-off buddies in their late forties or early fifties. It’s a lovely interaction; I expect nothing else through their visit. I get them squared away and walk back up to the host stand to snag my laminated copy of the table chart.

I walk back by this table after running through and checking on open and soon-to-be-open tables. This man slaps my a** as I walk by.

In a sheer, shocked reaction, I turn around and frisbee the chart into this clown’s neck. You know how sharp those new laminated edges are. I draw blood. The whole place just goes quiet.

Then, from every corner, nook, and cranny of that building, everyone — I mean everyone — starts uproariously laughing, even the proprietor. I’m still s***ting bricks, thinking I just slashed this guy’s jugular and now I’m going to jail.

I try to pull myself together as quickly as possible and leap to his table, just spewing apologies. (I’m nineteen, it’s 2000, and I don’t know better.) He and his bros are laughing so hard, the only noise is their wheezing. They have tears rolling down their faces.

The proprietor is now running to the table, still giggling like a toddler. Before he can even get out a response, the man starts talking, reaches into his back pocket, and pulls out his wallet. He apologizes profusely to me, saying he “didn’t know what came over him” and he wasn’t hurt by anything but “his actions”.

The guy puts five $20 bills in my hand and apologizes so many more times throughout the whole evening.

After he and his crew waddle on out, I am doing my thing with the chart again — more aware now — and random tables keep handing me money. “We haven’t laughed that hard in ages!” “You made our night!” And so on.

Forget the fact that he just basically assaulted me in front of all you. Thanks for the cash.

I profited off a booty slap, was not written up or fired, and took down a grown-a** man down with a laminated chart. I will never forget that night.