Sadly, Customers Like This Aren’t Very Rare

I work in a restaurant. Two older couples come in. I know the table is going to be difficult when [Wife #1] presents me with a handful of coupons. I explain that I can only take one coupon per ticket, as is printed on the coupons themselves. [Wife #1] throws two coupons at me.

Wife #1: “Split our checks, then.” *To [Wife #2]* “We can just pay two separate checks.”

Whatever — people do that all the time.

[Wife #1] proceeds to drink Dewars (Scotch) on the rocks until she is extremely intoxicated. When she orders her steak, she asks me to have it cooked “blue.” She flips out when I told her we don’t do blue steaks, and she instead orders a very rare steak. Her husband orders salmon. I am given very specific instructions on how to cook both entrees.

[Husband #2] and [Wife #2] look mortified.

[Wife #1] gets her food and promptly flips out because it’s not “blue,” even though she was totally clear on the fact that we didn’t do that at the restaurant.

My manager, an experienced chef, eventually goes out of his way to make the woman a d***ed blue steak and serves it to her himself. It is the third steak we have cooked for her.

[Wife #1] lectures me for ten minutes (I am not exaggerating) on what a terrible server I am, how the restaurant is a piece of s***, etc. She eats all of her steak and half of her husband’s salmon and complains that their food was inedible. She demands that their entrees be taken off their bill.

I am fuming at this point, but the manager still comps their meals. I take the check to the table for [Wife #2] and [Husband #2] to pay. I am lectured again about what terrible service I offered. After another ten minutes of being scolded, I tell her:

Me: *Calmly* “I understand that you’re upset, but I didn’t prepare your food, and I served you exactly what you ordered.”

Wife #1: “Fine! I want to see the person who cooked my food, then!”

She also lectures him.

Wife #1: “I’m a professional chef, and I’m appalled at your inability to prepare a blue steak!”

Manager: “Okay. Would you like a job here? Since we obviously don’t know what we’re doing.”

[Wife #1] flies off the handle and storms out. Her husband follows meekly in her wake.

[Wife #2] and [Husband #2] leave me an immense tip. They’re so embarrassed by their friend’s behavior that they can barely look me in the eye. They leave, and I start cleaning their table. [Wife #2] comes back, presses an additional $20 into my hand, and whispers:

Wife #2: “I’m so sorry about the way she acted. If I’d known she would be that way I would have just fed her at my home… but she’s a chef and I don’t know how to cook.”

She gave me a hug and left.

A few weeks later, [Wife #1] came back and got super drunk on Dewars on the rocks again. She ended up standing on her tiptoes, screaming into the manager’s face in the middle of a packed dining room because there wasn’t cottage cheese on the salad bar.

She was banned from the restaurant.