I have just sat a family down at their table and handed them their menus. They are parents, an adult daughter, and a teenage son. I am about to come by to take their drink orders when the adult daughter approaches me. She stuffs a twenty-dollar bill into my hand.

Daughter: “Here, take this. This is to say sorry for whatever is about to come. Wait a minute and then come back to the table.”

Confused, I oblige and check in on another table quickly before going back to theirs.

Me: “Are you guys ready for your drink orders?”

Mother: “We are not ‘you guys’. We are not your buddies, so don’t refer to us that way. And yes, I will have an Arnold Palmer.”

Me: “Certainly, ma’am.”

I take everyone else’s orders without issue and bring them out to them.

Me: “Hi! Are you… ready to order your meal?”

Mother: “The last time I was here, I ordered the chicken parmesan, and it was a complete disappointment.”

She lets the sentence hang in the air without any follow-up.

Me: “I… I am sorry to hear that. So, will you be ordering something else?”

Mother: “Are you stupid? I want that again, but I better not be disappointed this time!”

Me: “What was it about the meal last time that you found disappointing, ma’am?”

Mother: “Just… all of it.”

Me: “It’s just… it’s likely to be prepared the same way as it was before unless you wanted to make any changes?”

Mother: “Why are you still talking?”

Daughter: “Oh, my God, Mom! What the h*** are you doing?!”

Mother: “What? I’m just letting them know not to disappoint me.”

Daughter: “Mom, we all know that no matter what they do, you will be ‘disappointed’ and will find something to complain about, and you’ll ask for the manager and try to get some kind of discount. It happens every time with you.”

Mother: “It’s not my fault that their service is lacking.”

Daughter: “We could go and have tea with the freaking Queen in Buckingham Palace, and you’d find something about their service to complain about, Mom! It’s embarrassing. Stop it.” *To me* “Sorry about that. Bring her the chicken parmesan, as normal. She’ll find something to hate about it, but that’s on her, not you.”

Everyone else gives me their orders, looking slightly embarrassed and apprehensive of the mother, and things go smoothly for a while. I bring out their food and top up their waters, and I am especially attentive to the table, checking in and keeping on top of their needs so as not to give the mother any ammo.

When they appear to have finished their meals, mother included, I come back over.

Me: “Did you guys want to see the dessert menu?”

Before I realized I said it, Mom’s eyes go wide.

Mother: “That’s it! You called us ‘you guys’ again! I want to speak to the manager!”

Me: “Apologies, ma’am. It’s just a force of habit. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Mother: *Almost screeching* “Managerrrrrr!”

I’m about to turn and get the manager when the adult daughter speaks up again.

Daughter: “And say what, Mom? You’re offended because the waitress was friendly? Your life is so coddled and privileged that someone calling us ‘you guys’ is enough to set you off? Can you even hear yourself right now?”

Mother: “I’m only—”

Daughter: “—only being a b****! You’re never going to change! This is the last time any of us eat out with you, and you only have yourself to blame.” *To me* “Thanks so much for your amazing service. We’ll just take the check, please? No need to fetch your manager.”

I bring them the check without argument. The mother is seething but remaining silent. While they discuss the situation and who pays for what, I give the manager an update on everything that happened.

Manager: “You did good. Nothing is ever going to satisfy people like that, so don’t waste energy trying.”

They pay and start heading out of the door. My manager goes up to them as they’re exiting and shouts out with a beaming smile.

Manager: “Take care, you guys!“

The mother was about to go on a rampage, but her husband dragged her out silently, in a move that looked like it had been practiced.

The family has since been back to eat on several occasions. I’ve never seen the mother ever again.

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I always wished something like this story would happen and I was able to witness the happening.

An adult was umpiring a little league baseball game of eight-year-olds. The kids were not very skilled, and the pitchers had a hard time getting the ball in the strike zone. There were many walks during the five-inning game. Because of this, parents were complaining about the umpiring, yelling nasty things at him.

After the second inning, while the team in the field was “taking infield”, the umpire took a seat on the first row of the stands. And sat there, and sat there, and sat there.

After several minutes, the parents began calling to the umpire to start the inning. He turned to the crowd, held up his mask, and offered it up to anyone.

Umpire: “Since all of you think you can call balls and strikes better than me, I assume one of you will take this mask and get behind the plate.”

The crowd said they would be quiet if he would just finish the game umpiring.

Umpire: “One more crack from anyone and I will call the game and send these kids home.”

I just sat there with the biggest grin.

Client: “I need your agency to develop a robust morale-boosting program for the top 100 ‘leaders’ in our region during our annual team-building retreat. We want them to feel that they are an integral part of the company.”

Me: “Certainly. Perhaps you can share with us in greater detail why the company wants to do this.”

Client: “Oh… Because we’re going to lay off, like, forty of them right after the retreat.”

I work in a hotel lounge, and recently in my province, we’ve redone restrictions and we must now give last call at 10:00 pm. I swear, ever since this was put in place, I’ve had the thirstiest alcoholic sitting in my section at 9:30 pm having withdrawals just thinking of getting last-called. But I digress. This particular table is thirsty but very nice.

This is a table of four men. At 9:00 pm, they inquire about last call, and I promise them I’ll stay on top of their drinks before we get there. I connect with the leader of the bunch; he says he likes me and praises me often. He orders a burger with three add-ons, and he also lets me know that he wants only one bill for the table for when the time comes. He likes to drink lots, seems to have a deep wallet, pays for the whole bill, and is amicable. This is the perfect table. Easy money. I love it.

Last call came and went without a fuss. Although I slightly overserved these folks, they never slurred, got aggressive, or even displayed any rude or entitled behavior. I just liked this table in general after a really crappy wedding I had to serve the day before — a story for another day.

I brought the one bill as promised: $350 for the table. I saw them argue about the bill a bit, and then someone else from the table signed it and then went outside to mingle on our patio. To my dismay, he had tipped only $45 on the $350 bill, below 15%. The payer had even asked me to deliver two shots to another table to be put on his bill, which I had done promptly. There was no reason to stiff my tip.

But here comes the twist: he didn’t put his room number on the bill, and I couldn’t find his name in our room system. I decided to go up to the table where he wasn’t anymore and lay the bill open in front of the leader I had been connecting with all night.

Me: ”Hey, your bud forgot to put down his room number. Do you mind getting that for me, please?”

There was a pause as the guy looked a the bill.

Leader: “Is that what he tipped you?!”

YES! VICTORY IS MINE! I just stayed pleasant.

Me: “Don’t worry about it. I had a good time serving you and your friends.”

Leader: “This is unacceptable!”

He stormed outside to his friend on the patio. I didn’t hear or see the interaction, but he came back with a room number and a tip fixed to $70.

Not only did I get good money, but I got to get one under-tipper schooled by a proper tipper! Priceless.

I worked as a tech support for a global insurance company. Our old manager retired. He was a cool guy, not a micromanager. We got this new one who was, right away, very confrontational. He was a “my way or the highway” kind of guy, even when we explained the bureaucracy of our company and processes. For whatever reason, he had it in for me; he went as far as making comments in front of everybody about replacing me.

At one of our employee review meetings, he said he was getting complaints of me “not smiling enough”, which I found very odd because I consider myself a likable person and I’m always joking with other users and employees, which I’ve found helps with the job.

He even went as far as to show me how to smile.

I proceeded to give out the most forced, creepy smile humanly possible every time I interacted with a user, every single time. People asked me what was wrong, and I always answered, “Following an employee review, I was instructed to smile more, so I’m smiling.”

I was doing this for a couple of days and after an interaction providing support for Human Resources, with the smile and the explanation, I went back to my desk.

A couple of minutes later, I saw the HR lady go to my boss’s office. They were there for like half an hour. After she left, my boss called me in.

Boss: “You don’t have to smile anymore.”

Me: *Sarcastically* “Aww, do I really have to stop?”

He just looked at me for a moment.

Boss: “That’s all.”

He left like a year later. No one, not even the other managers, liked him.