I’m the manager. A lady complains about an issue with a previous order.

Customer: “I want it replaced.”

She presents a receipt dated October of last year.

Me: “I won’t be able to replace something purchased so long ago.”

Customer: “The manager said I could. He was a tall white guy.”

Me: “I’m the only manager.”

I’m black.

Customer: *Throwing a tantrum* “I’m never coming back! I’m going to complain on Yelp!”

I’m glad I don’t have to see her again!

I’m in the office of a company with the CEO and his phone rings. It’s about four-thirty. He is at first puzzled, then frowning, and then he ends the call and starts to laugh. He calls his secretary.

CEO: “Hi. Would you come in here and bring me some letterhead? [Worker] just called me to complain that the water in the showers is cold and asking whether I’m gonna do something about it.”

A tip: if you want to take your shower before you clock out, do it on the sly, and most of all, don’t call your CEO on the phone! The guy was written up.

Today was an all-around awful day for tips in general, but this was something else.

A guy came in and sat at a table in the bar. Then, a woman showed up. Both got coffees to go and sat around on their computers for a while. I dropped the bill off. The guy paid in cash and the woman thanked him for paying. He was a nice guy. He got up and left a five-dollar bill on the table under the water I had brought for him.

I assumed that was it, so it surprised me to look over and see the women snapping at me. She wanted to order food. Okay. I got her order. The five-dollar bill was still there. I should’ve grabbed it. I put in the food order and finished.

I noticed the woman moving tables. I went to bus the first table and pick up the tip… but it was gone.

She paid with a five and a couple of ones and left me the change, which was less than a dollar.

So, she stole the tip to pay for her food, made me bus two tables, was rude, and camped at the table for one or two hours… and still people wondering why the service industry is struggling.

There’s a customer who is a regular at both of my restaurant’s locations. He comes across as friendly. Honestly, I don’t care if a customer is nice as long as they don’t give me trouble. I have a coworker who likes to make conversation with customers and likes to kiss up to them in order to persuade them to come back again.

This particular coworker was serving the friendly regular his food. He ordered a jumbo soup ($7.70) and a jumbo pepper shrimp ($20.35). In the process of ringing him up, he told me:

Customer: “I can only afford the soup.”

So, I charged him for the soup only. But then, he was kind of charming my coworker.

Customer: “I can get the money at home later and come back to pay.”

Meaning that he would take the shrimp without paying first but would pay later.

In my mind, I was thinking that he should just come back some other time when he could afford it so that we didn’t have to chase him down for the money. But my coworker, who is also kind of my superior, told me to give him the shrimp because she assumed he would pay because she “knows” him.

This was on Friday. On Monday, I got a call from her.

Coworker: “The guy from Friday didn’t pay. You should expect him to show up today to hand over the money. I had to pay out of my own pocket to cover the cost of the shrimp on Friday.”

He never came. It’s been a week and he still has not paid the $20.35 for the jumbo shrimp. I hope my coworker learned that it doesn’t matter what kind of “relationship” you have with a customer; you can always be in a position where they can take advantage of your kindness and use it against you.

Coworker: “I hate that we all have to wear masks! I got a fake vaccine card from eBay so I can stop wearing one. I’d never use an experimental vaccine!”

I told my direct manager I was concerned about this because, while I’m vaccinated, I’d rather not catch any variants from some mouthbreather. 

He brought it up to our upper management. It turns out one of them is immunocompromised, and they fired her on the spot. I honestly feel kind of bad, because we are already short-staffed, and she was a hard worker, just apparently an idiot.