Customer: “Is it too late to cancel the salmon? I’ve changed my mind.”

Me: “The salmon that I just placed in front of you?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Uh… well…”

Customer: “So, is it?”

Me: “Yes.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “It’s been cooked, plated, and is now sitting directly in front of you.”

Customer: “So?”

Me: “It’s a finished meal. It’s too late to cancel it.”

Customer: “Why?”

Me: “Sir, when most people ask if it’s too late to cancel a meal, they usually ask within moments of making the order, often while the waitstaff is still taking the table’s order. The dish has not started being prepared yet. You’re asking while the dish is ready to eat and literally in front of you.”

Customer: “I still don’t get why that matters.”

Me: “Sir, it is too late to cancel a meal that is already prepped and finished. If you’d like to order something else, I can get that for you, but you’d have to pay for both.”

Customer: “Why?”

Rest Of His Table: “Oh my God! Shut up, Gary! Eat the f***** fish!”

I was so grateful for the rest of that table, for saving what was left of my sanity.

I am a server in a mid-to-upscale restaurant. The kind of place that targets middle-class folks for their special occasions. So, most people who come in are dressed and behave well because it’s their special birthday dinner or the like.

All things considered, I have had a relatively drama-free time working there with a pretty notable exception.

A woman comes in with her partner and two children, a boy and a girl who appear to be twins, around eight or nine years old. The first warning flag was how the kids were dressed. While the woman and her partner are both in nice dresses and look as you would expect for a nice dinner out, the children wore mismatched flip flops, dress-up costumes, and the little boy had a hat that had LED lights all over it and kept flashing. When they came in, my manager made a straight line towards them.

Manager: “Hello, ma’am, I’m sorry to stop you like this, but our dining room does have a dress code, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask that the children change before we can seat you.”

Woman: “Oh, they are autistic.”

She doesn’t get upset or agitated or seem like she is arguing at all, just casually and calmly says it as if that is supposed to explain everything.

Manager: “Well, ma’am, that may be, but many of our guests are here to celebrate big events and have saved up to come here. As such, we ask that people be respectful, and things like your son’s hat can be quite the interruption to a special occasion dinner.”

Woman: “Oh, he wanted to wear that, and he’s autistic.”

She just sort of shrugs when she says that.

My manager is typically pretty good about having a backbone, but she’s a single mom with a non-verbal autistic son, and I guess the woman claiming her twins were autistic struck a heart string, so she made an exception. She asks the woman to remove the son’s hat, but lets them be seated. My manager then gets called away to deal with a back-of-house semi-emergency, so is unavailable for a period of time.

As soon as the family is seated, the children scatter. Running around the dining room, yelling, and throwing things at each other. I approach the mother and her partner.

Me: “Excuse me, ma’am, please keep your children seated as they are disturbing the other guests.”

Woman: “Oh, they are autistic.”

She says this, then just gives me a blank look like she has just answered my question and is waiting to see if I want anything else.

Me: “You’ve said that, however, I will have to ask that you keep them in their seats.”

Woman: “It’s okay, they are autistic. While you are here, can you tell me about the fish special?”

I’ll be honest, this catches me off guard, and I just kind of go into autopilot and start giving my speech about the specials of the day. Suddenly, I hear a commotion behind me. I turn around to see that the little girl has grabbed a steak off of another diner’s plate and thrown it at the boy, and she is about to follow it up with a handful of mashed potatoes when my manager comes storming back into the dining room from wherever she had been.

Manager: “That’s enough!”

The ‘mom-voice’ seems to shock the kids into compliance, who at least come back to stand by their mother’s table.

Manager: “Ma’am, that is enough, your children have been a disturbance, damaged property, and now have stolen food from other patrons. I will need your credit card information to pay for the damages and replacement meals. Following that, you, your partner, and your children are permanently banned from [restaurant].”

Woman: “Oh no, it’s like I told you before; they are autistic.”

Manager: “That is irrelevant, please give me your credit card or I will call the police.”

Woman: “…but they are autistic.”

Eventually, the woman provides the credit card information, and the family is escorted out. I later found out that in addition to the food fight I had witnessed, the kids had also knocked a picture off the wall and broken the arm off of a chair when climbing on it.

The strangest part of all to me was that at no point did the woman get mad, or yell, or anything. She just kept saying ‘they are autistic’ and seemed genuinely baffled that people didn’t just go ‘Oh, okay, carry on then’. And throughout all of it, her partner didn’t say anything either, just kind of quietly followed.

I had breakfast at a well-known restaurant. After the meal, I went to pay my check. The bill was eight dollars, and I handed the checkout lady a ten. She proceeded to give me change for a twenty.

Me: “You gave me the wrong amount of change.”

Checkout Lady: *Very curtly.* “I most certainly did not!”

Who was I to argue?

So, I got a free breakfast and a two-dollar bonus, while she was ten dollars short at the end of her shift. Maybe she should have asked what the problem was?

I go through a fast-food drive-through, place my order at the speaker, and pull up to the window to pay. I ask for a receipt – something I always do – but this time, the employee says the printer is out of paper and they haven’t had a chance to swap it yet. I tell them that I’m OK waiting, but by the time my food is ready, the paper still hasn’t been swapped out.

I look in my bag as I’m rolling away from the window, and immediately notice that I’m missing an item. I drive around the restaurant and find a regular parking space, and go inside to ask for my item.

Cashier: “Welcome to [Restaurant], what can I get for you today?”

Me: “I just went through the drive-through, and I’m missing [Item].”

Cashier: “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you have a receipt?”

Me: “I asked for one, but I was told that the printer was out of paper.”

Cashier: “Unfortunately, without a receipt, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

Me: “Is there a manager I can speak with, please?”

It took a few minutes of arguing, as politely as I could, with the manager to convince them that I had in fact ordered the item. No matter what I said, the only thing the manager would tell me was that “without a receipt, I can’t prove that I ordered [item], so he can’t just take my word for it”.

I finally threatened to call corporate and report the restaurant since it was their own fault I hadn’t received a receipt, even though I had asked for one. The manager finally grabbed (item) off the serving window, which had clearly been sitting there the entire time, and handed it to me with a less-than-sincere “There. Are you happy now?”

I still sent in a complaint to Corporate when I got home, but I doubt anything will happen. The only explanation I can think of is that the manager, and probably other employees, were running a scam to get themselves free food by stealing items from people’s orders and then not giving a receipt so they either had to leave without their item or pay for a new one.

I have never left a drive-through without a receipt since this incident, just to make sure I don’t run into this kind of situation again.

I live in New England, and we’ve had snow falling for the last three days. For the most part, the temperatures have been mild enough that it hasn’t accumulated much until last night. We were slammed all night, lots of deliveries, but the people were great, very nice, and tipped well. Roads weren’t too bad, I actually enjoy driving in snow up to a certain point.

At my restaurant, delivery is ONLY offered between 4 PM – 9 PM, and closes at 10 PM, and the calls for delivery usually drop off around 8 PM.

Around 8:30 PM, the other driver cashed out and went home. I took a short run, got back around 8:40 PM, and, figuring I was basically done for the night, started organizing my cash/slips, just waiting it out.

At 8:45 PM, we get a call for delivery, to the very edge of our delivery area, about a fifteen-minute drive in good conditions. The guy who took the call said, “For delivery?” and looked over at me. I nodded, I’ll take it, I have nothing else to do tonight, and I’m down for an extra half-hour on the clock.

The customer orders two large specialty pizzas, the total was $47 and change, paying cash. We gave her about a forty-minute estimate, and then the pizzas went in the oven. 

About twelve minutes later, right around 9 PM or a few minutes after, she calls back and wants to add another large specialty pizza. A different guy had answered the phone, pulled up her ticket, added the pizza, told her it would add another fifteen minutes or so to her wait time, and gave her the new total, which is $71 and change. She starts to argue about the price, saying that it can’t be right, it should only be about $60.

The guy gives up and hands the phone to the owner, who breaks down the prices for her. Most of the large special pizzas end up being $23.80 after tax and delivery; I’m not sure what the actual menu listing price is, but why do so many people fail to account for tax and delivery charges?

Anyway, she said that $20×3 should equal $60, but she wasn’t factoring in that $3.80×3 equals about another $11. So, Boss talks her through the math, while our pizza maker is aggressively stretching and flipping the dough, saying:

Pizza Maker: “And tell her she’s an a**hole! Only an a**hole would call this late, add on, and then argue! A**hole!”

I started to figure that I was probably getting stiffed on this one, since people who argue over the price of food generally don’t want to part with more money than they absolutely have to, in my experience.

So about 9:15-ish, I load up the pizzas and take a shortcut I know, which is basically a snow-covered dirt road through the woods. I slid around and almost spun out at least once, but I got to the address around 9:40 PM. It’s a big-a** McMansion, attached three-car garage with huge lights on between the bays. The house has two doors at the front, but no lights on.

I trudge through the unshovelled snow to the first door. I can barely see the steps under mounds of snow; my feet are buried. I ring the doorbell and wait. Lady answers the door and the first thing she says is:

Customer: “Well! You certainly took the long way around to get here, didn’t you?”

I just started opening the bag and told her the total. She ignored me and said:

Customer: “And why didn’t you go to the door with the light on? We put the light on so you would know which door to go to!”

She says this with her hand on her hip like she is scolding me. I lean back a little and look towards the other door.

Me: “I didn’t see a light at either door, so I just came to the first one. Do you mean the garage?”

She looked at me funny, stepped back inside, looked at what I’m assuming is her light switch, and started laughing.

Customer: “Oh my god, that’s so funny, I must have flipped the wrong switch.”

I didn’t laugh. 

She handed me exactly $72.

Customer: “This is for the pizza. And now you wait right there one minute.”

She takes the pizzas inside. There was snow inside my boots, and I just wanted to get back in the car and crank the heater on floor-setting. She came back a few minutes later with a rolled-up wad of bills, saying:

Customer: “And this is for you.”

She says this with this self-congratulating look on her face, like she was expecting me to drop to my knees in gratitude and say “Mastah has given Dobby a sock?!”

I did, of course, thank her, told her to have a good weekend, and she thanked me “for coming out in this weather,” which leads me to believe the tip may have been an afterthought when she saw how bad it was outside, that she wasn’t planning to tip in the first place.

The “wad” of bills turned out to be $9 in singles, which is definitely a decent tip. I just felt like she was making sure I “earned” that tip by making me stand in almost shin-deep snow while she went inside to get it, to make sure I knew my place. Through the whole interaction, she spoke to me like she was talking to a naughty child that she was being charitable to. I’m generally very easy-going and let that kind of attitude roll right off of me, but with the snow and the time, it just really got under my skin.

I didn’t take my shortcut back because of how bad it was on the way there, took the main road, and got stuck behind a salt/sand truck that was going literally 10 MPH. The speed limit is 45; it would’ve been safe for me to go about 30-35, but there was no way to pass the truck, so I had to creep along behind it the whole way.

I didn’t make it back to the restaurant until about 10:30 PM. Everyone had gone home except the owner, who had to wait for me to cash out. He had a 10″ cheese pizza waiting for me to take home free for having such a crappy last delivery (we usually get food at a 50% discount) And he paid me for an extra two full hours, even though I only worked one-and-half hours over. 

Definitely lifted my spirits, it’s good to feel appreciated!