Caller: “I’d like to make a reservation at your restaurant.”

Me: “Of course, ma’am. What time and for how many?”

Caller: “Ten people on [date] at 10:45 PM.”

Me: “Ma’am, we close at 11 PM, so—”

Caller: “—and?! We’re making a booking before you close.”

Me: “We can’t take reservations fifteen minutes before we close. The latest I could take a reservation for a table of your size would be 10 PM, and even then—”

Caller: “—That’s not going to work for us. We’re going to the theater and we won’t get out until after that. We wanted a late dinner, and since you’re a hotel and open all night, we would eat there.”

Me: “Ma’am, the hotel is indeed staffed twenty-four hours, but the restaurant is not. The kitchen closes at 10:30 PM and the dining area closes at 11 PM.”

Caller: “I want to speak to your manager. You’re not being very helpful.”

I pass them over to my manager, who gets the gist of what is happening from having overheard my half of the conversation.

Manager: “This is the manager, ma’am. I have heard the conversation. How may I assist you?”

Caller: “You can make my restaurant reservation, but you can also fire that girl I was just talking to! She was very rude and made me feel like I was an inconvenience!”

Manager: “I apologize, ma’am, we should not have made you feel like you were being an inconvenience.”

Caller: “Good! I expect to be—”

Manager: “—Yes, inconvenience is far too light a word for what you were requesting. Hardship, or a burden, would be much more accurate terms to describe having to cater to a large table for hours after closing time.”

Caller: “What!? I demand—”

Manager: “—Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and I’ll be sure to teach all our staff the correct vocabulary to use when receiving outrageous demands. You have a great day now!” *Click.*

I work at an upscale steakhouse that has an all-you-can-eat dinner package. It’s pretty spendy, but it’s all you can eat steak. Our salad bar has enough charcuterie, composed salads, and soup to be a meal in itself, so we offer just that. Understandably, it’s a lot cheaper. (It’s popular with vegetarians and little old ladies who can’t eat their weight in ribeye.)

I had a table of four. One lady ordered just the salad bar. I take away her table marker for steak (so the chefs know she’s not getting meat) and go about my business. When I bring drinks, I notice she’s gotten an extra plate from another server. When the steak comes by, her husband gets a huge portion and gives half to his wife. 

I check back and try to be casual.

Me: “Are you enjoying your meal, ma’am?”

Customer: “There’s so much to choose from; it all looks delicious!”

Me: “Ma’am, would you like to switch to our dinner?”

Customer: “No, I only want salad.”

Over an hour, the table burns through four plates of our most expensive cuts. It’s screwing up the chefs because half of what they think they need is going to the “only salad” lady, who is plowing through filet mignon and sides. I give my manager a heads up, and he says to charge her for dinner.

I drop the check, and she is irate.

Customer: “I was just trying one bite of my husband’s steak! You’re going to charge me dinner for one bite?!”

My managers are excellent, so he steps in and lets her know:

Manager: “Ma’am, I saw you eating multiple plates of steak.”

Luckily, she doesn’t put up a fight, just sulks and says:

Customer: “I’m never coming back to somewhere that doesn’t even let me share with my husband!”

I feel bad for the other couple; they were total peaches and looked visibly embarrassed. She stiffed; they left 30% on their check.

But seriously, why be cheap at an expensive restaurant? There are hundreds of other places in this city. It’s my a** that gets chewed out if everyone notices and I don’t say anything. And you’re doing it in front of everyone. Please don’t make my night more difficult because you think you can outsmart the menu.

I work in a restaurant, at the bar. We are quite popular on Friday and Saturday nights, so I get a lot of interesting characters over the weekend. A customer who has already had a few drinks wanders over.

Customer: “Gimme a gin and tonic.”

Me: “We have Bombay Sapphire and Hendrick’s.”

Customer: “I want Tanqueray gin.”

Me: “We don’t have that, just Bombay Sapphire and Hendrick’s.”

Customer: “But I want Tanqueray!”

Me: “Then go to a liquor store and drink it at home.”

Customer: “You f****** c***! I want my drink!”

Without a word, I walk two steps to a corner of the bar and slide out a whiteboard. It contains a list of all the insults we’ve been called by customers, with a running tally of each one. I add a line next to the c-word.

Customer: “What is that?!”

Me: “What does it look like?”

Customer: “It looks like a bunch of swears!”

Me: “That it is. All the things we’ve been called.”

The customer looks over it and realises that the list is EXTENSIVE as well as creative. The customer seems to be a combination of embarrassed and angry for being called out.

Customer: “This is such b*llocks! Where’s your manager?”

Me: “I am the manager, sir. Now, I was on the fence about giving you another drink before, but you’ve just gone and fallen from that fence on the wrong side. You can have a glass of water before you leave, but that’s it.”

Customer: “You… you… lesbian harlot!”

Me: *Excited.* “Ooooh! That’s a new one.”

I add it to the whiteboard as the customer storms out. It’s amazing how quickly they fold when they’ve realised you’ve turned their perceived power into a silly little game.

I work in a fine-dining restaurant. Thanks to some recent media coverage of our head chef, the place is booked solid for two months. I am at the host stand and take a call.

Caller: “Hello, I have a reservation under [Caller’s Name] on [date]. We need to push our reservation back by a few hours.”

Me: “Sir, your reservation is for a table of eight. I am afraid we cannot accommodate such an adjustment. We are fully booked for two months.”

Caller: “Oh, well, when is the next time you can seat us?”

Me: “Our next availability is on [date].”

Caller: “But… That’s two months from now!”

Me: “Yes, sir. That’s what being fully booked for two months means.”

Caller: “But… we have to attend a funeral on that day! We didn’t know we’d need to when we booked it! Have some compassion!”

Me: “I’m sorry for your loss, but that doesn’t mean we can manifest a new table. Would you like to proceed with the new booking?”

Pause.

Caller: *Can be heard talking to someone else in the room.* “Dear, any chance we could put your mother in the ground another day?”

A couple of years ago, I had a part-time job (with almost full-time hours) in a local restaurant that had a sister restaurant in the city, about a twenty-minute drive from where our restaurant was located. Normally, you were hired for only one restaurant, but if the sister property was low on staff or needed help, then we would work in the opposite restaurant. These were run by two different family members and both of whom had slightly different ways of doing things.

One Friday evening, I came in for my 4 PM to closing shift (normally around 11 PM, but can differ depending on how busy/quiet it is) and was put on the cash desk. I had been working here for about a year and a half at this stage and was pretty good at keeping the float (a certain amount of money always left in the till) at the correct amount, maybe €1 or €2 off, which was normal and expected.

I was not allowed to count the cash to check this float, though; that was a manager/supervisor’s job and was done when we came in in the morning, around 6 PM, and at closing.

One of the managers took an instant dislike to me due to my (at the time) bubbly, happy-go-lucky attitude and tried to make things difficult for me. Let’s call her Mary. 

Before 6 PM that day, a manager from the sister restaurant (let’s call her Kay) was filling in for a supervisor and counted the cash float, which was correct. Once Mary came in, Kay hopped straight on the bus and headed home.

Later that evening, once we were closed and all our cleaning jobs were done, I was sitting down with the owner, having a cup of tea while Mary was counting the float. Out of nowhere, Mary calls me over and starts berating and screaming at me that I lost €100 as her float was down by that much. 

I asked:

Me: “Did you check all the visa receipts, vouchers, the cash in the safe, and underneath the coin holder in the till, as Kay tends to put money under there instead of the safe?”

This got me yelled at even more by Mary because:

Mary: “You know nothing and can’t even manage to do one simple thing right!”

I got told by the owner to just head on home, no harm done, as these things happen, and to tell my coworker to double-check the float in the morning, as I was opening Saturday morning. 

Come Saturday morning, and once we had all our morning jobs done prior to opening, I asked my coworker if the float was correct. She said she saw that Mary was down last night, but that she was correct this morning. She goes on to say that as Kay was there yesterday, she checked underneath the coins in the till and lo and behold… there were two €50 notes sitting pretty… I explained the full story to my coworker and got her to ring the owner and tell him that it was correct, and we waited until Mary came back in at 6 PM.

I made a passing remark to her once she started working along the lines of:

Me: “Oh, Mary, by the way, [Coworker] found that €100 that you couldn’t find last night. It was underneath the coin holder in the till. Kay was here yesterday, just so you know where to look if she does the float before you in the future.”

It was the most satisfying thing in my life, as, with the way I phrased it, it seemed to come across as if I was just keeping her up to date on what happened the previous night, but she and I both knew that I was subtly pointing out that had she listened to me, it would have been correct.

After that, she learned that I actually pay attention to what’s going on and knew how to handle things, and she lost her contemptuous attitude towards me. Made life much easier for the last year and a half that I worked there.