My husband and I are Australians on holiday in America. My cousin spent about two years working in America as a waitress and has drilled into us the importance of tipping our servers. Even when the service is shockingly bad, including the time they forget to put our order into the system for forty-five minutes, we tip at LEAST 18% because that is what my cousin recommended, and we’re a little stunned that servers work for pennies an hour and rely on tips to survive.

A large amount of staff who notice our accents seem pleasantly surprised when we tip them the proper amount or more. We stop for lunch in a little diner near our hotel and the waitress is AMAZING. She chats with us, asks about Australia and expresses how much she’d love to visit, tells us where to find a specific store I really wanted to visit but haven’t been able find, and is just all-around wonderful.

She is coming over with our refills:

Waitress: “Here we go, guys, here’s your—”

Mid-sentence, a small child who has been running around unchecked for the last half an hour slams into her legs. She drops both our drinks — one all over the kid and one directly into my lap.

The kid’s mother starts SCREECHING at the top of her lungs and demanding to see a manager. The waitress is trying to clean up the kid, apologise, and get us napkins all at once. I clean myself up as best I can and wave her off — I can easily pop back to our hotel to change — so she leaves to get her manager to deal with the screaming mother and her crying child.

She comes back a few minutes later with new drinks for us and is near tears; while her manager had her back, the other woman had said some awful things and her entire party of ten had left her without a tip. She drops off our drinks and we finish them, and she brings back the bill.

Waitress: *Still nearly crying* “I am so sorry about that, guys. I took your refills off the bill; those are on me.”

Feeling bad, my husband is trying to make her laugh.

Husband: “I think you’ll find they were on my wife and that demon kid.”

The waitress, realising we’re just kidding, does crack a smile as she walks off to handle another table. While we were already going to tip her about 25% on our tiny lunch bill — seriously, food is RIDICULOUSLY cheap in the States — for being so wonderful to us, my husband just rifles through his pockets for whatever he has on him in cash and shoves it into the billfold. It adds up to about $60 on our $19 bill, and we try to escape before she sees it as we don’t want her to thank us for it. 

We’re about five steps out the door when she chases us outside.

Waitress: “Wait! You guys, two of these are twenties! I know we joked that you’re used to your rainbow money but you’ve gotta read the numbers. Here!”

She tries to hand us back some of the money and we refuse to take it.

Me: “Honey, no, that’s your tip. You were amazing. Take it.”

The waitress seemed dumbfounded that we had deliberately left her that much, and my husband joked that it was to make up for the gremlin’s parents stiffing her. She legitimately started to cry and asked if she could hug us, which we accepted, and she went back inside.

I’m still stunned that she was honest enough to try and give the tip back to foreigners she thought didn’t understand. We saw her again a few times before we left — the food was incredible at that diner — and she was just as lovely each time. Tip your servers, people!

Customer: “I’d like a [frozen ice cream treat with a topping].”

Me: “Which flavour would you like?”

Customer: “Regular.”

Me: “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘regular.’ We have Oreo, Smarties, strawberry shortcake, or Rolo.”

Customer: “Just the normal one.”

Me: “They’re all normal, just different flavours. Or do you mean you just want ice cream?”

Customer: “No, with a topping. The normal one.”

Me: “Will that be with normal Oreo, normal Smarties, normal strawberry shortcake, or normal Rolo?”

Customer: *sighing* “Smarties.”

At the very front of our restaurant, in HUGE letters, reads, “Thai and Sushi Restaurant.”

Me: “Hi. How’re we doing today?”

Customer: “What kind of food do you serve here?”

Me: “Oh… Well, uh, we serve Thai and sushi, ma’am.”

Customer: “Do you serve Chinese food?”

Me: “Uh, no, ma’am, sorry. We’re a Thai restaurant.”

Customer: “Well, what kind of stupid restaurant is this?”

They stayed and ordered food anyway.

Related:
If At First You Don’t Succeed, Thai Again

I work at a personally owned restaurant. Its a particularly busy day and the owner is on the floor helping out. I happen to overhear this interaction

Customer: My steak was extremely over done and I’d like it taken off my check

Owner: I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t give you your meal for free when you cleaned your plate.

Customer: You better or I’ll have a word with *Owner’s name*. He’s an old friend of mine.

Owner: No, I don’t believe he is ma’am.

Customer: And how in the world would you know that.

Owner: Because I’m *name* and I’ve never seen you before.

My boyfriend works as a waiter at a local restaurant and bar. At ten o’clock pm on weekends, the kitchen closes and the bar stays open for another four hours. At this time, they post the two guys at the front and back entrance to check ID, as you have to be twenty-one to get in for the night.

I am at home when my boyfriend gets off work around 9:30, and he calls to ask if I want to meet up with him at the bar since he ran into an old friend of ours. Ecstatic, I agree. 

I get there and sit down with them a little after ten, when the door guys were just posted. Beyond [Boyfriend] and [Friend], there are three other girls I don’t recognize, although [Boyfriend] mentions he knows everyone but one from various places. Let’s call her [Customer]. She ends up sitting at the end of the table, not drinking anything, and just texting on her phone, which doesn’t matter to me at the time.

About ten minutes into us catching up, joking around, and having a good time while talking about trying out a new bar a few blocks down, [Door Guy #2] comes up to our table and goes to the girl on her phone.

Door Guy #2: “Hey, are you [Customer]?”

Customer: “Yeah?”

[Door Guy #2] pulls out his phone.

Door Guy #2: “Okay, well, I just got these messages you just sent to my sister about being underage and sneaking in here, so, is this you?”

Customer: “Well, yeah, that’s me, but no, I didn’t send them.”

We’re all watching, confused at this, because he’s showing the messages to us, things like, “lol tell your husband [Door Guy #1] that I’m twenty-one,” and, “got in before the kitchen closed and now I’m in here underage!” She’d sent these to the wife of [Door Guy #1], who happened to be the sister of [Door Guy #2], knowing she was the wife of one of the guys checking ID at the door. We had no idea she was underage, and on top of it, she begins to now argue with him, raising her voice into a shriek. [Door Guy #2] is patient but firm.

Door Guy #2: “Okay, well it’s after kitchen close, and you have to be twenty-one to be in here.”

Customer: “But [Door Guy #1] let me in!”

Door Guy #2: “And I’m asking you to leave. You can’t be in here now if you’re under twenty-one.”

Customer: “But I turn twenty-one in eight days!”

Door Guy #2: “Okay, then come see me in eight days. You need to leave. I don’t care if the rest of you stay.”

All her friends chime in at this point about how they are going to another bar anyway and they can walk her to her car. She wants to argue some more, but they finally convince her to go. I decide I don’t want to deal with any of that, so I stay and hang out with another friend I met and cool down since I’m pretty embarrassed.

My boyfriend offers to walk them to the other bar, so he’s there with them when they go outside. She immediately turns on him since he works there.

Customer: “This is so stupid! They can’t kick me out like this!”

Boyfriend: “Yes, they can. You have to be twenty-one to be there after the restaurant closes, and you aren’t.”

Customer: “Yeah, but I got let in!”

Boyfriend: “Before it closed, when you still could have ordered food. But it’s 10:30 now; he had every right to kick you out.”

Customer: “I wasn’t even drinking!”

Boyfriend: “Yes, but you decided to stupidly text and brag about being in there underage. We could lose our liquor license for that if you had gotten a drink! If you hadn’t said anything, I’m sure they would have let you sit there with your friends for a while, but having text evidence like that is dumb.”

Customer: “I just don’t think it’s right that they kicked me out! I turn twenty-one in eight days! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m calling the manager.”

She pulls out her phone right there and calls the bar manager to complain about being kicked out of a bar for being underage not once, but three times that night. Every time, the bar manager basically tells her to bugger off. Later in the night, we catch up with the Door Guys, who roll their eyes about the whole thing.

Door Guy #1: “If you actually sneak into a bar underage, why would you be stupid enough to text someone both the doormen are related to and brag about it?”

Door Guy #2: “I dunno, but she did do us a huge favor! [Bar Manager] is going to tell the owner that we had three separate calls tonight congratulating us on doing our jobs!”

Door Guy #1: “After this stunt, she might even get banned.”

Door Guy #2: “What a dumba**.”

I haven’t the slightest idea on if she actually got banned, but she did ruin it for everyone else and now her friends won’t go out with her after the scene she made. She can find another bar. Good riddance.