This story takes place many years ago at a fun family arcade-type place that turns into an adult arcade place with alcohol and bars after hours.

It’s my friend’s friend’s birthday, and we all go out to the bar and restaurant together. There are twenty of us all together. I’ve never met any of them besides my friend, including the guy celebrating his birthday.

My friend and I sit at one end of the table together with the guest of honour.

There are two servers managing our table — one for the three of us and one for the rest of the seventeen. Our server does not even speak to anyone else at the table. We’re basically a table of three and a table of seventeen.

Everything is fine, we have a great time, and the food is okay — about what you’d expect from this kind of place. We all discuss the bill, and everyone will pay for their own bill. My friend and I decide that we’re going to cover the guest of honour and we’ll put it on my card. Cool.

The server arrives and we tell her not to worry; we’ll make ours easier and she can give us the one bill for the three of us. She brings it and walks away.

I notice the forced gratuity of 15% for more than eight people on the bill. I wave her over.

Me: “Hey, you only served the three of us. Should the forced gratuity be there?”

Server: “More than eight people at the table. Yes.”

Me: “But you didn’t deal with the eight. You only served us. It’d be better for you if you removed it.”

Server: “No way. Too bad.”

Me: “Okay, then.”

I paid and we left.

I too am a server and have been since I was seventeen. I have never left under 25% on a tab… except that one time. Oh, well.

It is the Monday before Christmas. Lunch has started off much busier than expected and we had a surprise health inspector arrive at noon. While we have plenty of kitchen managers working, there is just one front-of-house manager and me working. I handle the financials, not the guests. I am just getting off a call with a manager from another one of our restaurants when my front-of-house manager comes into the office.

FOH Manager: “Could you help me out with this? We have a guest on the phone who wants a cash refund for an order from three days ago. It’s very busy out here; could you see what’s going on and if there is anything I can do for her?”

Me: “Sure, no problem!”

At that same time, I have a new hire who has come in to complete paperwork, and she has been patiently waiting for me to finish my phone call. I look over her papers, see she is all set, and tell her to call back in the afternoon and one of our night-time managers will give her a training schedule.

I turn back to my desk and pick up the phone line I’ve been told the guest is on; in fact, it is now the only line with anyone waiting. To my surprise, instead of an angry guest, I have a nice lady with some questions about ordering a cake for the holiday.

After this call, I check back in with [FOH Manager] and let her know the lady wasn’t on the line anymore. Over the next hour or so, I hear about a few different calls that want to speak with the FOH, but as it could just as easily be a staff member calling out sick, I don’t jump on any of them. Eventually, the caller and my [FOH Manager] do get connected, and after a few minutes of what I am later told was a rather circular conversation, the call is passed off to me.

Me: “Thank you for holding. Were you calling in regard to an issue with an order from a few days ago?”

Guest: “Finally! [FOH Manager] says you can help me. I picked up more than twenty slices of dessert and a small cake on Friday, and when I took them to my church function they were all freezer burned! I need my cash refund now!”

Me: “Well, ma’am, we don’t really do cash refunds several days after the fact. Let me check with my general manager what we can do.”

I place her on hold and call my general manager, who has the day off. We both find her claim to be a bit odd and talk about how things could have been done the same day, but it is now three days later. And she “needs the money today” because she is going out of town. Huh, how odd for such a thing to happen during a time when most people overspend!

My general manager tells me to give her three options. One, we will send her a $25 gift card. They ate/have not brought us uneaten slices to show the issue. All of these slices were from different cakes, and we had no other complaints, so how did we freezer burn just her slices? Two, she can call corporate and talk to someone there. Or three, she can call back in a few days when my general manager is in the building. I brace myself and get back on the phone to tell her these options.

Guest: “What kind of a business is this that I can’t get my refund?! This is America! Let me talk to your general manager if he is the only one who can do anything!”

Me: “Ma’am, he is not here today; he will be back in two days. You can call and speak to him then. It is his day off, so I won’t have him call you. These are all the options he has authorized us to offer you.”

Guest: “Am I going to have to call the Better Business Bureau? Fine. I will call him in a few days!” *Click*

I later checked in with my [FOH Manager], who had told her all the options we could have done the same day, but here we are three days later, and she wants us to just take cash out of the register for her? It will be interesting if she does call back, but by then, our general manager will have heard how she was on the phone with us, and I doubt it will make him more charitable!

I am working at an Italian restaurant.

Customer: “I want a menu in English. I can’t read any of this crap!”

Me: “That is in English, sir.”

Customer: “Bulls***! What the f*** is a linguine?”

Me: “It’s a type of pasta, sir.”

Customer: “Just say spaghetti, then! How am I supposed to know that linguine is the Italian word for spaghetti?”

Several brain cells were lost in the taking of this man’s order.

I go out to dinner with three of my coworkers. The waiter — maybe nineteen years old — comes to our table.

Waiter: “What’s going on, guys? I’m [Waiter]. What are you drinking tonight?”

Coworker #1: “Hi, [Waiter]. Before we begin, are we able to split this check individually?”

Waiter: “Yeah, of course.”

We all order our food and drinks. At the end of the meal, the waiter comes by with one check.

Coworker #1: “Hey, sorry, but we asked to get this split.”

Waiter: “No, you asked if you could split it.”

Coworker #1: “Um… Okay, well, I guess I assumed you would be splitting it since we asked.”

Waiter: “Okay…”

[Coworker #2] picks up the check.

Coworker #2: “So, please split this.”

Waiter: *Sigh* “Can’t one of you pay and the rest just pay that person?”

Me: “Please point to your manager.”

Waiter: *Points to a woman* “She’s my aunt.”

I go over to the woman.

Manager: “Yes?”

Me: “Hi, I’m having an issue with one of your waiters. We asked at the beginning of this meal if the check could be split per person. He said it could but did not do it, nor will he do it now.”

The manager looks at the bill.

Manager: “I can do this manually right here. I’ll have [Waiter] bring these over.”

Waiter: “Okay. Happy now?”

He walks away before we can answer.

Coworker #3: “Thanks.”

We all tip but only 5%. When the waiter picks everything up, we hear him yelling.

Waiter: “What the f***, Aunt [Manager]?! They barely tipped!”

Manager: “Maybe next time, don’t be lazy!”

I had a friend from the USA visit me in Norway. On her first day here, we went out to a restaurant. We got entrees, dinner, dessert, and drinks. I had already told my friend I would pay.

We got the bill and both looked at it. The waiter went to go get the terminal so that I could pay with my credit card. How it worked at that restaurant was that you had to input the total amount to pay. It is not common to tip here. You might round up, but it’s definitely not expected to tip. I distinctly remember that our total was 1,871 NOK (~190 USD), so I figured I might as well just round up to 1,900 NOK (~192 USD).

When my friend saw that I only rounded up to 1,900 NOK, she immediately took the terminal from me.

Friend: “You can’t tip that little! What’s wrong with you? The waiters depend on tips!”

I mean, it’s not the best-paying job, but in which country is it? I just looked at her and said:

Me: “No.”

The waiter was right there and shot in:

Waitress: “We actually don’t. Most people I serve round up to the nearest five or ten, so she was actually quite generous.”

The strange thing is that I had even told her beforehand that tipping isn’t expected here. She told me later that she remembered that but didn’t believe it as I wasn’t a waitress myself.