Years ago, I worked as a cocktail bartender and waiter. A group of suits came in and sat down and I went to take their order. I got a bad vibe from them from the get-go. After I finished the order and went to leave, this sleazy guy in his thirties said, loud enough for everyone to hear:

Customer: “Walk away slowly, baby, so we can watch!”

I smiled at him and started to do an over-dramatic slow-motion back away, keeping eye contact with him and smiling the whole time.

I told the other waiters about it, and everyone started doing these slow-motion walks whenever they walked past their table. The best one was a busboy who deliberately dropped something next to their table and then did a very slow and sexy pick-up, like the “bend and snap” from “Legally Blonde”.

The group left pretty quickly.

We get a diner who speaks no English and only poor German. I place him at a table in a coworker’s area. When my coworker comes to the table to take the order, the diner says angrily:

Customer: “No, no, no… Not you, no.”

My coworker looks at him, confused.

Coworker: “What’s going on?”

Customer: “Not you… No.”

I stand a little further away and watch the scene until the man spots me and waves me over. When I stand next to my coworker, the man says to me:

Customer: “Order from you.”

I immediately feel that it must be because of my coworker’s dark appearance and reply:

Me: “No, that’s his area, not mine. [Coworker] is the boss here.”

Customer: “No, you. Not him. Order, order.”

Me: “What’s the problem?”

Customer: “Not him, order from you.”

Both my [Coworker] and I continue to serve other guests. The man tries to speak to another coworker but she has also noticed what is happening and asks about it.

We then all go to the back office to coordinate. Since the diner obviously doesn’t want to be served by our coworker because he looks Mediterranean, the whole team decides to ignore the man completely.

We go about our usual work, and the diner tries to get the attention of all our coworkers, without success. After a while he gets up and shouts:

Customer: “S***, s***, Nazis!”

Then, he was gone.

No food for racists!

When I was in my early twenties, I used to be a waitress at a very popular casual fine dining restaurant. They only hired young women who could fit into a size two pencil skirt. This is only relevant because we had to deal with a lot of flirty guys and jealous, petty women.

A group of six were sat in my section: five forty-year-old men and one very rude woman.

Right away, the guys were fun. We were all joking around, and they were having fun, but the woman was going out of her way to try to treat me like a slave. I continued to act 100% unfazed and bring her everything with a smile. She kept getting more and more rude, hoping to faze me or get a reaction. I’m pretty confident and refused to let her get to me or buy into her game.

Well, until…

The entire table ordered the exact same entrée: a medium-rare striploin. The food arrived, they all tried it, and I could see smiles all around. I walked over to ask how everything tasted and all the guys were very complimentary until the woman cut them off and shrieked:

Woman: “EXCUSE ME, BUT THIS STEAK TASTES LIKE A**!”

I responded in the sweetest, calmest voice, as big and innocent as I could make my eyes:

Me: “I don’t know what a** tastes like, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Her table erupted into laughter and the woman lost it; she went into a full-on meltdown. Of course, she asked for the manager, and it was awkward explaining what had happened, but it was worth it.

It was a Friday night in our taco restaurant, and [Newbie], [Coworker], [My Ex], [Counter Guy], [Assistant Manager], and I were working. Another guy was supposed to work, but he had called off sick. He was the main line cook for the night, with [My Ex] and me as second and third. In our restaurant, you have the person who starts the taco, and another person who adds the cheese, lettuce, etc., and then the wrapper.

I was scheduled to come in at 3:00 pm and leave at 11:00 pm. Since the guy called in sick, [Assistant Manager] asked me to stay a little later. No big deal, more money in my pocket.

Well, no one realized that Friday night was prom night. It felt like every local high-schooler and their date decided to eat at our store before the big dance.

I was thrown to the front of the prep line, starting the orders. I had the most training at it, and at the same time, it wasn’t much; I could handle slow periods at best. [My Ex] was also still relatively new, so I had to tell him what went onto each and every single taco. We were slammed in the front and slammed in the drive-thru. I was doing my best to keep up, but we started to fall behind.

All of sudden, [Assistant Manager] disappeared, leaving me and [My Ex] alone on the line struggling. The drive-thru started to get backed up, so [Newbie] came over to try to help with the wrapping and pushing out orders while in between orders.

The next thing I knew, [Assistant Manager] was walking around, eating a bag of nachos, telling me to move faster, yet not doing a thing. I swear, if looks could kill, he would have dropped dead right then and there. I really wanted to yell at him to come help, but I thought he would fire me on the spot if I did.

We were busy for five solid hours. By the time it was time to close down the dining room, no one had had a break, no one had used the bathroom, and we were all furious because of [Assistant Manager]. [Counter Guy] was scheduled to go home when the dining room closed, but we talked him into staying a little bit longer to cover all our breaks. I managed to talk [Assistant Manager] into running the line for fifteen minutes. I was supposed to go home at the time, so I took my break first since my ride was there to pick me up and I had to explain the schedule change.

I called my [Store Manager] and [Assistant Manager #2] and gave them the lowdown. I sucked down about five cigarettes in about ten minutes, scarfed some food down in three, and smoked again. Then, I returned back to the war zone.

[Newbie] and [Coworker] were both given their breaks and [Counter Guy] went home. Then, [Assistant Manager] did the dumbest thing in the history of stupid things. He sent [My Ex] home. Why? Because married [Assistant Manager] decided he didn’t like [My Ex] but had a thing for me. I had massive creeper vibes.

So now, it was just [Newbie] and [Coworker] scheduled to close, and [Assistant Manager] demanded that I stay, too. Out of the three of us, no one knew how to close the line.

At midnight, we got slammed again with drunk and hungry teenagers leaving Prom. [Assistant Manager] did nothing to help but sat in the office and read emails or fired off some creepy/sexually-harassing remarks to me now that [My Ex] was gone. [Newbie] was trying to help me as best as she could despite her inexperience, leaving [Coworker] to run the counter by himself and deal with the angry drunks.

Somehow, we managed until closing time, and then we had to figure out how to close. [Coworker] took over dishes, [Newbie] bagged up the leftovers, and I started on scrubbing the line. I think we did better than expected, considering that we had no clue what we were doing. By some miracle, we managed to do it all in an hour.

This was 3:00 am now, and I had been there for twelve hours, with only one break. However, [Assistant Manager] wasn’t happy with it and made us do it all over again! By the time he was happy with it, it was 4:45 am. He never once helped.

By this time, I was scheduled to be back in three hours for my next shift, which happened to be with [Assistant Manager #2].

[Assistant Manager #2] walked through the door, took one look at me, and said, “I’ll call in [Normal Weekday Opener] and you can cover one of his shifts this week.”

I basically fell into my bed, still in work clothes, and passed out. [Store Manager] called me later that day to ask what had happened and why I had overtime. (Oops!) She was, by far, the coolest manager ever because she just listened as I went into a full rant on the phone with her, swearing and name-calling and all (and started crying).

The end result? [Assistant Manager] got written up by the [District Manager] and was not allowed to close on weekends or to close with me anymore.

I thought that was all that was going to happen, but I got one more drop in my golden goblet; it turned out that [Store Manager]’s brother had come in that night during the insanity. He told [Store Manager] that there was “a [description of me] who looked like she was about to murder [Assistant Manager] cause he was eating nachos on the floor and not working when it was crazy busy.”

[Assistant Manager] was demoted to a shift manager and then transferred to another store that was less visited, popular, and successful than ours.

Our hotel has added a sushi restaurant to the lobby. Tonight is a hotel-wide manager’s outing; all departments are being supervised by supervisors only and the one for the sushi restaurant is relatively new in the department. She and the two waitresses, as well as the sushi chef, were all off last night.

Three girls come in, sit in the sushi bar area, ask for a manager, and then explain.

Customers: “We were in last night and got sick from a bad sushi roll.”

Supervisor: “Are you guests of the hotel? If so, I can credit your room.”

Customers: “We’re not.”

Supervisor: “How did you pay?”

Customers: “Cash. We want another dinner as compensation.”

They then ordered the exact same roll they had supposedly gotten sick from the night before. It was such an obvious scam, as no one who has ever gotten sick from something would eat the same thing any time soon, let alone from the same place the very next night. Unfortunately, they picked the perfect night as there wasn’t an actual manager anywhere on-site, and no one that was there that night had been there the previous night to refute them.

They ended up with $65 worth of free food, which they ate without a problem sitting there the whole time. Of course, they didn’t tip, either.