Whatever Tip They Left Wasn’t Worth It

I work at a busy Japanese restaurant, and my coworker had an encounter with a table full of entitled customers consisting of an older woman and a bunch of middle-aged to young women.

It was relatively lively and I was busy handling orders in the kitchen while the hall staff were running around like headless chickens trying to take everyone’s order. My coworker started to take the table’s order. They listed off twenty or so items.

Coworker: “All right, give me a second while I input all this.”

Older Customer: “No, do it now.”

Soon after receiving their order, they complain that the lotus chips the older customer received were overcooked. Our lotus chips typically are fried to all h*** to remove the sweetness and moisture. taste pretty good and are by no means overcooked. But whatever, they give them another batch of chips that were cooked the exact same way, and they don’t complain about it again.

Once some empty dishes have piled up on their table, my coworker comes by with a tray to collect it. As he pulls up to the table, he’s holding the tray in one hand with a lax wrist and is by no means ready to carry anything. Before he can properly support it so that he can grab things, two of the younger women dump their beer glasses on the tray. The tray is at an angle and isn’t supported so my coworker has to quickly scramble to make sure they don’t fall.

Things start to slow down, so one of my managers takes her break. She is relaxing on her phone when the older customer storms over.

Older Customer: “Why are you resting? Get me a fork!”

Since my coworkers are mostly Japanese where the customer is always king, and despite living in a society where you can tell these people to f*** off, we had to leave them be and remain polite. There is a limit on dining time, so the second it was up, they told them to leave. They got up to pay… and then sat back down.

They were asked to leave three more times to make way for more customers. They didn’t leave at all. Then, when it suited them, they finally left. When a customer leaves, we bang on a small drum and say thank you. Needless to say, they didn’t get this treatment!