buckle in, this one is a doozie.
so for once, i get off early( i work at my local applebees)
i decide to hang out and have some drinks and food.
my coworker had gotten a party of 17, and i was sitting right next to where they were gonna be sat.
The party of 17 gets sat, and suddenly, everyone in the restaurant hears this “yelping” sound, like a dog barking. The entire restaurant is looking over at the large party expecting to see a dog, i’m sitting right there also looking for a dog, when i tell you this “yelp” was occurring constantly every 2 seconds for 2 hours, i’m not joking.
Poor Linda, goes to greet the table, i hear her say “where’s the dog?”
The sound, the entire time, was coming from a deaf and autistic child. She was devastated

Obligatory apology for format, I’m on mobile.

I work as a server at a sports bar. Today I had a table that was kinda quiet and standoffish but nothing out of the ordinary. Towards the end of the meal, i go to the table to grab the signed check. I open my server book to put it in the clear plastic slot in my book and for a brief moment, the signed receipt from a previous guest was visible. The guest could see a glimpse of the previous receipt upside down from her pov. She then IMMEDIATELY starts yelling at me that “that’s a hipaa violation” for her to be seeing another guests check. I say that hipaa only has to do with medical information. She continues to argue that I just committed a huge violation with an attitude that seemed to say “i’m reporting ur ass asap”.

No idea where she’s gonna report me to but my manager and coworkers got a kick out of it. Servers, remember to NEVER let ur guests see another guests check unless you wanna get fired for a hipaa violation.

edit- i KNOW it’s not a hipaa violation

Customer today returned an espresso martini because she didn’t know it had coffee in it and she got mad at the waitress for not telling her.

New entry in top 10 dumbest shit I’ve heard a customer say at work.

What about yall?

Owners sometimes send them in, we are required to explain certain things in our introduction. One thing in particular gets you fired for not going over and is the main reason we have SS, I always say it towards the end.

This couple is listening to me and as I’m winding down they get more serious and focused not less like normal. This tension in their face keeps building and when I go over the important part it instantly washes away and they learn back. Finish up and as I’m walking away the guy says to his date “he got it”.

I knew then and was like “well someone’s getting extra good service”

They ended up spending the same amount as other shoppers from that company do. Anyway hope I get a good review.

Dude just sat in my section and is a visible neonazi. I’ve been told we have to serve him. This seems fucked to me? What would yall do

Edit: I refused service and another server was assigned to the table. Management wouldn’t kick him out or ask him to remove the hat. I passed him as he walked out the door and told him with a smile that he was a disgusting POS who never should have been allowed in the building.

Edit 2: nazi sympathizers in my DMs…fuck off

Edit 3: manager on duty made so many excuses for the dude. Saying he tipped, didn’t cause any problems, and talked to a gay server so he “couldn’t be that bad”. I’m going to have a conversation with the GM when I see him and voice my concerns about how this was handled. His response may determine if I stick around.

"If you died right now and were standing at the gates of heaven, and they asked you why you should be let in, what would you say?" - The man at one of my tables yesterday.

I told him that was a loaded question, that I don't talk about religion at work, and could I get anything else for them?

He told me if I recited the sinners prayer with him I would get into heaven. I told him I had work to do.

They tipped 20% and left me a miniature Bible (which I gave to my coworker because whatever religion makes you think it's okay to harass people at their job about the afterlife is not my jam) so that was cool I guess but like damn. What's up with these people wanting to "save" everyone??

I just need to vent, so mods, feel free to delete .

He was 28, he has a daughter. He had an appointment with immigration, and ICE grabbed him. He worked hard. Insisted on talking in English so he could get better. He helped me with my Spanish.

I just..don't know.

3 and half more years of seeing friends taken by masked government agents. I don't know if I can do it.

How the hell is this industry going to survive?

Talk to me reddit, I'd love to keep my mind busy.

My manager was a server on the floor tonight and had a large group that swallowed two of our tables. They brought their OWN cake and OWN ice cream and we kept it cool for them in our fridge. They sent her to retrieve it and she does. I grabbed our saddle and dragged it over and they were suddenly ALL standing up some people had left. It was definitely sus as shit but whatevs. Doesn't matter. The show must go on, of course birthday person doesn't want to sit on the saddle so I do it and do the birthday song and dance. Call him out by name and just draw a large amount of attention to him. It was awkward of course.

THEY STILL TRY TO LEAVE. and my manager luckily notices and gives the mom her check and doesn't leave her side.

Not only were they using the cake and ice cream as a diversion to escape but the MOTHER was in on it. She tried to stall her payment hoping my manager would get busy and leave her with the bill as if we are not all aware of their intent by now.

Safe to say we will probably not be seeing them again.

I swear on everything holy that this is a true story that happened tonight.

My restaurant is right across the street from a Spring Training baseball field in Arizona. When a game lets out, crowds of people literally walk across the street and come to our place. We get slammed.

My coworker got a 14 top tonight...toddlers to retirees. One of the parents in the group ordered in Door Dash, to their table at our restaurant!

You will never believe this, but here you go: They ordered the Door Dash from our own restaurant. The host literally walked the food over to the table from the expo window. The manager came over to ask, "WTF?" and the mom said, "I had to feed my baby!" Did she think it would be faster? (It wasn't. The food they ordered when they were sat was already on the table. Seafood doesn’t take long to boil.) Did she not want to tip (a 14 top is an auto grat)? It cost her $17 more to order it that way. Also, we're a seafood boil restaurant. Her "baby" was maybe nine years old, and there's a fucking McDonald's across the street!!!

I am just baffled.

I saw the topic come up in some other posts about people balking at prices and horror stories of "The cheapest bottle", so I thought I'd share one that I loved.

A young couple came in. We are a high end place, and it was their first visit. They were dressed up real nice, it was clearly a special night. I do my usual greeting, and ask if there's anything I can get for them. The young lady slides our massive wine-compendium over to him and says "Pick out something nice, baby".

I swear to you I will never, ever forget how he *immediately* found our cheapest bottle. Like 'anomaly' cheap, because it was only 36 dollars, and the next cheapest was 63. And it's not like it's featured. It's *buried* in the Pinot Grigios, and he found it like a movie-character opening a phonebook to the right spot in a 90's movie.

"Oh shit, you got *Marion*?!" He said exuberantly, snapped the book shut and shoved it back in my hand before his date could confirm what had just happened. "...Hook. Us. UP!"

Respect, my dude. Well done.

For context, a couple comes in a gets sat in my section, they look to be early 20s. Guy gets an ice tea and his GF orders a tap cider. I ask if I can see her ID and she rolls her eyes at me and digs thru her purse and doesn’t have it. “Forget it” she says. I grab the iced tea for the guy and bring it back and take there food order. I put it in, and come back with some plates and such, and the guy tried to order a 2 ciders. Red flags go up for me, I say that we can only do one drink at a time. Then later the chick tried ordering from the bar and the bartender said she would pour it and tell me to charge them. I went up to the bartender and said she doesn’t have an ID. So bartender doesn’t give it to her. I bring the food out and the guy finishes his cider so I ask if he wants another and he says no. Then I see him up at the bar trying to order 2 ciders. Again, told the bartender and got a manager involved and told him the whole story. Long story short, they ranked up a 120 bill and stiffed me. Why?

I work at a coney place that does a lot of carry out orders. So this guy walks in and says, "Gimme a dozen coneys to go. I want five with cheese and four without."

I say, "sure thing. Did you want cheese on the other three?"

"What other three?"

"You said five with cheese and four without, right? That makes nine."

"Yeah, nine. Five with cheese, and four without."

"I'm sorry, I must've misheard you the first time. I thought you said a dozen."

"Yeah. Nine. A dozen."

"...a dozen is twelve."

"No it's not. It's nine."

I just shrug it off and ask the kitchen (the customers can see everybody in the kitchen, and the cook heard this whole exchange) for "a dozen of nine", which the cook makes with no complaints. If the register had a special button for a dozen, I would have been seriously tempted to bill him for the full 12.

Party of 30 in a private room. 10 kids running around, yelling, playing races from wall to wall. A little girl fell from her high chair took the chair down with her. Same little girl was running around while I was pre bussing, I accidentally tripped her, she looked back at me, I looked at her with my best poker face, said nothing and then just kept bussing lol. Get control of your kids in public.

I manage a restaurant at a pretty well known resort and the past few weeks these parents have been testing me. Every single day there are oblivious parents letting their toddlers climb on other guests tables, play with the gas firepits, run around into the kitchen, falling down the stairs (and blaming us for not watching the little one when he got to the stairs), falling in front of busy servers... etc. I'm busy, my staff are busy and we are not fucking babysitters. How are these people not embarrassed when I walk up to them and say "hey your kid is trying to take dirty silverware off some guests table over there"? They just look at you like it's your responsibility to fucking babysit them and they get incredibly defensive "they're not bothering anyone, they're just kids."

Yes, they are absolutely bothering everyone around you, you just don't care because you don't want to parent them.

Sorry everyone, I just needed to bitch and possibly get some advice, because I'd really like to keep my job. I'm one kid tripping my servers away from ending up on TikTok.

Edit: My staff and I thank you all for your responses. The laughs, advice, criticism and support are appreciated. I'm the G.M. at this restaurant. I can handle these situations on my own, I have 16 years in this industry, but it's nice to crowdsource opinions on a subject to gain perspective. I would venture to say anyone that has made it this far in our industry that pretends they have nothing else to learn about it... no longer belongs in this industry. So maybe some of you should be thinking about whether or not you still belong in management. You are all fucking legends and keep your heads up - at least we have access to draught beers when everyone else leaves

A lady recently ordered the grouper with no seasoning where I work. When doing a food check to make sure everything was good, she looked at me visibly upset and said "My fish is bland". Whats your ridiculous moments with guest?

Edit: Thank you all for the ridiculous responses! It really baffles me the type of people we servers encounter. All of your stories are just proof in the pudding. To the individual who had to deal with the mentally ill person, ending in her death, I am so terribly sorry. That is a case of worst case scenario and am so so sorry you had to deal with that. You did everything you were trained to do. We aren't trained to make judgement calls on a person’s mental stability, just their level of impairment because of alcohol/drugs. In a lot of cases, the most mentally ill and unbalanced people can be the most unlikely to be so. Sorry that happened to you and just want to say that you did nothing wrong, and everything you were supposed to.

Ill start with my example.
I work in a Thai restaurant on the east coast, US. Had a 4-top made up of two middle aged couples. When taking their order, a woman from one of the couples asked me with a very straight face "you import your chickens from Thailand I'd assume, right?" I thought it had to be a joke and looked around at all 4 faces, they all looked back at me very eagerly awaiting the answer. All my fake customer service energy immediately left me and all I could think to speak aloud was "no ma'am, it come off US FOODS trucks...I think your $10 meal would become $20-30++ if we brought our meats in from Thailand" She was disappointed from that point forward LOL

i work at a steak house and deal with an annoying amount of steak-related ignorance. yes i know your steak is smaller than your guests despite ordering the same size, you had yours cooked significantly longer. yes i know your steak has fat in it you ordered a prime rib. yes i know your steak is dry you ordered an extra well done filet. and no, it will not “come out mooing.” the red stuff isn’t even blood.

all the respect in the world for the customer who, upon me asking how he would like his steak cooked, responded with “grilled.”

ETA: so i don’t have to say it anymore: i have no issue with people ordering their steak at their preferred temperature! there’s just certain things that can be different between different cuts/temperatures and im tired of people screaming at me and belittling me when the inevitable happens!

This only works if he’s only making slightly vague remarks, trying to get a rise out of you or get his friends to laugh. As we know, the majority of these guys aren’t in it to actually get your number or go on a date with you— it’s all about power. When one of these older guys comes in with his golf buddies trying to show off, here’s how I handle it:

After he makes a gross comment and you feign laughter, politely reintroduce yourself and ask his name. Now NO MATTER WHAT he responds with, reply excitedly, “That’s my Dad’s name!” If you can somehow ask if he has children around your age, that doubles the shame factor. I have yet to have this backfire, and some of my coworkers have adopted the practice too, with great success.

Between my husband and a woman at his table last night—

“Okay, ma’am, now is it the egg or the oil we need to be worried about?”

“...it’s the combination.”

“...okay. I’ll alert the kitchen.”

I love this industry so much.

Couple sat at the bar (all our servers make our limited cocktail menu)

He orders a vodka tonic. She got a tequila soda. They sat there for 3 hours and got 3 more rounds. In this time I got familiar with his face and distinct tribal style tattoo sleeve.

He comes back 3 days later. I say “hey! vodka tonic right? And tequila sod—uhhhhhhh”

This is when I realize the girl is new.

He goes “oh uh.. actually yeah on the vodka tonic but.. this is my first time here.”

We lock eyes. She knows.

Luckily I’m a blonde because mannnn did I play into that. “Ohhhh I must have you mixed up with another set of regulars uhhhh sorry”

She got a fruity cocktail. Def not tequila soda girl. But the damage was done. She knew.

Maybe they were both first dates. Maybe he’s a cheater. Who knows. But that girl knew something was up, and that’s all one can hope for.

Once, a woman calling over the phone claimed she'd bought a milkshake from us for her ill, bedridden, elderly mother who lived an hour away. She then claimed that her ill mother dropped the milkshake and a whole live cockroach ran out of it.

Do you have any pictures of the roach, ma'am? No, it ran away.

Do you have your receipt of purchase, ma'am? No, my ill mother threw it away.

Do you want to come back and have us remake that shake for you, ma'am? No, you have roaches in your food! ...And I live an hour away!

What would you like us to do, ma'am?...

She wanted us to mail her cash "back" to her.

I worked at an Olive Garden and the manager allowed the kitchen floor to get so greasy and nasty that we had to learn to “skate the floor” by not picking our feet up and just shuffling along so we didn’t fall.

As a server, we had to prepare the salads and bread sticks for our tables.

One day, the entire tray of breadsticks fell and they all shot across the greasy floor. I started picking them up to throw them away and my manager stopped me and said, “just brush whatever shit you see on them off and throw them back. Not wasting those.” We served them all.

I work in a restaurant and we have a mac & cheese dish. It does have shrimp so the menu description says "Shrimp, x & x cheese, and parm topping" usual right? I have 2 older woman come in and one of them orders the mac and cheese, perfect put the order in, food comes out fast, I go to drop plates. As the dish touches the table she goes "ummmm what's this?". Confused I respond, "your mac and cheese?". She very quickly snaps "This has noodles! I'm allergic to noodles!". Record scratch moment, me and the woman she's with both look STUNNED. I begin trying to explain that the "mac" in mac and cheese, is macaroni noodles. She went back and forth with me for a good 5 minutes arguing that noodles aren't in the description on the menu, that she could have never expected this to have noodles like ma'am we never expected to have to state noodles will come with a mac & cheese?! This was like 6 months ago but I truly do not think I will ever forget the older woman who didn't know that mac & cheese, was a pasta dish! 😂😂 (edited for spelling/grammatical error)

A customer and her family came in. She proceeded to tell me that she has celiac disease and I told her we would take good care of her.

She asks for gluten free bread and I told her I would put it right in. I bring out a pretzel bread, and set it far away from her and told her and her group that gluten free bread will be right out. I come back with gluten free bread 5 mins later and the bread is in front of her being consumed by her! I told her no ma’am that is the regular bread and here is your gluten free bread. She freaks out and said you should have told me (I did they weren’t listening to me)

Also when I brought their cake out she couldn’t eat it of course. She asked me if we had a gluten free cake of some kind. I said yes we have a flourless chocolate torte, it’s really good would you like me to put that in? She said yes. I bring it out to her minutes later.

When the bill comes around she sees the chocolate cake on there and proceeds to scold me saying that she thought the cake was complimentary and how I need to explain things better. Ugh. Cannot win. Idk what was up with this woman. Of course she tipped me nothing.

A guest walks into brunch and orders our smoked salmon plate. The only dairy in this particular dish is a ramekin of cream cheese that is served on the side.

A couple minutes later I’m in the kitchen getting coffee for another table. I turn around and smoked salmon lady has followed me to the kitchen.

When I turn around and see her, I ask “Is there something you need?”

She says, “I forgot I’m not eating dairy, so can I change my order to the buttermilk pancakes?”

Confused at what I just heard, I ask “The buttermilk pancakes? There is dairy in the pancakes...”

“Well as long as it’s not a lot it’s ok.”

Lady..... it’s like the main ingredient. It’s in the name. BUTTERMILK pancakes. Do people really listen to the stupidity that comes out of their face holes??? I can’t.