Home is where the hate is

I live roughly 1,440 miles away from my home state of Oklahoma.  And yet I've still encountered a number of people from the heart land during my years at the restaurant.

In strange, Hellish twists of fate, I've waited on chatty friends from my family's church, dumb jocks who tried to run me over in the high school parking lot, and even my former loathsome headmaster, who smugly said "I see you've done a lot with yourself since graduation" as I wiped spilled salsa off his table.  

But nothing prepared me for waiting on two of the tackiest, classless, most difficult people I've ever met...whom I previously served about nine years prior while waiting tables back home during college.

"Hmmmmmm," Tammy Joe said after I greeted her and her wife-beater wearing husband Johnny Joe.  "You look familiar."

"Oh do I?" I replied sheepishly, knowing full well who they both were.  And what they had done...
---
FLASHBACK: Summer of 2002, Red Rock Canyon Grill, Oklahoma City...

TONYA:  Excuse me!  You charged us $36 for the strip steak special?!?
ME:  Yes.  Because that's how much it costs.
TONYA:  Don'tcha think that's a little expensive for regular customers?  We come here all the time.
ME:  You and everyone else who tells me that.
TONYA:  Well smart ass, you won't think you're so funny when I tell [the manager] how unhappy we are.

CUT TO: Manager's Office, later that night...

MANAGER:  I'm sorry.  I have no choice but to suspend you for two weeks.
---

So yeah.  I vividly remembered Tammy Joe and Johnny Joe.  Only this time, instead of working in a high(er) end restaurant with strict service standards, I was schlepping chips and salsa in a D-grade dive replete with ghetto dine-and-dashers and a management team that was too busy sniffing bleach in a van outside to care whether I gave good service or walked through the restaurant drunk and naked on rollerskates while waiving both middle fingers in the air.  

"Are you from Oklahoma bah chance?" twanged Johnny Joe, who looked like George Hamilton's morbidly obese twin.

"Why yes I am," I smiled.  "I take it you two are as well?"

"Yes we are!!" he shouted.  "So do we get the freends n' family discount?" he howled as chip fragments skeedadled from his open trap. 

I'd sooner rub butter on my body and take a nap in a crowded pig pen. 

"Haha," I sighed.

"We're actually in a hurry," Tammy Joe interrupted.  "We have V.ah.P. tickets?  For the Warner Brothers Studios tour?  So if we could hurry this up?"

"Ooh fancy!" I replied. 

Tammy Joe ordered the large steak nachos, medium rare, and Johnny Joe ordered four cheese enchiladas with extra pinto beans on the side.

Once the food arrived, Tammy Joe yoddled to get my attention and interrupted my daily game of "One shot for the customer, four shots for me."

"Yes?" I said as I approached the table.

"This steak? Is kinda RED!"

"Correct," I replied.  "That's what medium rare looks like."

"UHHHHHH, no," Johnny Joe interjected.  "Medium ra-yer refers to how long ya cook it, not what color it is."

"I see," I replied.  "So would you like your medium rare to be more of a pink color?"

They both looked at me as if I'd just asked them to name the capitals of all 54 states. 

"Have you actually worked in a restaurant before?"  Tammy Joe asked.  "Because medium rare is more of a dark brown color.  It's called medium rare because it's way more medium than it is rare."

"That's...a great explanation," I said.  "I'll have the cook fix this right away."

I had the cook remake the nachos with a steak burned to a crisp.  Because this was no expedient process, I returned to the table to find Tammy Joe tapping her credit card like a tomahawk, complemented by the sickly sound of her flashy acrylic nails. 

"We're almost late for our tour ya know?" she said.  "We'll just take the bill.  And I don't think those nachos should be on that bill."

"Ok," I said.  "Then I'll just throw them away."

"Oh no you won't," she countered.  "We still wanna eat them."

"Ok," I said again.  "Then I'll take care of this bill whenever you're ready.  Including the nachos."

Tammy Joe and Johnny Joe began to yell at me in unison about customer service, my bad attitude, how the-customer-is-always-right, and a litany of other lies entitled people will tell you to get free food.  The manager, reeking of musty marijuana, dragged himself over to the table and somehow articulated that either the nachos would be paid for, or they'd be garbage-bound. 

Tammy Joe and Johnny Joe then left without paying their bill, thus giving them the dubious distinction of being the only people to have stiffed me in two different states.

Comments

[erin]

oh oklahoma. i work in dallas, but we get our fair share of that trash during the texas vs ou game weekend. first complaint i've ever had actually sent to corporate, even though everything was great, they were NOT thrilled about the 18% auto grat they got for being a group of eleven inbred assholes. they also asked for a to-go sweet tea, which they proceeded to puncture and dump all over the table. lovely bunch. i got tricked into working that night, by a coworker, guilted me about it being her birthday or some shit. never again.

[Worth Cadenhead]

If this is how you truly operate, I want to spend an evening just drinking at a table and watching you go. I'd probably even be willing to make up for all the tips you got stiffed on just to pay for my entertainment. People where I work think I'm a smartass, but I salute you, sir!!

[PurpleGirl]

Wow, that is a crazy and shitty coincidence.

[Naughty Waitress]

They sho is rude in Oklahoma!!!

[Emily]

What a small, weird world.

I inadvertently waited on my ex's second cousin in New York...And my ex's family is from Arizona!!

[Sweaty Noel]

The only selling point I can see about working at your current restaurant is that management is so careless and clueless that they couldn't give a rat's ass about whether or not the customer is "right"--YAY!!

[chris]

I love "ray-er." Love!

[MM]

Anyone we know???