the bitter waiter

Between the lines

Though I have no shortage of least-favorite customers, I've endured a lengthy history of animosity with one in particular.  He's been a regular at two of my L.A. places of employment.  And like a yucky fever blister or Katherine Heigl movie, he shows up frequently just to wipe his ass with my erratic contentment. 

Here's a typical conversation, with both standard discourse and the not-so-subtle unspoken communications we've established with each other. 

WHAT I SAY: Hi, how are you today?
WHAT I MEAN: Unless your answer is "I only have five minutes left to live," save it.   

WHAT HE SAYS: I'm in a hurry.
WHAT HE MEANS: I'm more important than you are. 

WHAT I SAY: Great.  What do you want to drink?
WHAT I MEAN: Just give me a reason to relieve my bladder of all the vodka I had before work...

WHAT HE SAYS: Do you have passion fruit iced iea?
WHAT HE MEANS: I already know you don't have passion fruit iced tea.  I ask every time I'm here just so I can play the part of put-upon customer when you say "No."

WHAT I SAY: No.
WHAT I MEAN: Here, take a swig from my flask.  You'll enjoy this much more than any old soft drink, and you clearly need it more than I do.  

WHAT HE SAYS: Fine.  I'll just take a regular iced tea.
WHAT HE MEANS: Hear the sigh in my voice?  Behold, the glorious refrain of my entitlement.

WHAT I SAY: We don't have any iced tea at all, actually.  We ran out. 
WHAT I MEAN: I just brewed some five minutes ago.  

WHAT HE SAYS: I'll just have a water.
WHAT HE MEANS: And by the time I'm done asking for refills, you will feel like Laura Ingalls, running back and forth fetching pails from a well.

WHAT I SAY: I'll be right back with your water.
WHAT I MEAN: Your breath smells like you've been eating from the devil's asshole.    

WHAT HE SAYS: I'm ready to order.
WHAT HE MEANS: Stand here while I look at the menu for a few minutes. 

WHAT HE SAYS: Are the braised beef tacos any good?
WHAT HE MEANS: Because they weren't very good the last four times I ordered them and sent them back. 

WHAT I SAY: We don't have any braised beef, actually.  We ran out.
WHAT I MEAN: I could feed all of Somalia with the braised beef we have in the kitchen right now. 

WHAT HE SAYS: I'll just take the steak fajitas, extra well done.  And I'm still in a hurry, so let's speed it up. 
WHAT HE MEANS: The only thing of importance I have to do today is to keep tabs on that Boba Fett action figure bidding war on eBay.    

WHAT I SAY: I'll get that rushed right out for you.
WHAT I MEAN: Before I turn in your order, I'm going on my lunch break.  Braised beef tacos and iced tea. 

WHAT HE SAYS: I'm really in a hurry.  Any idea where my food is?
WHAT HE MEANS: It's been two minutes since you turned in my order.  Is your Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle broken?

WHAT I SAY: Here's your food.  Let me know if I can bring you anything else.
WHAT I MEAN: If you so much as trouble me for water upon spontaneously combusting, I will fan the fire.
--
WHAT I SAY: How was everything?
WHAT I MEAN: Why the fuck did I just ask that??

WHAT HE SAYS: It was ok.  The steak was way too well done.  And of course it took forever. 
WHAT HE MEANS: It could have been prepared by an expert assembly of chefs from all the world over, and I'd still make it a point to complain. 

WHAT HE SAYS: Keep the change.   
WHAT HE MEANS: Watch out, iTunes.  I've given this boy the power to buy any one song of his choice with the tip I just left.

WHAT I SAY: Thank you!  Have a great day!       
WHAT I MEAN: Go fuck yourself.  I hope someone gouges out your eyes and makes you sniff your way home.

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.

Some people love a good mariachi band...

...and some have their reservations.

Light! Camera! Asshole!

I recently had to deal with a pudgy, obnoxious F-list "celebrity" who apparently spent one season on an early '90s TV show I'd never heard of. 

"Do I look familiar?" he asked while staring blankly at me as I waited for him to order.

"Nope," I replied, tapping my pen even more impatiently.

"Oh," he sighed.  "I thought you were giving me that I-know-you-from-somewhere-look."

No.  This is my stop-staring-at-me-like-you're-epileptic-and-order look.

"You look very, very, very, very familiar to me," he said.  "Doesn't he look familiar to you??" he asked his dinner companion, an unfortunate-looking lass who spent her time quietly numbing the sound of this asshole's voice with alcohol.

"Uhhhm," she stuttered.  "No?"

"Maybe we worked together," he said.  "Oh I know!  Were you ever an extra on [name of TV series]?"

"Nope."

"The only reason I ask is because I did a brief stint on [name of TV series].  Well, HAHA, ok, I was a series regular, so I guess it wasn't just a brief stint."

"Right.  Oh wow, look at the time.  Were you two ready to order?"

"What was that dish JESSICA was telling me about?" he asked his friend.  "I think it's so funny they named a drink after her."

He looked at me, no doubt expecting me to inquire further.  I carefully examined my shirt for lint.

"It's just...I'm friends with JESSICA SIMPSON, because we did a movie together," he bragged.

Bitch, please.  I performed improvised dance routines to "Material Girl" in child talent shows at the Oklahoma State Fair that drew more critical acclaim than Jessica Simpson's acting career.  Talk to me when you've worked with someone whose "movies" aren't lining the bottom of a Wal-Mart bargain bin. 

"Have you waited on her?" he asked. 

"I think so," I said.  "I get all those where-are-they-now celebrities confused.  Anyway, were you two ready?"

After going on and on about some diet for some big audition for some alleged comeback, The Famous Actor and his companion decided to split an order of chicken fajitas.

I returned after the food was served to make my obligatory quality control cameo.

"Doing ok?" I asked while covering my ears.

"You know..." he said with a mouthful of chicken -- Whichever anecdote he was on the cusp of sharing was so important that it couldn't wait for him to chew. 

"...This (SMACK SMACK) reminds me of the yummy food I ate on set when I did an episode of [vaguely familiar TV series from the early 90s] (SMACK SMACK).  Maybe your restaurant did the catering for that show?"

"Oh I doubt it," I replied.  "The restaurant wasn't in business that long ago."

"Just shows you how long I've been a working actor," he said smugly.

Long enough to go completely unrecognized in broad daylight in a restaurant within two miles of five major studios.  How prolific.

 I cleared the plates, praying that someone would ask for the bill.  But no.

"What was that dessert that TIFFANI recommended?"

"Uhm...are you asking me?" I inquired.

"Yes!  You know, TIFFANI AMBER-THIESSEN?"

"How in the world would I know which dessert someone else recommended to you?"

"Well doesn't she come here all the time?" he asked incredulously.

"I've waited on her once," I said.  "And I don't remember what she ordered for dessert, if she even ordered dessert, or if she came dressed as a unicorn princess."

 "That's odd," he said.  "Normally people pay attention to what celebrities order.  I know when I go to [Restaurant of average quality and unjustified price in Beverly Hills] that the waiters always know my order.

Perhaps to expedite their experience with you. 

I stood there determined not to move a muscle to drive home the point of how indifferent and bored I was.

"So.  Any dessert?"

"No no," he said.  "Not with my big audition coming up.  You know, for AARON SORKIN?"

I rolled my eyes in slow motion and walked off.  I did overhear the big spender explain to his poor friend why he couldn't pay.  Something about "that big residual check" not having arrived yet.  She paid, and tipped me about 50 percent.  I'm sure this wasn't her first time to apologize for her has-been friend in the form of gratuity.

What I found most peculiar is that, even though his friend signed her credit card slip, he still signed the top of it and wrote "Thanks Chad!"

Ugh.  Actors...