Little Maddie entered my section screaming during a stressful dinner shift. She brought along an American Girl doll, a set of 64 Crayons, and three different pair of shoes. Her father, Mark, didn't care where she roamed, for he was too busy flirting with some busty blonde at the bar.
"You're the waiter!" Maddie (age 5ish) informed me when I passed by her table. "CHOOOOOCOLATE MILK!!!!"
"No no, sorry!" I responded, "I can't take any drink orders until there's an adult at the table. Guess we'll have to wait for your daddy!" and then I hid behind a corner and took a sip of stress vodka from my flask. I'd dealt with Mark and Maddie before. He allows her to run wild and untethered throughout the restaurant while he either preys on his latest sexual conquest or swaps hooker stories with the other gross single dads at the bar. He's also a shit tipper, and we servers fight tooth and nail to avoid waiting on him.
I ignored Maddie until Mark finally joined her in the booth. Instead of acknowledging me, he helped her change into the second pair of shoes she'd brought for dinner.
"She'd like a chocolate milk," he finally said.
"Mmm, nuh-uh," I said. "Just like last time, and the times before, we don't have chocolate milk."
"And you all still can't just make it?" he asked incredulously, as if Lumiere and Cogsworth were waiting in the wings to grant our guest's every wish.
"Nope," I smiled.
After a couple temper tantrums, Mark's many returns to Barbarella at the bar, and no fewer than a dozen broken crayons left for me to clean up, Mark finally ordered. He told Maddie she could get up and "Go play restaurant," and she made a bee-line for my co-worker, sending a bottle of wine and its three glasses crashing to a sad, premature death. Of course Mark didn't apologize. Maddie's adorable, everything she does is adorable, and isn't that broken bottle of (expensive) Malbec adorable, as well?
For dessert, Maddie made a new request while feeding crayons to her ugly American Girl doll.
"I want a crêpe!" she bellowed.
"She wants a crêpe," Mark reiterated, in case I couldn't hear his bright-eyed little banshee.
"We don't have crêpes," I said.
"Yeah you do," Mark countered.
Oh that's right, thank you! I forgot which one of us works here for a second, my bad.
"No." I replied. "We don't."
"You have eggs, flour, and water, correct?" he said.
"We have the ingredients for a lot of dishes we don't offer, yes," I said. "But we can't make a crêpe."
Mark impolitely instructed me to go ask our chef, who would no sooner inconvenience himself to alter his menu for a Make A Wish kid, let alone some entitled asshole from Brentwood. I returned and informed him that he was crap out of luck on the crêpe.
"Well, how about some ice cream, honey?" a defeated Mark asked Maddie, whose response was pure sobbing. "I WANT A CRÊPE!"
"I'm sorry, sweetie, but the server doesn't want to go the distance," Mark said. "We'll just take the bill. And add [the blonde at the bar]'s drinks."
Mark normally tips about 10-12 percent. Tonight, however, as punishment for something completely beyond my control, I received no tip. Just a bunch of fucking broken crayons.
Oh. And one pair of shoes that Maddie left behind.
I stuffed the goddamn crayon fragments in the shoes, tossed them in the trash, and took a sip of relaxation vodka from my other flask. Finally, I could go the distance.