There are so many of them. They are almost the entire general public. For very time Gordon sticks his hand in gum on Kitchen Nightmares, there are 50 pieces of gum under the tables at your favorite restaurant. It doesn't matter if you clean often either, you'll never see them do it but the gum is replenished.

people who put their gum under tables are wild animals they literally do not have higher level cognitive functions. they live in nature.

yesterday i was taking a guest’s order and they were staring at the menu and the question they asked stunned me into silence and has been burned into my brain for life and i will present it to you verbatim today. they looked at the menu and turned to me and asked “so like, the more we get, the more expensive it is? is that how it works?”

I tip like 25-50% usually I love service workers and they need my coin… my gf busts ass all the time in the service industry and I respect that so much and even before I met her since I’m a normal and good person I’ve always been a generous tipper but yeah y’all need to tip it doesn’t matter if your food was cheap YOUR SERVER DOESN’T MAKE FUUUUCKIG MINIMUM WAGE AND THEY DON’T USUALLY MAKE ANY KIND OF COMMISSION. If you cannot afford to tip you cannot afford your services and you need to do something else so you aren’t wasting hardworking people’s labor. Your nail tech needs that tip, your waiter needs that tip, your hairdresser needs that tip. Respect their work, time, and the skills you pay for when you go out to receive services rather than doing things yourself.

Most Embarrassing Moment Ever

First off, I just discovered this blog and I adore it. Thank you for this gift. So I thought I would share my most embarrassing story.

Normal Saturday afternoon. I was working lunch and I end up taking a twenty top. It’s a girls soccer team. The girls were probably about 14/15 years old and they had several parents with them too. No biggie. They’re nice and not complicated. Now here’s where it gets interesting. All the girls order milkshakes and I take a bunch of them in one go to run them to the table. Now, our milkshakes have a glass and the little extra in one of those metal tins on the side. I was on the last milkshake. I set down the tin, with one milkshake still left on my tray. I notice the tin on the table starts to wobble as there was something small underneath it keeping it from standing straight. So my first instinct is to steady that thing before it falls and makes a mess. Unfortunately, I lost focus on the tray in my other hand and that milkshake tipped just enough over the edge to POUR over the head of the girl I was standing behind. I’m not talking a little dribble. I’m talking 75% of the milkshake ended up on her head and dribbled down her shirt.

There was a moments silence and then the whole table burst into laughter. Meanwhile my face went white. I started apologizing profusely and ran back to grab as many napkins as I could carry. I felt so terrible. The girl ended up going to the bathroom and stuck her head in the sink to try and get it out. We comped her meal and apologized profusely. The parents kind of laughed it off and completely understood that it was an accident but I still felt bad for this girl who just seemed miserable now.

I also later found out that they were on their way to the airport to catch a flight home (2 hour flight) after this soccer tournament.

I really hope they (and particularly that girl) look back and laugh about it.

If you can’t afford (or even worse, choose not) to tip your server after they’ve given you good service don’t 👏🏼 fucking 👏🏼 eat 👏🏼 out 👏🏼.

okay but they made a whole blog for this post.

Do ye know what REALLY gets on my nerves?

When customers ask for cold milk with their americano… But then complain when their coffee “isn’t hot enough” after they have poured an entire jug of milk into it…

So, I offer them hot milk instead and they decline, INSISTING that they still want cold milk.

“well can’t you just make the water hotter?”

IF IT GETS ANY HOTTER IT WILL FUCKING EVAPORATE.

I'm gonna say it again: BE NICE TO YOUR WAITER

My mom and stepdad are in town and we went to breakfast this morning at Nadeen's, one of my favorite local places. We were seated outside. It took a while for us to decide what we wanted, and our waiter was training a young new waitress, so things were a little disorganized. I got my coffee right away because I was sat first and waited for them, but it took more than 10 minutes for my stepdad to get his coffee. He didnt seem too bothered by this, but he's always weirdly short with wait staff and it makes me uncomfortable.

So when we were finally ready to order, he got a hashbrown platter thing but instead of the melted cheese thats supposed to come on top, he asked for biscuit gravy. I knew what he meant but I sort of anticipated what could happen.

We waited quite a while for our food, during which they were not exactly prompt with refilling our tiny coffee cups. When it did come out, the trainee set in front of him two plates: the hashbrown thing he ordered, and a side of biscuits and gravy. He immediately flipped. "This isnt what I ordered, I wanted biscuit gravy ON TOP!" The trainee apologized and walked away, we all assumed she would be right back with a side of just gravy.

More than 5 minutes later, still no gravy. And my stepdad will not shut up about how his food is getting cold, how hes going to go in and find a manager and make sure our entire meal is free. All while there is A Plate of GRAVY Sitting RIGHT THERE??? Also Getting Cold? It just had biscuits under it.

So the waiter comes out finally, trainee right behind him with the gravy. And he apologizes sincerely, saying that he misunderstood and was sorry that the wait for the gravy was longer than he would have liked because of how busy it had suddenly gotten. My stepdad said over and over how he was now being forced to eat Cold Food and he just wanted to have a NICE meals with his FAMILY. He gestured at my mom and I. I made it clear with a look that I was uncomfortable but he didnt seem to notice or care.

A manager came over right after and my stepdad basically ignored him, passive aggressively digging into his meal without looking up, mumbling that it was fine. They had taken his food off the bill without him asking, so the harshness was in no way necessary. The man just wanted to complain.

Before we left, I went in to tip the singer who was playing covers inside. I found the waiter and his trainee and apologized that my stepdad was a dick. The waiter said it was fine, he deals with people like that all the time, but I told him it wasnt fine and no one deserves to be treated that way. I let them know that they are both lovely and that they did a perfectly fine job for how busy they were.

When my stepdad went in to pee, I made sure my mom knew how I felt, and that I had lost a good bit of respect for her husband just then. She tried to make excuses, "he travels a lot", "he eats out too much", "we're on a tight schedule today", but there is not a single good excuse. I made sure she understood that too. Especially around me, a former waitress who is extremely vocal about this kind of thing, the man should have known better.

I didn't see whether my stepdad left a tip, but I'm assuming he did not. Next time I'm there, I'll ask the waiter and make sure he gets from me what he should have made from our table today.

tl;dr: Be nice to wait staff or you might lose what little rapport you had with your stepkid.

Truuuu

HAPPY AMERICA, GUYS

Margaritas aren’t girl drinks they’re drinks for everyone.

I feel like storing these to next each other is going to end poorly for someone

Some of my foodservice favorites:

-Asked to explain what a caesar salad was to an older couple who, in their own words, “usually just go to McDonalds”

-Repeatedly brought a steak back to the kitchen because “it isn’t cooked enough”. After about the 4th time, the cook (rightfully) blasted the shit out of this steak that was originally ordererd medium rare. When I brought it out, the guy cut into it, then literally stood up and tried to convince everyone in the restaurant (there was a convention in town, so it was mostly people from the same group) to leave with him because of how poorly his steak was handled.

-Was asked for some top-shelf brand of champagne (that I had to google because no one there had heard of it) AT A FUCKING LOGAN’s ROADHOUSE

-Asked “do you have breakfast” at literally every restaurant I’ve worked. I was once very specifically asked--at a steakhouse--whether we would make pancakes for the table.

-”Is there gluten in potatoes?”

-People becoming exaggerately upset when they learned that it’s Texas Roadhouse that does the honey-cinnamon-butter thing, not Logan’s. When faced with this, some people actually have the balls to leave. I would offer to bring cups of honey and cinnamon so they could add it to the butter at their leisure, but the idea of mixing it themselves was often too much to handle. 

-Two old men won’t leave my section until two hours after I’m supposed to be done. I start sweeping THE OTHER END OF THE ROOM and they yell to me to stop because if I get any closer they won’t be able to handle the dust. 

Tonight I had a table of 21 lads drinking none stop they were so needy I neglected my other tables they kept ordering wine by the bottle and constant flow of beer. I was happy to serve them and have a laugh, they asked me to meet up with them after I got off work. We close at 11pm on a saturday night, but we stayed open till 12:30 for them. When their bill came it came to 750 and they left 30 tip by the time I'd gotten out of work it was 1:30am and I was fuming. 4% tip does this happen a lot?

Damn that blows. I won’t say it’s common but it definitely happens enough to be an issue. Some of the places I’ve worked, we’ve been allowed to add an 18% tip to “large parties” (usually over 8), so maybe people just assume you’re doing that? On the other hand, maybe they’re ignorant and not a single one of them ever learned how to tip properly.

The Wichita Beacon, Kansas, October 19, 1916

Today instead of asking my customer how well cooked he would like his steak, I said “how cooked well done the steak?” Work has broken me.

After a certain number of well done steaks, it's perfectly natural to give up on life. Don't blame yourself, friend.

As a waitress, I don't hesitate to ask people if they have an allergy/sensitivity. Maybe that seems like a dick move, but it usually comes across as a polite double-check that I'm listening. As in: "I'll have the shrimp plate, please make sure it's gluten free" "Oh absolutely, should I let the kitchen know you have an allergy?" "Yes, I do" "Okay, I'll have them double check that everything is cooked separately from where we cook gluten, and if it turns out we need to make a substitution I will be back out in a moment."

By doing this I'm showing that guest that I truly care about their allergy and obviously don't want them to suffer, so I'm going above and beyond to make sure the food is safe. I'm also saving the kitchen some heartache if it turns out they're just on a diet. People on diets will usually be honest and say they're just trying to avoid it, and they usually don't care if the corn tortillas are fried in the same vat as the chicken tenders.

DO NOT DO THIS.

This makes me so angry.

If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.

My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.

When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.

If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.

Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.

Please signal boost this so people know.