The Torment Of Not Being Able To Do Anything
“‘If you don’t shut the eff up, I’m going to break your jaw,’ said by a man to the woman sitting across from him. Her only reaction was simply to keep her head lowered. I told my manager about it but he told me not to get involved.”
What A Disgusting Thing To Joke About
“I had a guy at a table who kept making jokes about me ‘slipping something’ into his date’s drink because ‘How’s a guy supposed to get lucky if she’s only having a glass of vino?’ She left mid-meal when he went to the bathroom.”
He Hopes It Was All Just A Prank
“Once, I went to a small Chinese restaurant and overheard two Mexican men talking about kidnapping a child and sending her to Mexico. They were talking to someone on the phone who sounded like they were pleading for them to stop, but it was hard to hear. (I sat right behind them.) I informed the police, but I don’t remember hearing anything else. For all I know, it could have been a prank.”
Maybe It’s Just Not A Friendly Cat
“I once overheard a girl telling her friend about her plan to kidnap her next door neighbor’s cat and take it to a different friend’s house so that the neighbor would think it had run away or been killed by a car.
She was going to do it because she was convinced that the neighbor was abusing/neglecting the cat. Her reasoning? ‘It’s not friendly. Whenever I try to pet it, it runs away from me. It wouldn’t act like that if (neighbor) wasn’t abusing it.’
I had no way of warning her neighbor, but I did tell the girl on her way out that she was an idiot and stealing someone’s cat was a crappy thing to do. I don’t know if she ever followed through on her plan.”
He Always Thought They Were BOTH Her Sons
“I was a manager at a restaurant for a few years, and there was this particular woman that came in from time to time, always with two boys around 13 or 14 years old. She wasn’t unattractive, exactly, but there was something about the way she ‘eyed’ me up that even as a man made me…uncomfortable.
One time I was sitting with a couple regulars at a bar top and she and the two boys were at the table behind me, so my back was to hers. One of the boys got up to go to the bathroom. I had assumed they were both her sons, but after the one boy left, I heard the following exchange:
Woman: ‘We’ve got to be more careful, he almost walked in on us this morning.’
Boy: ‘I know, I’m sorry.’
Woman: ‘We can talk about it tonight after he falls asleep. Shh…here he comes.’
At the time, I assumed maybe they were planning a party or something because my mind definitely did not go to someplace sinister. It turned out it should have. She was a teacher at a local school and apparently the boy she was talking to was a friend of her son’s. They knew each other from church.
The boy told one of the church elders that he and she were having an inappropriate relationship. It turned out it had been going on for a year or more and they’d had ‘relations’ 40+ times, so she was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. It was really, really bizarre.”
His Immaturity Really Stunk
“I was grabbing a quick bite to eat at a Thai restaurant and there were two ladies sitting in front of me eating. The place was pretty much empty aside from the two ladies, some waitresses, and myself, so I could hear everything clearly.
Woman 1: ‘Yeah, I broke up with him a week ago. I just couldn’t handle it, he’s so immature sometimes. He’s like a child.’
Woman 2: ‘What do you mean?’
Woman 1: ‘Like a week ago, we were sitting on the couch watching TV when he stood up in the middle of the show, got in front of me, pulled his pants down, bent over, and just farted in my face. That was the last straw.’
Woman 2: ‘…’
Me: (Stifled laughter).”
What A Bizarre Thing To Casually Mention
“Yesterday I heard two girls talking after I dropped off their gyoza and one looked, dead serious, at the other and said, ‘Sometimes when I take a massive, brutal dump, I just think wow, I’m a disgusting person,’ and then just popped a gyoza in her mouth and they returned to the previous conversation like she never said it.”
She Had WHAT, WHERE?!
“At the table next to me, a sweet little old lady was talking to her sweet little old friends. I wasn’t paying attention, but all of a sudden I very clearly heard her say, ‘…and the funny thing was, he didn’t know I’d had it up my butt the whole time!’
I bet her knitting circle is wild.”
That’s A Lot For A Boy His Age To Think About
“I heard a woman loudly explain to a 5/6-year-old boy how most people have two parents, but that ‘we don’t know who your daddy is.’ We were sitting maybe 15 feet away but heard her loud and clear. This was in the middle of Panera bread at dinner time. I’m not sure if the kid was hers, but she was old enough to have a 5/6-year-old. The kid didn’t really react to the news, but I couldn’t help but think it was kind of a messed up way to explain things to him.”
A Disturbing Comparison
“This happened in the late 90s when I was working at an Italian chain restaurant in Colorado. A family sat down in my section and one of the kids was wearing a pageant costume and an absurd amount of makeup. She looked to be about 7 years old so even without any overheard conversation, it was legit creepy.
I was delivering bread to the table when I noticed that the little girl’s kiddy cup of chocolate milk was almost empty. I asked her parents if they would like me to bring her a refill, some 2% or whole, or some water, careful not to utter the words ‘chocolate milk’ just because most parents don’t want their kids having more than one cup of the stuff. They asked for water, so I went to get a fresh cup.
As I approached the table, I heard unhappy child noises. Then an adult said, ‘JonBenét ALWAYS took at least one bite of her dinner.’ For context, the JonBenét Ramsey child murder case was a big deal here; it was just up the road and had only happened a year or so before. It was scary for parents and not something they joked about, so surely I’d misheard. I had even thought to myself, ‘Who the heck still does that JonBenét bullcrap anymore?’ when I first saw them walk into the restaurant.
I gave the little beauty queen her water and she lost her mind, ‘I want chocolate milk!’ She took a swat at the water cup and knocked it over, so I picked it back up and got to cleaning up the mess. Then the mom said clear as day, ‘Brie Hannah, what happened to JonBenét when she knocked over her drink?’
Now, I’ve let a lot of things slide while waiting tables. If I’m not actively tuning out conversations, I’m certainly acting as if I am, but I could not let that comment stand. After a long silence, I asked the mom, ‘I’m dying to know, what did happen when JonBenét knocked over her drink?’ Silence. ‘Oh, no, you’re not implying…’ Silence. Yep, she was implying she was going to strangle her child to death. I often wonder what happened to that kid.”
Her Family Tree Just Got More Complicated
“One time I was at a bar and the bartender said to another customer, ‘So did I tell you I’m either going to be a grandmother or a great aunt?’ The dude just looked at her confused and she replied with, ‘Yeah, my son and his wife got into a fight, so she went and slept with his cousin, my nephew. And now she’s pregnant and they don’t know who the father is.’ What?!”
Wow, What A Supportive Family
“One afternoon, I had a family seated at a hightop table, an older couple with their adult son. The parents both ordered a mixed drink and the son ordered a mocktail, and then he told me he had just (that morning) come out of rehab and COULD NOT have anything hard in his drink.
His parents proceeded to order mixed drinks a few more times during their lunch, as he was their sober driver apparently. They talked to him about rehab, his recovery, and how he needed to straighten out his life. I obviously didn’t say anything, but I judged the parents hard for drinking in front of their fresh-from-rehab family member while lecturing him on being the black sheep.”
Overheard In The Drive Thru
“I was behind a car at the McDonald’s drive-thru when suddenly a lady got out of the passenger side door and yelled, ‘Buy my OWN milkshake?! Suck your OWN dong!’ before storming off into the night.”
Their Girl Talk Got A Little Too Real
“I was in a diner having dinner with a friend when we overheard a woman in the next booth talking about how her butt hurt after her husband put it in there. While that isn’t too shocking, what she said next was, ‘Dave is such a whiny wimp, the strap-on is only 8 inches and he cries like a girl every time. Do I cry when he rips open my butt? No, I surely don’t.'”
Their Priorities Are All Jacked Up
“A nice-looking family, two parents and a child, walked into the vegetarian restaurant that I volunteered for. These restaurants in my country (Vietnam) are often set up by pagodas and run by monks for the purpose of charity. Most of the customer are devout Buddhists who come to cleanse their souls by paying big money and eating vegetarian food.
The parents were two such devout Buddhists so they chose to be vegetarian, but the kid was forced to; I could see the pain in his face as he was forced to eat some tofu. After a few bites, he refused to keep eating.
The father then slapped the kid so hard that the fifty people in the room could hear the kid’s teeth flying out of his mouth. He hit the floor hard and then his mother held him by the ear and forced him to apologize to the Buddha for ‘disrespecting him.’
The father told him, ‘You little punk, you better respect the Buddha or you will eat from the floor again tonight.’ Yep, it turns out that some Buddhists think that beating your child and feeding them food scraps on the ground is ok, but not being a vegetarian is a sin.”
The Classiest Fights Happen At 3 AM
“A couple years ago, I worked the night shift at a greasy spoon diner and was used to really wasted people coming in all night. I rarely saw any children, and if I did, something felt wrong about it.
One Saturday night, this woman dragged her 4-year-old daughter into the restaurant and ordered her a kid’s meal, which the girl would not eat, and she started to fuss. After a minute, the mom started cursing and dragged the girl by her arm into the bathroom, presumably to ‘teach her a lesson.’
They came back to the table a minute later and the child silently picked at her food. At the same time, a wasted couple entered in good spirits, laughing, kissing, whatever. The angry mother spotted them and began screaming vulgarities at the man, who responded, ‘Oh heck no, who do you think you are bringing her here with your smashed self at 3 am?!’
He ran to get his daughter, who screamed, ‘Daddy!’ and wrapped her arms around his neck. He asked me to call them a cab, which I did, but no sooner had I grabbed phone than the mother started making a scene by trying to grab her child. She then started a very physical fight with the girlfriend when she couldn’t get the kid away from him. I called the police, which caused the mother to bolt, and the cops stayed with the father and girlfriend until the cab arrived. I hope he’s been a good dad.”
The Things People Say In Front Of Their Servers…
“I’ve been waiting tables for a little over a decade now and I definitely have some favorites. One time I had to wait on a table where the mother and father were trying to calmly explain that they were getting a divorce to their 8/10-year-old son. They started the conversation before the appetizers even hit the table, were crying by the time the entrees came, and still stayed for dessert. The little boy kept asking if he did anything wrong, it was so uncomfortable.
I also used to work at a fancy bar in a really nice part of town where I was ‘propositioned’ by a woman and her husband who were definitely old enough to by my parents. One table had two couples negotiating a swingers’ contract, and I overheard another a couple discussing pricing for the evening (which wasn’t surprising; she was stunning and he was about 40 years older than her).
The worst, though, is waiting on a table where you just know some kind of abuse is regularly occurring. I once listened to this 20-something guy tell his girlfriend that, because she didn’t want to order what he told her to, she was a selfish witch and he would ‘fix’ her attitude later. I told my managers what I overheard, but because he didn’t do anything while in the restaurant, there really wasn’t much we could do.”
“I Don’t Want To Even Think About What Would’ve Happened…”
“I’ve been waiting tables in eastern Europe for about two years now, as I’m a broke student who’s studying abroad. One night this younger lady came into my restaurant with two shady older men, the kind with greasy, slicked back hair.
Throughout the meal, I overheard them talking about all the things they were going to do to her. Toward the end, I saw the girl go to the bathroom to freshen up or whatever, and one of the guys slipped a pill into her drink. Mind you, this is in far eastern Europe, where kidnappings and assault are common. I ended up warning her, and I don’t want to even think about what would’ve happened if I didn’t.”
They Should Have Saved That Discussion For Home
“This was over 10 years ago when I was working breakfast fairly early at a downtown hotel in a big city. I was naive and had no idea what swinging/wife-swapping was at the time.
I had a table where the husband was clearly upset and the wife was acting half-sheepish/half-annoyed, and they’d instantly get very quiet whenever anyone approached. Their conversation was clearly heated and the restaurant was pretty empty with high ceilings and marble walls, so even slightly raised voices carried.
At one point I was walking toward their table and they didn’t see me coming, so I overheard the husband say, ‘How could I not be upset?! You let him do you in the behind! Why did we even talk about rules if they don’t matter?’
Couples fighting at breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning after a night of debauchery was pretty common, but that was the only time I ever heard a fight about unsanctioned butt stuff with a third-party.”
She’ll Never Let Him Live That Down
“I waited tables at Olive Garden 10 years ago and one time a guy and his wife sat down at a table and immediately started arguing. It was something about his affair and how a baby from it was costing them money, and it all culminated as I was bringing out their salad.
As I walked away, I heard the wife say, ‘Well, maybe if you hadn’t boned our son’s girlfriend and gotten her pregnant, we could afford to eat somewhere nicer than the freaking Olive Garden. Oh look, the highlight of my meal, unlimited bagged salad! Maybe you could save up and we could go to Joe’s Crab Shack for our anniversary, idiot.'”
Her Tears Should Have Set Off Alarm Bells
“Late one night, I had this couple who were probably in their late 30s. The guy looked a little like a roid-head and had a lot of tattoos, a tough looking guy. From the moment they came in, the woman would not stop crying. Not like a little bit of sniffling, but straight up bawling. She didn’t talk to me the entire time, but the guy was very chatty.
He explained to me how he had just found out that he only had a few months left to live and how she, his ‘angel,’ was gonna take care of his boy for him and all that crap. Anyway, I felt genuinely bad cause that’s a pretty messed up thing to hear.
Then I saw them come in again over a year and a half later…acting totally normal. They didn’t remember me, but how do you forget the face of someone that told you they were dying?
My theory is that he was abusive and was making up some cover story as to why she was crying that night. Either that or he miraculously survived without looking sickly at all, in which case good on him.”
Their Attire Didn’t Match The Conversation
“I was bussing tables at a restaurant about a year ago and while I was refilling ice at the bar, I overheard two wasted gentlemen having a conversation. One guy was basically telling the other that he was trying to get his wife to cheat on him so he could have a reason to divorce her. He was devising an escape plan, which caught me off guard because they were in full business attire.”
Now That’s A Dream We Want To Hear More About
“Overheard this at a bar recently: ‘I had the weirdest dream last night. I was banging this guy in the butt and then all of sudden, my dad walked in with McDonald’s coffee.’ It wasn’t the most messed up thing of all time, but it definitely made me laugh.”
The Hero We All Deserve
“A really annoying 15-year-old guy was sitting at a booth with two similarly aged girls. I think he was trying to show off to them because he was being extremely loud, obnoxious, and shouting inappropriate stuff across the restaurant. It was a fairly slow night so everyone could hear everything he was saying.
He had a Justin Bieber haircut and was basically behaving like one of those spoiled, full of themselves little punks you see on YouTube. Well, sitting in the booth next to them was a young couple in their mid 20’s. They were really nice and polite and I remember talking to them; the guy was in the military and was having a nice romantic dinner with his wife.
I mentioned to the manager that the kid was being very inappropriate and causing disruptions, but he wouldn’t do anything about it. About 15 minutes after that little brat and his two girlfriends sat down, the military dude got up, leaned down at the kid’s table, and told him, ‘We are trying to celebrate our anniversary at the booth next to you. You need to quiet down and learn some manners or I’m gonna take you outside and beat the crap out of you.’ The kid went so red in the face and didn’t make a peep the rest of the night. Before the couple left, I thanked the military guy for putting the kid in his place.”
It Could Turn Into A Fight At Any Moment
“I was sitting next to a booth of people at a restaurant having the most awkward exchange of words ever. Imagine two very Italian old guys with the most stereotypical South Philadelphian accents possible.
Guy 1: (Accidentally spills iced tea on the table.)
Guy 2: ‘Ahh, it’s all ova me!’
Guy 1: ‘I’m sorry, it was an accident! Ahh, I’m sorry!’
Guy 2: ‘But…it’s all ova me…’
Guy 1: ‘I said I’m sorry! It was an accident!’
(Waitress comes over to help)
Guy 2: ‘Napkins please, butterfingas ova here spilled this all ova me!’
Guy 1: ‘You’re embarrassin’ me, you’re embarrassin’ me!’
Guy 2: ‘I’m embarrassin’ you? You wanna take this outside?’
(They stand up.)
Guy 1: ‘No, you’re like a brotha to me.’
Guy 2: ‘Come here!’
(They shake hands and hug.)
I literally could not help but keep looking over at them while my uncle was begging me to stop staring because he thought they were actually going to escalate into a fight. It was so weird, I’ll never forget it.”