People who work in restaurant deserve raises immediately. Not only must they put up with some disgusting and vicious customers, they have to do so with a polite smile. These are the absolute worst of the worst, and somehow these wait staff survived what ended up being some very traumatizing nights. Content has been edited for clarity.
It’s Raining Chicken
“I had a man and his wife come in during a really busy lunch rush. He was rude off the bat, interrupting me and not wanting to listen to me speak. Whatever, it happens all the time. He was very adamant that he wanted both chips and salsa and a plate of roasted wings as appetizers. He kept emphasizing that he wanted them together before they ordered their lunch. Even though chips and salsa only take a minute and wings take about 12, I rang them in together because of how he ordered them. Not THREE minutes later, the man is waving at my coworker across the restaurant, yelling at her about how they’ve been there for thirty minutes and his appetizer is taking too long, and he wants it before his wings. I was at a party table, so she ran back and grabbed the chips and the wings, which were somehow up as well, and brought them out. He took one bite of a wing and tossed the plate like a Frisbee across the table towards her. He started complaining about them being cold. I rush over to see what’s going on, and he starts yelling at me, saying his food is awful and this is the worst service he’s ever gotten in his life. I don’t do well with grown men yelling at me, so I went to the kitchen and my manager went out. Thankfully, my manager had my back as much as he could, and he made the guy pay for the wings and the chips and then leave. After he left, I started to clean the table where I found the single penny he tipped me with. My coworker promptly threw it in the trash. The next day, got a call from my general manager asking why a man had called me ‘professionally challenged’ on Yelp.
That Customer Needs A Muzzle
“So I work at a restaurant with my mom. I got the job when I was 18, and my mom has been working there for 25 years. My mom worked her way up from waiting tables to bartending and had been bartending for years now. The first summer I worked there as a server, it was a typical busy summer night. My mom and I had been there all day, as we had both worked double shifts and it was coming close to 6-ish at night. The way my restaurant is set up, there is a bar side and a dinning room side. I was in the dinning room with two other servers, and one was an older lady. The older lady ended up slipping and falling right in front of the kitchen to the door. She shattered her elbow and her knee. She couldn’t move, so at this point we are all waiting for the ambulance to arrive and dishes are just stacking up, and no food is going out of the kitchen because none of us can go in. My manager that night had to end up taking over all the tables that the server who fell had.
Now, in the midst of all of this, I was serving a table for two. Apparently, the host informed me that she saw the couple practically fist fighting in the parking lot before they came in. Great. I greet the table and they seem okay. They both order drinks from the bar and I bring them promptly. They ordered their food and ended up getting four entrées for the both of them. They were all expensive seafood dishes, and at this point their check is over $100. A couple minutes after I put the food in, the other server slipped and fell, so of course the food for my table took a little longer. The food finally comes, and my mom just happened to help me run the food over. We put it down and the woman goes, ‘FINALLY!’ and we explain that an older server fell in the kitchen and had major injuries.
Then the man then goes, ‘WELL, THAT’S JUST GREAT!’
You know, a totally normal response to being told an old lady just fell and can’t get up. The lady starts literally MAN-HANDLING the lobster roll she got, complaining it was cold. Okay, no big deal, we can get you another one right away, anything else? The lady goes, ‘Well now I NEED another drink!’
Since my mom was bartending, and at this point I have about 5 other tables going, my mom made the drinks and brings them to my table. The woman at the table says to my mom, ‘Oh, well you’re really good at your job!’
My mom says, ‘Well, I’ve been here for 25 years,’ to which the woman responds, ‘Oh, so you have to pick up the slack for all the others?’
My mom said, ‘No, we are a team and all help each other. Plus your server is my daughter.’
The woman is now just looking for a reaction out of my mom because she goes, ‘Oh, well I’m really sorry about that.’
My mom is a calm cool and collected person, so she just goes, ‘Well I’m not. My daughter is pretty great.’
At this point, the woman proceeds to LOSE HER MIND and call my mom a cow, SCREAMING at the top of her lungs in the middle of the dining room. The man at the table got up in the middle of the interaction and just went outside. My manager ended up having to comp all of their food. Other tables that weren’t even mine were coming over to me and apologizing. I went to check on a table of two guys right next to my nightmare table in the middle of that crazy witch screaming to my manager, and I asked if I could get them anything else. One guy goes, ‘Yeah, a muzzle for that monster.’
That table ended up leaving me almost a $50 tip, and all my other tables also left me a lot extra because they had seen what happened. The lady ended up leaving this huge note on the receipt that was all sideways and sloppy, and it looked like it was written by a 5th grader. She wrote how she ALWAYS tips her server, but this time she wasn’t, and my nasty mom could tip me instead. The whole thing was absolutely WILD. Luckily it’s been a couple years since that happened, and I’ve never had a table that horrible since.”
Those Kids Must Have Been Terrified
“I was working at the most popular Italian ‘fine dining’ chain in America. We opened at 11, but I was scheduled for 10:30 to do opening duties. Two middle-aged women were at the doors at 10:45, so we let them in because it’s not a big deal. But what is a big deal is that they both ordered drinks, and our bartender didn’t get there until 11. I let them know and they seem okay with it. This is where things completely fell apart.
I drop off waters while they wait for their drinks. ‘That’s great honey, but that’s NOT what I wanted!’
They smile and it’s clear she’s just trying to make a bad joke. Again, I tell them that it’s only 10:55 and the bartender is not in yet. They tell me to make the drinks, but I can’t because of corporate rules. I ask my manager to make the drinks. While he does that, I take their food orders. They got calamari as an appetizer. They start oversharing, like a LOT. Turns out they’re out to lunch because one of them was at the hospital and just got a lot of blood drawn. They mention trashy men, bad drivers, and they are swearing a lot.
Now it’s 11:05, and they have their calamari and their drinks. ‘UGH was that so HARD? FINALLY!’
Other guests, including young families, arrive and sit in my section. They eat half the calamari and then decide it was undercooked. It was golden and perfect. I ask the kitchen to drop new Calamari and cook it like a minute longer than is typical. Surprise, this ruins the calamari. They hate it, ‘I’m not eating this TRASH!’
I ask the manager to take it off their check. They’re taking up a lot of my time and asking for a lot of little things. I go to take care of some other tables, where they ask if I’m okay and then ask if I could tell the women to stop swearing so much in front of their children. Next time they drop an F bomb, I tell them that this is a family restaurant. ‘Blah blah blah free country! Oh, and I want another DRINK!’
Fine whatever. I put the order in. Their meals are up right at that second, so I return within a minute to drop their food off. ‘WHERE IS MY SECOND DRINK?!?! HELLO!?!’
Now they are banging their half empty glasses on the table. I offer grated Parmesan on their meals, and one says ‘Come on, what do you think?!’
Now they’re yelling at me and I start to cry, while I’m still trying to take care of my other tables (who are angels).
I ask my manager to take over the rude folks and to let them know they are cut off from drinks, and he tore them a new one in the way only managers are allowed to. They got upset that they couldn’t order more drinks, and they asked for the check and leave. They barely leave enough cash to cover the bill, but one comes back and ask if she left enough of a tip. I say, ‘No. You left me a 2% tip.’
Because yeah, I could get fired for saying that but like also, I’m so done. She gave me five more dollars and I never saw them again. Worst customers ever. Best manager ever.”
The Audacity Of This Man
“I had a guy that was a germaphobe and had really bad OCD. He came through before and my coworker didn’t want to deal with him. So I went to the drive-thru window after washing my hands. I cashed out the order that was on screen and he reluctantly handed over his card. I gave him the coffee that I cashed him out for. He started yelling at me, saying that it was wrong. Apparently the person that took the order forgot to type it in, which was unfortunate, but it happens. He started yelling at the coworker that didn’t want to take his order at the window. So instead of just saying that it was the wrong order, getting refunded and being on his way, he stayed in the driveway for 20 minutes telling my coworker that she was stupid and unprofessional and was unfit to be a supervisor. He kept demanding that we get the phone number of our franchise owner, but apparently the number was wrong and he kept yelling at us. But when we came back to the window after 20 minutes of all of this, he left. My supervisor went into the back to cry. I felt so bad for her, as she’s the sweetest person.
Fast-forward less than month later. He called the store to apologize, and the manager made sure that my coworker never dealt with him again. He could come in as long as he didn’t make a scene. He told the manager that his therapist told him he should apologize. He spent a combined total of three hours on the phone with the manager, where he apologized and also blamed us for making him late to his appointment that day. And at the end of the phone call, he asked if we were hiring.”
Let’s Fight!
“I worked at a chain steakhouse as an assistant manager. This gentleman yells for me across a walkway to come speak with him, while I’m talking to another table. As soon as I do, he’s pointing to his filet medallions and letting me know that they aren’t medium-well. To his credit, they were definitely a medium. Of course, I apologize to the man, take the blame for the situation, and attempt to fix it I offer to him two things: I could either put the medallions back on the grill for a minute or two (which is what we usually do in the situation) to get them to his desired temperature, or I could get a new set of them going if he would rather have that. I told him it would take a little longer that way, but I had no problem helping him.
The gentleman proceeds to stare at me with a glare for about thirty seconds, not giving me an answer. I guess he was trying to scare me? After that, he started shouting so the whole restaurant could hear. He was demanding that his wife and his food should now be free because of the horrible mistreatment he received. I politely asked him to stop and apologized again, but I asked him again which way he wanted me to fix his meal. I said to him, ‘Sir, I deeply apologize that your Sunday lunch is not going as well as it should. The quicker you let me know how you want it, the quicker you and your wife can get back to eat and enjoying the day with each other. So please, anything I can do, just let me know.’
He shouts back to me that he isn’t going to pay for his food. It’s ruined and pointless for him to wait for more. He requests the check, so I oblige and remove his meal to just get him out of the place. Once I put the check on the table, he snatches it and says, ‘Why is this here? You were supposed to make it all free. I’m not paying!’
I respond with, ‘I removed your meal as requested, so I just need payment for your wife’s food and your drinks and we can be on our way.’
He tells me that his wife didn’t eat her salmon, and she, with a mortified expression, pushes her mostly eaten salmon and sweet potato forward. At this point, with all the yelling and time this is draining on a busy Sunday, this lunch isn’t worth it. I take the check and let them know that they needed to leave. He proceeded to stay sat down for three or so minutes STILL loudly yelling about how awful everything is here. I go back over and tell him that he needs to leave immediately. He’s now yelling about how he’s being racially profiled. My next response was to let him know that if he doesn’t vacate the premises, the police will be called, as he’s been creating a scene this whole time. Now he’s trying to fight me. My boss gets in the way of him, but I don’t back down. This makes him a lot angrier. He finally storms out with his mortified wife behind him, and we receive a guest complaint a day later stating that we were treating him like a lesser class citizen.”
Mother’s Day Madness
“I used to wait tables a while back for this breakfast place. Mother’s Day was always the WORST time to work in restaurants, as I’m sure anyone else can agree with. So this Mother’s Day is going particularly well, and then towards the end of the brunch rush, I get sat with a party of 8. Everyone’s in a good mood. The mom orders our breakfast tacos with no onions. She says no onions like three times. Right, no onions. Drinks are going fine, and everyone is doing well. Food comes out, and I ask how everything looks. Mom pushes her plate away and loudly and aggressively says, ‘I said NO ONIONS!’
I look down at the tacos to see that there are in fact, no onions.
Me: ‘Ma’am I put your order in with no onions. There are no onions.’
She gets a nasty grin and goes, ‘Oh YEAH? Well what are these!!?’
She points to the green bell peppers on the tacos.
Me: ‘Um, hose are green bell peppers.’
She rolls her eyes and goes, ‘SAME THING!’
The table is now silent, as no one in her party knows what to do, clearly blinded by her stupidity.
My brain short circuits. I think to myself, ‘They’re not even the same color, you can read, you’re an adult, just say how you want something and stop making a scene!’
I just put on my best customer service smile and said, ‘Right, sorry about that, we’ll get that fixed.’ I took it back to the kitchen and told my chef, and he just started laughing about it. $0 tip. Happy Mother’s Day!”
Give Me Old Fish Or Else!
“I worked fast food in high school. We had this regular who came in every Sunday morning and ordered the same thing: a side salad, super sized fries, and a happy meal for her grandkid. One day, the person who bagged her order put the salad and the fries in the same bag, as we were trained to do. If you’ve never seen a super size fry container, they’re tall, and the side salad is in one of those little rectangular plastic things, so as you can imagine the fries fell over. For a normal person this is no big deal. But not for this lady. She needed new fries and a new salad, in separate bags this time. Of course the fries we had already made that came up a minute ago were not good enough, and she refused to leave or accept the new ones until we made a fresh basket.
Some guy comes to the drive-thru and orders four fish sandwiches. We only had two pieces of fish cooked, and they were really close to their hold expiration time. Since we had to cook more anyway, my manager said to waste those two since they were old, and to make all fresh ones for the customer. This guy comes up to the window and they ask him to pull forward because it will be a couple minutes. Meanwhile, we keep serving other cars. After a couple orders go out, this dude is in the lobby and asking for a manager. He is irate that we made him wait on his food while serving other people. The manager apologizes and explains the situation. Most people would be thrilled we didn’t serve them old food, but for some reason that just made this guy angrier. He starts yelling louder, and then he threatens my manager with physical violence over it. She asks him to leave and threatens to call the police. Dude storms out, slamming the door so hard he broke the latch, and he squeals his tires as he leaves the parking lot without his order. He never came back for it, either.
Another man orders a double cheeseburger with extra cheese and receives one with 4 slices instead of the usual two. Two minutes later, he is absolutely red in the face and screaming at the poor cashier. He’s demanding to talk to the ‘little troll’ that made his sandwich and asking if we think this is some kind of joke. Apparently, when he ordered extra cheese he wanted one extra slice, not two.”
Everyday Was A Struggle
“I used to work at a Starbucks right next to a Walmart, and one of the Walmart employees would come in for lunch every day. She was maybe in her 60’s and she was a very strange woman, and very demanding. She always ordered a spinach feta wrap on a plate with a fork and a knife, and a tall hot coffee with room for cream. So when I saw her I would say hello and then recite her order. She would confirm it. Then while I am typing it in, she would say it again very sternly. Then while I was putting it in the oven and getting the plate ready, she would tell me again very sternly. She would repeat her order a few times despite me showing that I know what it is, and she was always angry and scoffing during the process.
The next part of her ritual was to go find a table and rearrange the furniture VERY loudly. She would drag the metal bottom of a table across the polished concrete floor. Then she would drag the wood chairs across it too. We, and even some customers, had offered to help her move it, but she always insisted that she could do it. So for a solid five minutes a day, everyone in the store just had to listen to very loud sounds.
Next she would go get her coffee ready at the little bar and make a HUGE mess. She always pulled out a bunch of sugar packets and spilled it everywhere, then she would take a ton of napkins but not use them to wipe up. Then she would come back to the counter and squeeze in front of whoever was currently being helped and say that we were out of napkins. Then she would go have her food and drink. She would leave the plate and cup there, go into the bathroom, and she would throw all the napkins on the floor with some paper towels too. So we always had someone go clean up after her.
Then she would go back to work and return later. When she returned, she would always complain that she had left her stuff on a table and that it was now gone. We explained that we had cleaned it up and that she can’t reserve a table for herself. She would be furious and demand a free coffee. But she already had gotten a coffee, so I would just give her a refill that Starbucks already offers free for members.
Then again, she would drag tables and make a huge mess for us to clean up. We were always kind and always did whatever she wanted, but she was always a nasty anyway.”
Thank Goodness For The Evidence
“I got my worst review (it was also this establishment’s worst piece of customer feedback) from a woman who I had welcomed warmly and served politely. My boss agreed with me on this, and they had witnessed this entire interaction. The customer accused me of being terribly rude and swearing at her because, get this, I held up two fingers to illustrate that we had two cup sizes.
She also said that I’d been consistently rude for over a month and was the reason she was never coming back. Only I’d actually transferred from a different store and it was actually my SECOND day working there. So I guess she had no way of knowing. I just want to know what her issue was. I thought I was friendly enough. I don’t understand why she’d go out of her way to try get a minimum-wage worker fired.
As I said, this review was toxic. My boss was initially furious until she looked into it and got testimony from the person supervising me on the till. She still ended up having to track down the CCTV footage though because of how serious the complaint was. Once her bosses saw the footage of me serving this woman quickly and clearly being very friendly to her (and also not flipping her off), they backed off.
The whole thing scared me though. I was lucky enough to serve this person in front of my supervisor and it was a quiet day, so my supervisor was giving it her full attention. I also had CCTV to back me up, plus this woman was clearly spouting nonsense because I couldn’t have been so terrible all month if it was only my second day back. But customers do have the power to mess life up for a minimum-wage worker, and it freaked me out to have that venom directed at me for no real reason. I genuinely think she just didn’t like the cut of my jib. So she tried to fire me over it.”
The Most Obnoxious Boss
“A lady from the real estate agency next door ordered a chicken box, and then she proceeded to drive an hour to her next showing. This was in the middle of summer, where she most likely put her food right in front of her AC unit in the passenger seat. Surprise, surprise, the food gets cold when left in the cold. Who knew. Upon the shocking discovery that food doesn’t stay warm, she called us to scream at my boss that we tried to kill her. Because he’s a spineless pushover, he agreed to give her a new free meal when she came back.
She came to get her free food, and things didn’t improve. One of our chefs came to collect her cold food. While still in front of the window, he opened the box and fished out the uneaten biscuit. He threw the rest away, but he walked away with the bread. I presume he meant to eat it, but he went about it all wrong. She started screaming about how we were ‘recycling’ food, that she was good friends with the health inspector, and that she was going to see us in court. The histrionics brought my boss out of his office, and after chewing out the idiot chef, he tried to smooth things over.
She wouldn’t move forward, and the line was piling up. My boss was starting to get annoyed. Her hot, fresh meal is up, and my boss goes to hand deliver it and tell her to get out of line. I was halfway across the store trying to make drinks. All I remember is a surprised gasp from our food runner and looking up to see a box of steaming hot chicken come sailing through the window and scatter across the front of the house. My boss had barely stepped back in time. We could only stare as the crazy lady roared out of the parking lot, and he snapped at the first person stupid enough to still be making eye contact to clean it up.
In the summer, people got free meals for the stupidest reasons. I once watched my boss comp a $60 meal (at a fast food joint mind you) because they didn’t get their food within five minutes of ordering DURING THE LUNCH RUSH. As in, he gave them back their money and they still got their food. In the winter though, it was a different story. I remember this lady came through one morning, it was just me and my boss working. She rudely ordered like 15 burritos, and then she had the nerve to demand that we have it ready quickly, as her son was about to late for school. She was cranky all the way up the window, and once again reiterated that she needed the food now, as she’d forgotten it was her morning to bring food for the PTA meeting. Surprise, surprise, it takes some time to make 15 burritos.
Guess who came storming through the door, about 10 minutes into her order, to scream that she wanted a manager because this wait was ridiculous, and she wanted her money back. And she most definitely still wanted the burritos. They got in an argument that ended in her dragging all my freshly washed trays to the ground and throwing her kid’s milk at our window as she flew out of the parking lot. She didn’t get anything. No refund. No burritos either. She then tried to blast us on the Google reviews and claimed that I’d cussed her out and my boss spit in her food. That went over well.”
All Of That Over Some Hot Wings?
“I worked at a grocery store that had hot food to go and pre-made meals. I worked in that department for four years and had a lot of messed up customers. We used to joke that even the crazies have to grocery shop.
We had a glass covered counter with heat pads and lights to hold the food. The counter allowed two people to be served at once, which was handy in a rush, but could cause some issues. On this night, I started serving a lady who ordered the rest of the chicken wings. My co-worker started serving the second customer in line. She wanted chicken wings as well, so my coworker told her she would have to wait about 5-10 minutes for the next batch to come out. She immediately flipped out, saying that she ordered them first (she hadn’t), and that her kids were hungry at home. She insisted that the other lady wait instead. I finished packing my customers’ wings and began handing them to her. The rude lady was saying something like, ‘Wow, you couldn’t leave ANY for me!?’
At the same time, she shoves the first lady into the counter in attempt to reach for the wings. She pushed this woman so hard that the glass case rattled and the baby the first lady had in a carriage began to cry. The second lady kind of snapped out of it and went to pay and rush out the door. The lady I was serving was so stunned that she didn’t know what to do. We told her to call the police because she had been assaulted. She agreed and went outside to see if she could get the other woman’s license plate. Apparently in the parking lot, the lady who’d stormed out almost hit her as she was leaving. The police arrived and took everyone’s statements.
Afterward, I saw both ladies talking to the cops. I hope that crazy woman got what she deserved!”
“The Lettuce Is Too Green”
“This guy at the Subway I worked at never ended up paying for anything ever, because he’d managed to figure out the right combination of corporate complaint calls to ‘get people fired’. He made it impossible to ban him. He’d drop multiple complaints at once, posing as different people, and he’d make stuff up.
He’d ask for stupid stuff, in the most pretentious way possible. ‘I’ll have 12 olives, no more, no less.’
This always happened very slowly at peak time during the day, with a queue wrapped all the way around the shop and out the door. Then he would demand at the end of the process that I remake the sandwich. He’d pay, scan his points card then eat about half of it. He would demand his money back for equally nonsense reasons, such as the lettuce is too green.
He must have pulled that stunt 20 times during the period I worked there. I took petty revenge on him by using his accumulated Subway card points to discount customers in the queue. I wasn’t there if/when he found out that all his points were gone. The man needed to be shoved in the sub toaster and toasted for 40 seconds on high.”
Attack Of The Children’s Soccer Team
“I worked at Friendly’s in high school as a server, and I worked my butt off all night once for a whole soccer team and their parents who came in with no notice. Then at the end of the night, they wanted everything split up. The kids were sitting at different tables, so trying to get the right kid’s food to the right parent was nearly impossible. Not to mentions, some kids split meals or got specialty drinks and ice cream or appetizers. Some parents were trying to tell me what their kid ordered, others were just saying, ‘Whatever the blonde kid with the headband ordered.’
It was impossible to work out how who got what and who was supposed to be charged with it. Not to mention, about half of them had coupons that they were all switching around with each other, some of which were expired, but they wanted to use them anyway because they were ‘spending so much money.’
A huge portion of the bill had to be comped because no one would claim a bunch of items, and I didn’t think to tell them beforehand they couldn’t split the bill 17 ways. After reprinting checks about 10 times because god forbid someone pay an extra $2 on a milkshake they said their kid didn’t order, even though you could look over at the table and see half the kids had milkshakes. I was in the back crying. My manager was yelling at me over what a fiasco this was and mad because the kids had been drawing on the tables and throwing crayons at other customers over the partition. I finally come back out to hopefully get everyone change or swipe cards or whatever, and one of the dads had the audacity to tell me to, ‘Not look so stressed out, it’s just Friendly’s.’
They then left me about a $15 tip in total for the three-ish hours I waited on them with a bill that was EASILY over $400. A lot of them tipped on the coupon price instead of the ACTUAL cost, and a lot of them just left whatever change was leftover. I know it’s ‘only’ Friendly’s and I might have been young, but that doesn’t make the job any easier.
Big groups are great when one person is kind of the go-to and holds everyone accountable, collects money, and organizes. When this doesn’t happen, I find a lot of people think they can hide in groups, assuming everyone else will tip so no one will notice if they don’t. This is the restaurant equivalent of signing the card for a gift you didn’t chip in for. It’s why automatic gratuity for groups over 6 is amazing. That being said, in a better restaurant establishment than Friendly’s, no way would they have pawned what was a 30+ person group on a 16-yr-old who had only been working there a few weeks. Unfortunately, this was back during the recession, after the company had filed chapter11, so we were were working with a skeleton staff. Servers were already working dish room, ice cream counter and host podium. These jobs had previously been at least minimum-wage positions, but now servers were doing them for $2.63/hour. No one had the time or energy to help me. Most senior servers avoided groups like that like the plague.
It took me years to order a salad at a restaurant because of how disgusting our bar was. People used to double dip leftover fries and chicken fingers in the honey mustard. I don’t think anyone ever actually cleaned the clam chowder soup thing. One time we had a bad odor coming from behind the fryer, and we found a mouse had given birth and then died inside a pair of the cook’s non-slip work crocs.
I was there for three years from 16-19. It really does attract a weird crowd. I think it’s because it’s where people who usually eat fast food as the standard go up to eat and families who just want a cheap meal go down to eat. It’s cheap and less formal than most sit-down places, but it still operates like any other sit-down place. Plus, it does counter service and is technically an ice cream place, so that adds a whole different thing. Some people come in and sit at the tables JUST for ice cream. It’s also got a pretty extensive kids menu that is heavily advertised, so we get A LOT of kids. We get a lot of pre-teens that come in by themselves that have no idea how to tip.
By the time I was in my last year, I was so fed up with that place. I was a minor, and they would consistently change my hours to say I was out by 9:30pm, when in reality, I would be doing work until midnight. Management was forcing $2.63/hour servers to work fountain, hosting, and dishwash. I just started low-key stealing. I brought my parents home ice cream every night, and all of my silverware is still from Friendly’s that I didn’t want to roll at the end of the night. I even have one of those 5-scoop goblets that I’ll drink margaritas out of when I’m feeling ridiculous.
That being said, I really loved some of that staff. They were nuts. What a weird group of people. There were young people like me at their first jobs, and then there were older people who had just taken a weird turn in life and ended up at Friendly’s. The cooks were almost all middle-aged recovering addicts. I even worked a few of those stations occasionally when the methadone clinic would open and they needed someone to cover for an hour.
Our regulars were mostly elderly people that came in the middle of the day, and in general they were pretty good. They always got the same thing, left the same tip, no problems. I do remember free ice cream day. THAT was a nightmare. People were complaining left and right about the scoops being too small. DUDE. It’s literally free and I’m in high school. I don’t make the rules and they will yell at me if I give you more than one scoop. A whole table of 7 or 8 middle school aged girls came in ordered a free cone, got about 10 water refills, sat at the table for two hour,s and then left no tip.”