The dining experience isn’t just about fine cuisine. A server with a terrible attitude can pretty much sour any experience, which can then lead to customers abandoning the night altogether. Here, diners share the most horrendous servers that made them drop everything and ditch them high and dry.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
Ice Cold Water
“Me, a friend, and her two pre-teen kids went to a restaurant that was formerly a train station. It was a very cool-looking place. We had heard excellent reviews and were looking forward to eating there.
We asked for water while we looked over the menu. The server brought water for us all on a tray in four giant, heavy, glasses. Unfortunately for me, when the server attempted to move the tray from her shoulder to the table, the tray was unbalanced and I was DRENCHED in ice water and clocked by the heavy glasses.
The water got on my lap, down my back, on top of my head, and even inside my purse sitting on the bench beside me. Accidents happen, and it was only water, but it hurt when the glasses struck me. Luckily they didn’t shatter.
The worst part?
The server laughed. The manager laughed. I was given a few napkins as I jumped up. I received no apologies. The server and manager ended up walking away, still laughing hysterically. I was mortified when I heard laughing coming from behind the kitchen door as well. Literally, the entire waitstaff was laughing at me.
My friend and I got up and left. When she saw we were leaving, the manager rushed out and attempted to bully us into paying for the food we had just ordered. We told her we would never eat there because of the way she and the server had responded to their mistake. I didn’t take too kindly to having ice water dumped on me and basically being assaulted with glassware.
We found another restaurant whose staff were MORTIFIED by the treatment from the other place. The small touristy town relied heavily on tourists. This second restaurant had top-notch customer service and the food was good.”
Drink, Please??
“I went to a restaurant and after I was seated the waitress came to take my drink order.
I told her I was also ready to order, so she took down both orders and then went to the kitchen.
After several minutes, I was left waiting and waiting for my drink. Then after some time, my food arrived, but I still had not received my drink.
I asked my waitress for my drink but that’s when she said, ‘Oh, it is the owners’ policy to only serve your drink once you finish your meal. If you don’t finish your food they won’t allow me to serve your drink.’
I know the look on my face said it all. I told her I wanted my drink immediately but again the waitress said she couldn’t give me one. I then asked for the manager and she came back with the owner. The owner shrugged as he told me the same story.
I told them to take the food away because I was leaving the place. That’s when I was told I had to finish my food before I left or pay for my order without eating and leave.
That’s when I whipped out my phone and called the police.
In no time, the police arrived and got the full story from me and the restaurant owner.
The cops literally scratched their heads and told the owner they couldn’t withhold drinks from customers like they were children. They then told the owners that I could leave and that I wasn’t expected to pay.
I got up and never looked back.”
What Did You Say?
“One night I went out to dinner with family. Altogether my brother, his wife, both of their kids, my mom, my wife, and I were excited to spend some quality family time together.
The restaurant we chose had a popular fish dish that was prepared in a unique way. We ordered this signature dish and talked amongst ourselves as we waited for our food.
As we continued waiting, our waiter brought out tea and water for everyone. We continued enjoying each other’s company as we waited for the food.
As more time passed, we noticed a family that came in after us had been seated, served, and were now heading out the door.
Three more families came in, ordered, enjoyed their meals, and left. We also couldn’t help but notice how each family also ordered the signature dish.
When she came back around, we asked out waitress how other families ahead of us were able to be seated, order, eat, and leave, and we still hadn’t been served yet. It had now been over an hour since we ordered.
The waitress stated one family had ordered prior to coming in. The others were regulars and deserved “priority service”.
Two families in our section noticed we had been waiting a long time, and offered to let us have the fish dish before them. We were thankful for their kind gesture, but the waitress grumbled something in Vietnamese to a different waitress. That same waitress then said the same thing to the table in Vietnamese.
Little did they know, my wife was fluent in the language.
“Those Americans can wait,” our waitress said.
Once my wife translated what they said, we all got up and walked out. The family that offered their place in line apologized on behalf of the restaurant for the way we were treated and vowed to never eat there again.
We heard that less than six months later, the restaurant closed because their clientele dried up.”
Poke The Bear
“We had family visiting us from out of state. My sister had been following a ‘POPULAR’ local eatery on Facebook and requested we go there during their visit.
I called ahead to see if we needed a reservation since there were eleven of us. The person who answered the phone said no and that it wouldn’t be a problem.
When we arrived at the restaurant, the host looked at my ten-year-old niece and made a snide comment to her about her father because he was wearing a Yankees shirt. We thought it was odd, but laughed it off.
The host then brought eleven of us, seven of us being full-grown adults, and the other four being children ages ten through thirteen, to a table for SIX.
They somehow put two small tables together and arranged 11 chairs around it. There was NO WAY possible we could fit. There were plenty of empty tables near us so we grabbed a table for four next to us and the other seven stayed at the other table. With a little work, it worked out beautifully.
Well, this upset the host. The guy came over and yelled, ‘NOPE! You have your assigned table there. Get up! You cannot have this extra table!’
‘Sir it is IMPOSSIBLE for us to all fit there,’ I told the host. ‘If the extra table we took was for a reservation then we apologize, and if they can’t accommodate us, then we will leave.’
Mind you, the restaurant was ninety percent empty. There were only two more occupied tables.
The HOST then said, ‘No, that extra table is not reserved. That is for other people who will be coming in throughout the day!’ His tone was so nasty I flinched.
I said, ‘Okay. We’re out!’
As we started leaving the host threw up his hands and said, ‘Screw y’all! I HOPE YOUR KIDS GET KIDNAPPED!’
‘What the Hell?’ I said in disbelief.
Needless to say, my family members and I lashed out. Some other crazy customer got involved as well and got in his face for saying something so heinous.
My mother had to scramble to get the kids out of there. By the time we adults got out of there, the host was hiding behind the counter behind two waitresses.
I had a hard time calming my husband and brother down and not allowing them to beat the life out of this man.
What a crazy thing for a man to say about someone’s children. We should have known from our initial ‘greeting’ that this guy had mental issues.
We found out that it is family run and this was how the HOST usually was toward customers. His waitstaff considered it ‘harmless charm’ and his sarcastic banter added fun to the place.
Uh, no…”
Is This The Best You Got?
“We went to a famous steak restaurant chain.
It was a Wednesday night and the place was empty when we walked in. We were seated fairly quickly but weren’t given any menus, or drinks, or rolls.
We could see a man sitting at the bar with food watching a football game. He was very focused on the TV and seemed rather content.
Another couple was then seated a few tables away from us. While we were still waiting to be served, the other couple got drinks and rolls.
We frantically flagged down the waitress and watched as she sashayed back over to us with her pen and notepad read.
‘Are you ready to order, now?’
Frustrated, we told the waitress we had not even seen a menu yet, and would like some water. The waitress said that due to Covid, they no longer had menus. She then announced we had to access their website on our phones for the menu.
It was annoying she didn’t inform us prior to us being seated, but we shrugged it off and asked her for water. So off the waitress went. Several minutes later, we were still waiting for water.
The other couple received food that smelled great. We eagerly tried to access the online menu but ran into complications because their website froze up.
When we finally received water and a couple rolls, the waitress failed to give us butter. Before the waitress left again, we explained the issues going on with the website.
The waitress then gave us a blurry photocopied page of a menu, with no sides or beverages listed.
When she finally came back, we asked to speak to a manager. The waitress nonchalantly walked over to the man sitting at the bar watching football, and they both turned and looked at us with annoyed looks on their faces. We had been there about half an hour at that point. Nothing else needed to be said. We got up and left.
We had a gift certificate for that chain. We were planning to splurge on a meal that cost over one hundred bucks for the two of us. However, part of the dining experience is good service, and it was pretty clear that wasn’t going to happen.
Outback, are you listening?”
Zero
“This happened at the Philadelphia Airport. I lived in Boston then and flew down every week as part of a management consulting team for a client engagement in the city.
One time I was returning back to Boston along with my manager at the end of a week’s work. We had a couple of hours to kill before our flight arrived, so we showed up to the pub right by the gate to grab a bite and some beer.
We sat at the bar and weren’t given a menu for more than fifteen minutes. The bartender walked around and looked like she couldn’t care less. The place wasn’t crowded at all so there was no excuse. There were no more than half a dozen people sitting at the bar at most. We had little choice of course since that was the only place to eat by the gate and it was nearly an hour before we even got our meal.
Finally, the bartender walked up, started chatting with us, and told us that the rude service was on purpose but it was nothing personal. She then bragged about how she was doing it to everyone.
Her reason was that the owner of the bar was closing the place in two weeks. The bartender was going to be out of a job, so the staff was deliberately trying to screw the owner over by being rude to customers and driving off any business.
My manager and I stared at each other as if to say, ‘Did she just say that?’
Look, if the bartender hadn’t been so rude, I would have tipped her well over the usual amount for regular service because who doesn’t feel empathy for someone who is about to lose their job?
Not this time. It was poor in taste to have some temerity to tell a customer to their face that you’re being an asshole to them on purpose. Some nerve!
When the bill arrived, I wrote down, ‘Service so bad, you should be paying us!’
In the tip section, I spelled out the word ‘ZERO’ in big fat letters.
My manager started laughing because he was as pissed off as I was. When then gathered our things and peeled out of there.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
A few minutes later as our flight arrived and we were standing in line to board the plane, the bartender came charging at us, red in the face and breathing hard. That’s when she started yelling.
‘Which of you two wrote that down?!’
‘I did,’ I said nonchalantly.
‘You’re such a jerk!’ The bartender screamed.
‘No I’m not,’ I said in a childish voice.
‘Yes you are,’ the bartender said in a shrill voice. It was like talking to a five-year-old.
‘Okay well yes, I am,’ I said while laughing.
‘Piss off!’ The bartender stormed off, leaving behind a trail of confused travelers as she passed them.
‘Same to you,’ I called after her.
I was calm throughout that exchange with a deadpan expression which enraged her all the more!
My manager watched the whole exchange wide-eyed and while he understood that my reaction was justified as a response to such impudent ‘service’, he couldn’t wait to tell the guys at the office the next day.”
I Am The Manager
“My family and I went to this big Indian buffet restaurant because we wanted a change of taste. We had never been there prior to this incident.
We walked in and it didn’t look too different from the other restaurants in the area. We casually walked to a table and had a seat. More than five minutes after we sat down, no waiter showed up to take our order or welcome us into the restaurant.
We signaled to a stocky grumpy man who was carrying plates of delicious-smelling food and asked him to come to take our order.
The man saw us but instead of coming over to help, he grunted and walked straight past us and into the kitchen. We assumed he would come back, but after almost six minutes, the man didn’t show up. The man seemed to be the only person serving food.
Once the man finally came out of the dining room after ten minutes, my dad approached him to tell him that nobody was serving our table. The man grumbled and muttered something about waiting at the door for someone to collect them. That’s why we aren’t being helped.
The man didn’t apologize or anything, but rather told us, quite rudely, ‘Go to your table.’
My dad and I were appalled by his behavior and told the man we wanted to see the manager. With an eye roll, the man announced that he was the manager.
Shocked that a manager would disrespect his customers this way, we notified him that we were leaving and never coming back. The manager muttered something along the lines of, ‘Go to hell, I don’t care.’
We left and haven’t gone back since. I’m kind of surprised that the restaurant hasn’t gone bankrupt yet.”
Ruined Vibe
“I was out with my husband on a beautiful summer day. We saw a nice restaurant with a nice serving patio and decided to try them out.
We spoke with the lovely hostess who then happily seated us at a table. We settled down and started looking over the menu for about ninety seconds before a red-faced man came barreling toward us. He was yelling nonstop at each waitstaff he passed by. He then took one look at the hostess and at us before he yelled:
‘HOW DARE YOU SIT THEM AT A TABLE THAT COULD HOLD FOUR PEOPLE. ANY MINUTE A PARTY OF FOUR COULD COME, THEN WHAT? THEY HAVE TO MOVE NOW!’
The hostess couldn’t even speak. The man, who we assumed was the manager, rudely told us we were moving. We were nearly jerked out of our seats before we were moved to a tiny table in the darkest corner of the restaurant.
We sat there looking at the menu for about five minutes. I looked at my husband and said, ‘I am not enjoying myself anymore.’
Without another word, we picked up our stuff and left.
We will never, ever go back.”
A Grave Mistake
“I was in my early twenties and on a date. My date made a reservation at what was advertised as an upscale restaurant. When we arrived we were seated at a table that was reserved for us.
After several minutes, we were practically being ignored. No one even so much as offered a glass of water despite there being a number of other empty tables and staff standing around talking.
My date finally flagged down a waiter. He had to nearly grab him by the arm to get him to stop. My date then asked why we were being ignored.
The waiter shrugged and shared how he was told no one was to serve our table because we had just walked in and sat ourselves down at a table with a ’reserved’ sign and that we were never going to be served because of it.
My date, extremely aggravated, asked for the manager and was told the same thing. The manager, who claimed to be the owner, even went so far as to refuse to check the list for our reservation.
So, we got up to leave.
I guess the hostess who had seated us finally realized what was happening and said something to him because, as we were walking out, the manager suddenly ran after us and tried to apologize.
We did not stop. There was nothing the manager could have said to reconcile the situation.
That night, all dressed up and nowhere to go, we had a fabulous time eating burgers at a local favorite drive-in.
The restaurant went out of business soon after.”
Panic Room
“This happened at Red Lobster. We came in and were seated in no time.
A waitress came by and took our drink orders, but after that, we never saw her again. It was busy in the restaurant that day so at first, we attributed the long wait for the drinks to that.
But when thirty minutes went by we got another server’s attention and asked her to please send the manager over. The manager came apologized profusely and said he would check into what happened.
He then disappeared for several minutes. When he came back he said that our waitress was a new hire who got overwhelmed by the rush and hid in the bathroom.
We left out of frustration and went somewhere else to eat. The manager did give us a gift certificate to use for next time.”
