This story has been edited for clarity.
Wine And Dine
“I worked at a really expensive French restaurant that I could never afford to eat at on my own. Despite the restaurant being very pricey, I earned minimum wage and relied on tips to pay my bills.
One busy night, a very pretentious couple came in. They both looked like they were in their mid-twenties, but had their noses held in the air as they waited to be seated. The couple acted and were dressed in a way to fit the ‘rich people of social media’ stereotype.
I was assigned to their table along with two others in the section. Right away the couple started complaining about how slow I was. The two of them were loud and obnoxious as they found things around the restaurant to complain about. Once I heard the guy say: ‘The music sucks here!’ This came as quite a surprise because our guests loved the four-piece chamber orchestra that played almost every night.
Then I heard the woman with him complain about how our menu was too hard to understand. Obviously, the menu was in French, but the English translations were right underneath.
They were going to be a handful alright. However, I’d dealt with much worse.
I just didn’t realize the couple was slightly insane.
Never Judge A Book By Its Cover
The couple ordered a six-hundred bottle of wine. Now it’s required of me to check any person’s ID that looked under twenty-one.
I asked the couple in the most polite way I could manage. With a few agitated grumbles, the both of them scrambled to pull out their wallets. As they retrieved their IDs, I noticed that they both had student IDs from the college nearby.
After I checked their IDs, both of them insulted me and called me uneducated for not inferring that only adults would be such ‘wine experts’. The girl said to her date: ‘She’s trying to flatter you by saying you look young.’ She then turned to me and said, ‘Look, sweetie, it won’t get you a bigger tip so save the ass kissing.’
I held my tongue and brought them their wine. While the couple was ordering, they then decided to make personal remarks to me. The man asked, ‘Why are you just a table attendant instead of having a ‘real job?’
I was too stunned to speak. The wife then added that my husband must be some kind of ‘failure’ because I also have to work. The comment was extremely insensitive given that at the time, my husband had recently been killed in action in Afghanistan.
The couple couldn’t have known this, but to make assumptions about people just to make themselves look good was incredibly rude of them.
‘Maybe she doesn’t have a husband,’ the man added. ‘Hey, how much do you make anyway? You’d think it would be enough to afford French lessons!’
The entire time they were in my section, the couple kept finding cruel things to say about me. They also ordered the most expensive things on the menu and took dozens of pictures for social media clout. I noticed that most of the pictures were of both of them making duckfaces, tons of duckface selfies. Even the guy took duckface selfies.
I felt like smacking both of them in the face, but instead, I just refilled their drinks and ‘fetched’ them their requests.
The other two tables I served were nice and friendly, thankfully. I then went to a small nook behind where the snooty couple sitting to grab extra napkins. When I was back there, neither of the two heard me. They thought I was on the other side of the restaurant.
It was what I overheard the couple talking about that made me realize just how pathetic they really were.
Forgetting Something?
At first, I heard the guy calling me a loser and a pathetic waste. I was about to walk away, but that’s when I heard the girl suggest they ‘disappear’ so I’d get stuck with the bill.
‘They’ll probably fire her,’ the girl added. ‘Her service was terrible. This will only prove it.’ I had no idea why those two were picking on me so much that night. The couple was going on and on about how neither of them would waste their life being a waitress, that they would have careers and would be something in life, not just being in people’s way trying to have a good time.
I was angry, but you know how people are. Talk is one thing, and action is another.
I could tell the couple was near the end of eating their dinner. Their tab was nearly twelve-hundred dollars. Sure enough, the guy beckoned me over and asked for the bill with a smug look on his face.
I knew how dine and dashers operate. As expected, the girl excused herself to the restroom. Then a minute, the girl walked out to the parking lot where she then called the valet. The valet then went to get their car even though she didn’t have their ticket.
However, I was one step ahead. I texted the valet and told him what was happening. I instructed him not to give the car to the girl unless I texted him that they paid. So the valet went off to the corner lot where he parked the car and waited.
The boy, still waiting at the table, darted his eyes all around as he contemplated his next move. He then made sure it looked like I was occupied with the other customers. What he didn’t know was that I had already told the maître about the stunt he was trying to pull. The maître d had deadbolted the front door from the inside. He was letting new customers in and old customers out, but he made sure to lock the door each time, keeping an eye on the boy.
We were all working together here because we knew that if the boy got away, our boss would fire me and take as much of the bill off of my pay and the pay of my other coworkers as possible. At the same time, the boss was such a kiss ass that he wouldn’t help servers out if they come to him regarding customers who act too entitled. He just allowed them to treat us like crap and then fired us if we ever ‘stepped out of line’.
So as I predicted, the boy sat around before he finally got up like he was going to the bathroom. In reality, he saw that his car had pulled up outside. However, the valet told the girl that he could only hand over the keys to the ticket holder, and that was the boy.
It wasn’t actually our policy. The valet normally hands over the keys if he’s given ten dollars by the obvious owner or one of the owner’s party, but the cheapskate girl wasn’t even going to give him his ten dollars, let alone a tip.
Meanwhile, the boy thought he had an opening. He made for the door only to smack his face right into it. The door wouldn’t budge. Then he started trying to look around to. see if there was another way out, but the only other exit was the delivery entrance in the kitchen.
The boy then turned around like he was going back to the table, but the maître d stepped in front of him. I walked up next to the maître d, holding the boy’s unpaid check.
The maître d glared at him before asking, ‘Forgetting something?’
By that time I could see the boy’s girlfriend trying to pay the valet so she can get away, but the valet won’t give the keys.
‘I’m calling the police! You can’t hold me here like this!’ The girl’s screams could be heard through the front door.
‘That’s a good idea,’ said the maître d. ‘Let’s call the police.’
Life’s Journey
I could see the discomfort in the boy’s eyes as he struggled to find something to say. Then the boy tried to bluff like he was going to get us all in trouble by lying to the cops when they got there.
Finally, my boss came out. As envisioned, he took the boy’s side at first, but several other customers witnessed what was going on and said the boy was a total jerk and a dine-and-dasher.
I was so amazed at how quickly other customers stood up for me. They even mentioned how I put up with the two jerks’ abuse and shouldn’t be punished by their unpaid bill.
After the cops came, my boss filled out a police report. The boy started whining to the policeman that his dad could pay and we were making a big deal out of nothing. Then my boss noticed the boy attended the same school he donated a lot of money yearly and got pissed off.
Behind the scenes, my boss shared his disappointment with the school about the two students who tried to steal from his restaurant after years of donating.
We learned later that both the girl and boy got expelled. On top of that, both now have a record because they tried to steal and commit fraud for more than one thousand dollars. However, their rich parents got them to avoid jail like normal people.
Within three months, I got a better job working as a teller in a bank. Within another year I finished my business degree.
Everyone has a different path in life. The couple’s path involves checking the box ‘yes’ next to ‘Have you ever been convicted of a felony?'”
