Waiters are people too, not human doormats who can be stepped all over! Seriously, these wealthy customers had no idea how to treat other people or how the real world actually works. Their behavior ranges from bizarre to downright disturbing. The poor waitstaff certainly didn't even get a good tip out of it! Content has been edited for clarity.
Unleashing A Magical Spell

“Not a high class restaurant or hotel, just a nice little shop selling fresh house-made pasta and sauces to take home and boil or heat up yourself. We got the stereotypical rich people due to the location smack in the middle of Marin County, CA. This was in the late 80’s, and food trends were plentiful and rapidly evolving. Many people were very interested in being on the cutting edge of the latest trend, be it the latest hot restaurant or that month’s fabulous must have menu item. Not that they were actually into food, but just to be ‘in the know’ and brag about how you simply must try the most fabulous tiramisu at (latest hot restaurant). We actual restaurant folk would stoically refrain from rolling our eyes in their presence and carry on. So at the pasta shop one evening, a typical Marin Matron arrived in her jeweled slippers, clattery jewelry, and a cloud of perfume. She pushed past the other patrons in front of her and said she needed some squid ink pasta. ‘I’m sorry,’ I replied, ‘We don’t actually make a squid ink pasta, but you may be able to find it at (fancy grocery store in the same plaza), they carry several very good imported items.’
She gaped at me and started moaning, ‘OHHHH NO NO NO NO NOOOOO!’
Of course now everyone in the place was staring at her. She then told me that she HAD TO have squid ink pasta because she had her ‘gourmet friends’ coming for dinner and they HAD TO have squid ink pasta. I apologized again, explaining that we didn’t make squid ink pasta and again suggested the fancy grocery store, only to be cut off by her loud wailing ‘OHHHH NO NO NO!’ again. I just stood and watched along with everyone else in the place as she paced up and down before the display case, clutching her head and repeating, ‘Squid ink pasta… gourmet friends! SQUID INK PASTA… GOURMET FRIENDS!’ over and over at the top of her lungs, as if this incantation would magically call forth a hidden cache of squid ink pasta. Needless to say, we could not provide said SQUID INK PASTA, so I don’t know what she served to her GOURMET FRIENDS that fateful evening. The whole thing was just so bizarre and over the top. Anytime we encountered some delusional, entitled weirdo, we’d mutter ‘Squid ink pasta!’ and cackle to each other.”
The Secret Code System

“I worked in a restaurant attracting football stars, models, television stars, rich Middle-Eastern and Russian clientele, and absolute turds. I was a receptionist and hostess. I would welcome people, take their coats, show them where to sit. One guy came on his own, and my manager told me where to place him. We had this long counter, perfect to watch chefs prepare their dishes. He refused as soon as I showed him the seat, said he was a regular, and he went on a little ego trip asking me if I know how much he is worth. Apparently he was worth forty million, and he won’t sit there. This was a normal spot, nothing wrong with it, but this man is worth millions, better give him a gold pedestal! Teenage kids were coming in on their own, sometimes with their younger siblings, to have a really expensive bite to eat. When I was a teenager, I could barely afford eating out in KFC or McDonald’s! We would have customers park their supercars right outside of the entrance door, in order to make a grand entrance and attract girls. Some people would even bring their own security guards. One woman, a daughter of someone very important and well known, called in in last minute for a table for eight. Obviously we had to accommodate, even though there were no free tables. That was also general approach, kiss the feet of the high-value customers, even when it wasn’t necessary, even when they treat you like an invisible speck of dirt. We would often serve high-class women of the night, who would be fishing for new clients. I only worked there for three months, but I saw so many bizarre sights. That place was overflowing with inflated egos, plastic faces, and nastiness.
This restaurant denied that they had any kind of system to rate their customers. Guess what, there actually was a code system for celebs, regulars, and VIPs of any sort! We had special notes taped on the inside wall of the cloakroom, with photos and descriptions of the most important people. There were details on who they are, what they do. I’m pretty sure we had a special note about Gwyneth Paltrow. I was also shown to do google image search when the customer code alert popped up on a computer and add it to their file. The restaurant is in UK, but there are branches in the US and Dubai, so we attracted lots of pretentious people from all over the globe.”
The Most Annoying Customer Ever

Back when I did waitering, there was a woman and her friends at one of my tables. The woman asked for a can of Coke. When I brought their drinks and gave the woman her Coke, she looked at me, and, in that typical rich voice, said, ‘Excuse me, honey? I asked for Fanta, not Coke.’
So I apologized, wrote it onto my notepad, and went back to get her a can of Fanta. I brought it to her, and again, she turned to me and said, ‘I didn’t ask for Fanta, I asked for Cream Soda.’
By this time, I was getting a bit annoyed, but went back and got her a Cream Soda anyway. And surely, when I returned to her table, she did the same thing again. ‘I asked for Sprite. Should I call the manager?’
So, for the last time, I smiled and I went back to the kitchen and packed one can of each: Coke, Cream Soda, Fanta, Sprite, Pepsi and Sparberry Soda, into a small plastic box. I took it all to her and said, ‘Here you go, miss, take your pick!’
She looked offended and almost made a scene. She started lecturing me about how I’m incapable of getting the simplest order right, and that she wants to talk to the restaurant’s manager. I told her that I can call him, and that I’ll show him all the soda types I wrote on my notepad that she asked for, and we can get his opinion on the matter. She turned and took her Sprite out of the plastic box and said, ‘Just leave it.’ Her friends were silent throughout the whole ordeal and none of them gave me any issues further on. I didn’t receive a tip as expected, but I shrugged it off. Most customers were decent.”
Wrath Of The Billionaires

This guest was sitting by himself in our restaurant’s lounge, sipping on a $39 glass of sparkling rose. The table next to him contained three Italian couples. All of them were enjoying even more expensive drinks. The The ladies were admiring the view by the solo gentleman’s table, so he complimented their choice in bubbly. One of the husbands exclaimed, ‘YOU DON’T SPEAK TO MY WIFE!’
The man simply replied that he could talk to whoever he would like. The Italian husband screamed, ‘YOU DON’T EVEN LOOK AT MY WIFE! YOU’RE A NOBODY! I HAVE BILLIONS AND YOU ARE A NOTHING!’
The single guest shouted back that he was also a billionaire. At this point, the security showed up. They awkwardly intervene, turning the billionaires’ wrath onto them. This prompted more shouting about the size of these mens’ paychecks. Finally, the solo guest agrees to leave, not because he was asked to, but because he decided to. The two men go over to shake hands, at the urging of their wives. As they come out of the handshake, the solo guest exclaims, ‘I OWN THIS BUILDING! IF I EVER SEE YOU IN HERE, I WILL PERSONALLY THROW YOU OUT ONTO THE STREET!’
The only thing missing from this billionaire fight was them throwing wads of cash at each other. Money is so weird.”
How To Utterly Destroy A Person

I work at a ridiculously upscale steakhouse in Manhattan as a hostess while I’m in college. We have some of the most demanding and exclusive clients come in daily, and I have a lot of stories. Our guests range from Michael Cohen, Steve Madden, and Anderson Cooper, to lesser known Real Housewives stars and just filthy rich business men and women. Last winter while at work, we had three hostesses at the podium: one for seating people, one for checking in, and one for checking coats. I was checking coats, and it was around 7 p.m., our busiest hour. wWe usually do around three hundred covers per night, and we have an entire bar apart from the restaurant side, so it is always hectic. Well a lady checks in with her husband and hands me her coat. I hand her, her ticket number for her coat, then I proceed to hang it up and mark it with all of the other coats in the closet. After checking in two hundred other coats, I totally forgot what kind of coat this woman had, and she was not a regular client, so I didn’t make a special note. Well fast forward two hours later when the couple is leaving. She hands me her ticket and I go to get her coat. She looks at me absurdly and exclaims, ‘That’s not my coat!’
I asked her to come to the coat room with me so we could locate her specific jacket. She wrinkled her nose and told me I was a joke for not being able to do such a simple job! I apologized and walked her to the coat closet. We searched high and low for about an hour for her coat, and at that point she was screaming every name in the book at me. I stood there, calm as could be, because the money is worth it. I finally decided to involve the manager because I just did not know what to do. He didn’t know what to do either, so he said we would reimburse her for the cost of her coat, and we would write her a check, but she refused. She must have tried on all 200 coats in our closet and claimed all were not hers. I was petrified at this point that I had given her coat away to someone else, as many look the same. Well, she told me I would be getting a bill personally from her lawyer, and I was actually scared because I knew how expensive those coats were. She berated me and degraded me in front of the manager, and told him I need to be fired! At this point, I just wanted her to take someone else’s coat, I didn’t care anymore. She takes the coat I initially tried to give her, puts it on, and says, ‘Wow, it fits perfect!’
She reaches into the pocket and says, ‘Wow, how did this coat happen to have my wallet and keys in it too?’
I looked up and literally had no words. I wasted about two hours now being belittled by the woman when I was right the whole time. The lady was like, ‘I don’t know what to say!’ and my manager said to her how she owed us an apology. The lady handed me her drink glass and a $1 tip, did not apologize, and left like nothing happened! I sat down on the closet floor and poured my eyes out. She wasted what little energy I had left and made me feel so worthless. Thankfully my coworkers were pretty awesome. The bartender made me a special drink and they all gave me a hug.”
KFC Catastrophe

“Not a high end restaurant, but a KFC. This is about four in the afternoon when the dinner rush is just about to start, and this ‘very successful business man’ comes in. He was in his mid-twenties, with a fitted suit and a fresh haircut. So the way you order at KFC is you walk up to the counter, tell the cashier what you want, and pay for it. He’ll hand you your number and cup, and you wait for a few minutes while the other workers behind the cashier prepare and make your food. It’s then called up as your number, you grab it, and have a seat. THIS guy however walks right to the seating area, sits down, and starts snapping his fingers into the air to call for service, all while on the phone. After about a minute of snapping, he starts to look anxious, so I go over and tell him that he needs to stand in line at the counter if he wants to order. He looked at me like I has killed his dog.
There was also this family that wasn’t rich per-se, but they kinda hurried themselves in, quickly ordered a bunch of chicken pieces and some soda, and they DEMANDED that they receive it immediately, because they were STARVING. The thing is that they refused to pay for it until they had started eating. I told the father that they were preparing the food right this moment, and you can pay in the meantime, but he straight up refused to pay for it until it was on their table, so I told my coworkers to stop making it. After a few back-and-forth comments, he exclaims, ‘YOU ARE RUINING OUR DINNER! and he promptly left. After a minute, his son paid for it without a word.”
His Daughter Was Beyond Horrified

“I had a guy from Brooklyn come in with his young daughter, and the poor young girl couldn’t have been older than seventeen. From the moment this guy entered the restaurant, he was guaranteed to be a monster. The moment I get to the table, he is talking on his phone, so I leave and wait for him to finish. I come back and he scolds me for not having brought bread. Whatever, I’m not supposed to do it until drinks are on the table, but cool, thanks guy. He orders and also gets a $20 glass of merlot. The entire time he’s here, he is talking obnoxiously loud to the table sitting across from him (who were obviously not into it), shouting in the stereotypical annoying Brooklyn accent about how he and his young ten-year-old son were going 120 mph down the interstate in his Ferrari, and just all sorts of pompous rich gems. So his steak comes out and of course he complains, it’s not done or done too much I don’t remember specifically, but I get him another one. Of course, he complains about his daughters too. I look over to what seems to be this young girl trying to enjoy her meal, eyes wide with one of the most apologetic looks I’ve ever seen, and he demands I get her a new plate as well. After this loser puts me through the ringer for 45 minutes, he asks to see my manager. He continues to say how this is the worst food he’s ever had, the merlot is trash, and I was a terrible server that left his glass of tea empty etc. This all happened while he was holding the to-go bag full of extra food I brought because they were unsatisfied originally.
Now, my manager trusts me to go through the cash register for my own change, so the idea that one of her most reliable and trustworthy servers just ‘abandoning’ his table raised a red flag, so she did what most intelligent managers would do. She said, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the meal sir, you don’t have to pay. But if you didn’t enjoy it, and don’t plan on paying, please leave the leftovers.’ The man was livid. His poor daughter was flushed red standing by the door covering her face, just trying to not be seen with this monster. He starts screaming and carrying on, and after about five minutes of making a scene, he takes off with the food without paying. Later, we located his Facebook account and warned him that he was no longer welcome, and the police would be contacted if he showed up again. As you might have guessed, no there was no tip.”
Cruel And Unusual Humiliation

“I didn’t work in high class restaurant, but I delivered for Jimmy Johns, and my delivery radius included a very wealthy area. My experience has been that the rich are often incredibly stingy and nasty, and they make for the worst tippers. A man called in an order at 9:57 pm, when our store closed at 10. I knew that delivery was going to keep me in the store an extra half hour to 45 minutes more than usual, and this was time which I would not be paid for. But I still went ahead with it and delivered his sandwich. Apparently when I delivered, I wasn’t as friendly as he thought I should have been. I didn’t bend over backwards for this guy, but I thought I had been pleasant enough. He had paid via credit card using the app, so his tip was already included in the bill. He was so incensed at awful and rude behavior that he called the store, making me stand there and wait while he did it, and he demanded that my manager refund the payment, saying that he would pay in cash instead. My manager was generally pretty laid back, so he just went along with it, despite it being an unorthodox request. The man then paid me in cash with exact change, thereby denying me my tip, all because I wasn’t as friendly as I should have been. I won’t name him, but he’s a well known billionaire in my hometown.
The tip, of course, was 47 cents, enough to bring his bill to an even dollar amount. He later left not one but two one star reviews of my store using two false accounts. They were both left the day after the delivery, and they referenced my manager my name and me as the delivery boy. I’m assuming it was him, since neither I nor my manager had had any other angry customers recently.”
Give My Dogs Foie Grass!

“My uncle works at a very upscale restaurant on a very well-to-do and desirable vacation island in the Atlantic Ocean. My uncle has told me so many bizarre stories. One of their regular customers is a billionaire oil guy. One time, the owner got a call from health inspectors, saying they received a complaint that dogs were seen eating in the restaurant. All the owner did was speak the billionaires name and the health inspector said, ‘Oh okay, bye.’
If he really liked the meal, he will go through the restaurant and, in front of everyone, peel off crisp hundred-dollar bills from a giant roll of money in his pocket and tip every service person, whether they helped or not. When he takes guests with him, my uncle has never seen him with the same woman twice, and often it’s a table of women. He demands to have his dogs seated at the table and feeds them foie grass and expensive water. He arrives on a yacht that tows a smaller yacht. The smaller yacht is still big enough to have a helicopter. He is definitely a playboy, if only in his own mind. All that said and his quirks aside, my uncle said he’s quite a nice guy and treats everyone courteously and is always very gracious.”
Coffee Ladies Haunt Some Dreams

“I worked at a swanky Starbucks with a drive-thru, and two women I encountered still haunt my dreams to this day:
Ms. Linda: Ms Linda came by in her old-school Mercedes around 4:45 a.m. accompanied by her dog. She would INSIST we brew a new batch of coffee when she ordered it, or else it wouldn’t be fresh. Given her consistency, we eventually just started waiting until 4:45 a.m. to brew our first batch (we opened up at 4:30). Four out of five times, she would take a sip and ask us to brew a new batch. This all happened while sitting at the drive-thru window. Granted, there was almost never anyone behind her, but it meant she could watch me grind new beans and wait the full five minutes for it to brew. She wouldn’t accept a pour-over cup, nor could we take coffee from the urn before the full batch finished brewing.
Ms. Trish: Ms Trish would come by around 7:30 a.m. on her way to dropping off her son at elementary school. This is a pretty busy Starbucks, and our window time needed to be less than thirty seconds, ideally less than twenty seconds during peak hours. She orders an americano with steamed half and half. However, she wants you to wait until she is at the window to pull the shots, so they are super fresh. I would then hand her the shots, a cup of hot water, and a cup of steamed half and half, SO SHE COULD MIX IT HERSELF. And if she thought the espresso was too bitter, she would ask us to redo it. Properly pulled shots take 18-21 seconds, so her order alone would put us in the red for our window time, assuming it was fine the first time.
Ms. Linda paid using exact change, no tip. Ms. Trish would at least give us the 12 cent change from her $5 bill. So glad I left that horrid company.
How To Deal With Nasty Celebrities

“I used to be the head host and event manager for a very popular and swanky restaurant in Austin, Texas. For the most part, celebrities were quite civil and in no way demanding for special accommodations. They clearly did not want to make a fuss about being there and what not. Regarding generic rich people, it was never quite that bad, although I did have one guy slip two $100 bills at different times in order to move up the waiting list faster, and another couple who came in to eat before heading next door for a concert. It was a weekend night at 6:30, our busiest time, and I informed him it would be a two hour wait. He immediately got agitated and started to go on about how he had tickets to the show and needed to be seated immediately, and at this point I can tell he has already had way too much to drink. I pointed out to him that pretty much everyone in the restaurant was pretty much doing the same, and they made reservations. He got angrier with me because he had called earlier trying to make a reservation. We don’t take reservations for the current day after 5, so he was lead to believe I lied to him and asked for my manager. He began to berate and insult me in front of all the other guests. Luckily, the no-nonsense manager was on duty and asked him to leave.
Two instances of celebrities in particular stand out the most. One with Michael Ian Black and the other with Jennifer Aniston. Upon his entering, I didn’t realize it was him at first, and we were required to ask for both first and last name from the head of the party, in order to put them into the Open Table system. The reason why was to ensure we knew exactly when and for how long they were seated and who their server was, in case they called back with complaints or the occasional praise.
Anyway in walks comedian Michael Ian Black, and after asking him for his name, his just snaps immediately at me, exclaiming that I don’t need his name. I apologize and explain, and at this point I just label them as guest X. I then inform him there is a slight wait, and he then gets annoyed even more and points out there are several empty booths. I tell him those are for reservations within the next hour, and unfortunately I can’t seat him there. I direct him to the bar while he waits. I get to seating him and begin to tell him about the restaurant as I’m supposed to do, and he just snaps that he and his guest would like to not be bothered. For the rest of his visit, he was rude to several servers and food runners, and unnecessarily condescending concerning his order. I don’t quite remember what tip he left, but it was subpar. Even more so based on the fact I sat him with one of the best servers in the restaurant. I just wanted to go up to him and tell him not to worry about us calling paparazzi and informing them he was there because they wouldn’t care about him. But I would have gotten fired for that, so I kept that thought to myself.
Now to anyone who is worried here, Ms. Aniston was not the rude one. In fact, she was quite friendly. Earlier in the day, I get a call from this woman wanting to make a reservation for eight, and she wants a table by the window, which was also not a problem. However, then she proceeds to demand that no other parties be seated at any tables directly next to them for the duration of the meal. I explain to her I’ll try my best to accommodate this, but in no way can I guarantee it if more guests show up than is possible to reach that goal. She goes off. She starts telling me I better do this because the table is seating several high profile people, and that they demand they have this demand met. I ask who the people are, and she will not reveal information because I’ll call the paparazzi. I’d also like to add, I don’t have a clue how I would even go about doing that. Anyway they show up and I realize it is Jennifer Aniston, as well as Jason Bateman, Sia, and Sandra Bullock. They were absolutely the nicest people. Incredibly friendly. They even allowed for the employees to take a few pics after the meal. But the best part was when the assistant to Ms. Aniston, the woman on the phone, was finally seated. She had to eat at the bar by herself and was not included.”