The other night, Jenn and I went for dinner at a pub. We walked in, the early 20-something girls behind the bar looked at us but said nothing so I asked if we seat ourselves, to which they replied in the affirmative. So we sat down and waited. Took a long time but our pretty server eventually came over and took our drink orders. When she came back with those we said we’d like to start with an order of very saucy, messy wings. For sure, no worries, she said. We waited way too long but finally the wings came. She dropped them off on one plate, with no plates for the bones, and most notably, no napkins. We kept waiting for her to come back with those but she never did. Never even walked by because she was busy sitting at another table with her friends, playing on her phone. Eventually I went to the bathroom and grabbed some paper towels to use as napkins. Just as I got back with those, she finally walked by the table so Jenn asked for napkins. “For sure, no worries.” When she came back with those she saw the paper towels I had grabbed and didn’t acknowledge them, no sorry or anything. She tried to run back to her friends and their table but we said we now wanted to order the rest of our meal. “For sure, no worries.” We ordered, and waited. And waited and waited and waited while she sat with her friends. At long last the calamari and nachos arrived, but sans cutlery for the calamari. Took a while and yet another “for sure, no worries” (as if she was doing us a favour by bringing us the basic fucking utensils required to eat this food) but we eventually got forks. We asked for more tzatziki for the calamari, she never brought it but she did charge us $1.50 for it.
You can imagine how peeved I was by all of this. I had been mulling over giving her a $1 or $2 tip — something insulting that says “you sucked” but at least isn’t absolutely nothing — but the fork and tzatziki stuff pushed me over the edge. How can you you serve food to people but neglect to give them the means to eat that food? And how can you charge for something you fail to provide? It’s unconscionable to me. So we asked for the bill, she came by with the machine, and I entered zero for tip while she was off giving more lip service to some other poor bastards in there that night. She came back, said thanks, and stared at the numbers on the machine for a few uncomfortable seconds before storming off without saying a word. It felt very, very good.
Epilogue: Jenn went to the bathroom while I walked out to the truck which was parked behind the pub. As I approached the truck I noticed a guy smoking by a door to the kitchen. I asked if he was kitchen staff, he said yup. I said our server was fucking terrible but the food was good and I didn’t want the kitchen staff to be stiffed on her account so I gave him $10. He was a little weirded out but appreciative, then asked which server it was. I said I didn’t want to single her out but he asked if it was the blond one and said she gets some complaints about her attitude so I admitted yup, it was the blond one. I said it wasn’t so much the attitude as it was just zero service but reiterated that the food was good (the wings are legitimately among the best I’ve ever had, and it makes me sad that I may not be able to go back for them for a very long time) and the guy was chill and grateful, and it was a funny, happy ending to the whole thing.
crimson highway 