Un.Believable.

Where do I begin. I'm so upset right now that I just want to get to the point of the story.

No. Scratch that--not upset...IRATE! But maybe it'll be best to tell the entire story so that I can build the intensity for you--that way I'm not alone in my madness. I'll try my best not to break the keys on this keyboard...

So I got to work this morning in a pretty good mood. I was hoping for a busy day because I was pumped and ready to serve! But of course, my day begins with a one top. Lovely. And another. Lovely-er. And so the day went on with a really slow service and my section never filled up completely. Darn it all to heck.

And I had the long shift.

Awesome...

My very last table was a mother and daughter. I almost knew they were going to be toughies right from the get-go due to their "just get me seated and fed" attitudes. They came in just after 3 parties had come in literally right before them, all at the same time. I usually panic at this point when I'm the only server on and I get a lot of tables at once. I got them seated and chipped (Su Casa lingo...chipped=served them chips and salsa). Even with 4 tables all at once, after I get all their orders in, I was pretty proud of myself for how fast I got all of them taken care of.

The 3 parties that had come in before the mother and daughter had all paid and left pretty average tips, so I was content. Pretty good ending to a long shift. Or so I thought.

I went to drop off the credit card slip to the mother and went through my whole routine of, "Here ya go, if you could just sign the top copy, everything else is yours. Is there anything else I can do for you? Alrighty, have a good day, thanks for comin' in!" ...and then I had this gut feeling that this lady was blatantly going to stiff me (more server lingo...stiff=No tip.Zero.Zilch.Nada.) because the entire time serving her and being kind to her, she would hardly acknowledge me when I would do what she had asked. In my head, I kept thinking about the man from my previous shift (I promise I'm not trying to make this post longer--this is relevant).

I was being just as kind to this man as I would to any other customer. However, he was in a bad mood the entire time. Long story short, he got upset at the manager and another server for no reason at all, and I finally got him all paid and ready to go. And lo and behold, no tip. This of course got me upset because I didn't understand why, and I regretted not confronting the man and asking if I had done something to upset him that caused him to not leave any tip. This made me decide that next time I would ask if I had done something wrong. And yes, I did realized this could lead to the customer getting upset, but then I thought again--if they don't come back, that is totally fine with me because who wants to serve a table, work their best, and get nothing in return. HELLO PEOPLE! Do you know we only make $2.20 an hour?!

So back to the grumpy mother and daughter.

Realizing I could be in the same situation as before, tippless, I waited near the cash register to watch out of the corner of my eye what would happen. I see she is finished signing the bill. I go to grab it and with a forced smile, I say, "Thanks again." I look at the bill and see a big fat ZERO. In case that wasn't enough to catch my attention, it had a big slash going through it as if it wasn't a hard enough slap in the face. Just had to emphasize she was not leaving me a cent! I see as she gets up to leave there is no cash on the table. She's about to pass me and she says "Thanks" with hardly any smile at all. I'm thinking, no no no no no, you are NOT leaving me a verbal tip (Yeah, some people count that as a tip. Guess what. ITS NOT!) So I quickly get up my guts (I hate confrontation) and ask her in the politest way possible, "I'm sorry, can I ask you a question--was there something wrong with my service today?" A little nervous of how she would react, she simply says, "No." Shocked from her calm reaction, I timidly ask, "Oh...well, you know its customary to tip servers, right?"

"Yeah, but I just don't tip."

...?!?!

I was seriously taken back by her honest and RUDE answer. To be honest, I can't remember exactly what I said after that, I was so mad at this woman! Who doesn't tip, on purpose?! Who walks into a restaurant, sits down and has a nice meal for about 45 minutes, and doesn't plan on tipping their server?! I think I said something like, "You know servers work for tips, so it is customary to leave tips for them."

"Yeah, but its not the law."

...THE LAW?! By this time, my blood was boiling and it took everything to hold back my anger. I calmly persisted and told her, "I'm sorry to say this, but I know for a fact that servers do not appreciate serving without receiving tips." She then decided she DID in fact want to blame it on my service and said "Well, I told you about the flies." (There were a few flies around the front of the restaurant due to opening the door all day with the patio out front, and she complained about them during my service. I told her kind of laughing thinking she was saying it in a 'ha-ha' mood, "Oh I know we're trying to get that taken care of." She says, "No you're not. If you were I'd see you swatting at flies." Not knowing how else to reply, I told her that the manager has been swatting at flies in back trying to get rid of what he could.) So after her snide comment about my ignorance to the flies, I told her, "I'm sorry about the flies, I couldn't really do anything about that, and I couldn't really be swatting at the flies while you're eating and have the possibility of swatting one into your food, and I didn't want to bother you while you were eating." She just ignored what I had just said and cowardly left with a simple, "Okay, thanks."

I have NEVER in my entire 8 years of working as a server been so livid, irritated, furious, etc towards a customer. Its one thing to forget to tip. Its one thing to not tip if you have a crappy server. Its one thing to be confronted about not tipping and fake you forgot and then proceed to leave a little cash. But it is a COMPLETELY different thing when a server specifically asks about her service and gets an honest reply how 'because it isn't the law' they simply do not leave tips. Well ya know WHAT lady?! Its definitely not the law for me to have to serve you. So next time, please be so kind and do all us servers a favor and go to a fast food joint. Unbelievable.