Working at a restaurant or bar usually means you will have some regulars. It also means not all of them will be nice.

See why this restaurant worker had to put her foot down with a regular customer.

AITAH for refusing service

I’ve been working at the same locally owned restaurant/bar for approx. 25 years. I’ve worked every position and have been the primary bartender for the last 4 years. I have watched regulars come and go, some of which have become like family.

One particular regular, who we’ll call Howie, has been coming for as long as I can remember and we always got along just fine. Until recently…

He’s not good for business.

He’s always been a little colorful with his conversations but now he’s getting out of hand. He lost his wife in 2021 and retired in 2023. Now it seems he has nothing to do but sit at home and drink before he comes in to eat (he takes an Uber, so I don’t have to worry about that).

He likes to pay for other people’s meals but then doesn’t tip me appropriately. l know for a fact he’s costing me money. I had people tell me they won’t come in if he’s there.

Big problems came when he joined a party and paid their $500 tab.

It’s turning into bannable offenses.

From that moment on he would constantly talk smack about my manager.

One night he was drunk and I refused to serve him more beer. He was also upset we wouldn’t give him half off his appetizer because he didn’t get a meal. He called my manager a fat, dumb b**** and said “I should’ve gone somewhere else.”

I slapped his ticket on the counter and told him we’re done. For the next 3 weeks I didn’t see him.

But she hasn’t seen the last of him.

Then he came back to ask what he said that upset me. Like really bro? I explained everything that I had to put up with for the past few years. I told him we can talk smack to each other, but leave the guests and my co-workers out of it.

We are starting over, nothing comes up from the past and I will take care of him. I honestly do care about him, I know he’s lonely.

We were good for awhile but then last week he came in and reverted right back to his old self. I made my manager transfer the ticket and told him I would no longer be taking care of him. He was big mad.

She still feels a bit bad for him.

He said he’s never coming back when I’m working, I needed to be fired, he made sure the other server was getting the tip, not me like 100 times.

Then, guess who showed up last night. He sits down at the bar and asked me if I was going to serve him. I said probably not and went and got the manager. She asked everyone that was old enough if they’d take him.

They all said no and now he’s on a war path. She kicked him out.

So, AITA for getting a regular of 15+ years kicked out when this was one of his comfort places or should I have let bygones be bygones?

Here is what folks are saying.

I don’t get why she feels bad.

Exactly. Look after yourself!

He’s lucky it didn’t happen sooner.

Sometimes. But it didn’t really, here.

This is what I thought. Why are people comfortable showing off that they are a loser?

And stay out!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.