A 24-Hour Diner Waitress Thought She’d Seen It All—Until She Outsmarted a Spiteful Customer Trying to Set Her Up
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Working in the food service industry has a lot of perks. You usually get fed while you’re on shift and get a discount when you’re not. Generally you’ll be able to sneak some of the leftovers too (no, not the ones from patrons’ plates, the stuff that never got plated up.) And that’s without mentioning the tips, which are sometimes mediocre and other times life changing.
But imagine working in somewhere that provides food service around the clock, like the former waitress in this story, who used to work at a twenty-four hour diner. Because the truth is, at some times of night, things get a little weird and for sure the overnight customers were unpredictable at best. But nothing topped the rudeness of this young customer who came in one day for breakfast.
Read on to find out more.
What was the point?
In my late teens and early twenties I worked as a waitress/server at some local 24 hour diners native to my city. Unfortunately, the last two closed their doors permanently during the pandemic.
This situation was honestly stupid but here we go. One morning, a group of young adults came in. Two of them were a couple, and the young woman held her man’s arm very tightly while glaring at me.
I thought it was weirdm, but working there I had become accustomed to weird.
I dropped off their water and menus and returned back after a few minutes with my little writing pad. The young woman smirked and said to her boyfriend and friends, “Watch this.”
Read on to find out what the young woman did next.
She then proceeded to order her breakfast meal in rapid succession. I mean auctioneer style while smirking.
She said very quickly, “I want a two egg special. I want my eggs scrambled with cheese. I don’t want bacon but turkey sausage. Cook it well on both sides. I want my toast lightly toasted on both sides. I also want my hash browns light with onions but just like five pieces of onions.”
She said this in basically one breath and stared at me satisfied as I quickly wrote everything down.
I want to preface this by saying my brain files away words in the order my ears receive them.
Read on to find out what happened next.
Though I was still writing after she finished talking, I didn’t need to ask her to repeat herself because her order sat in my brain like a list. After writing each thing down it disappeared from the list.
In psychology we would call it working memory, however, if it makes an impression on me I won’t forget it but file it away. I hope this makes sense?
Anyways, after ordering she looked at me satisfied as if she had won some kind of battle or I had failed some form of waitress speed test. To her surprise I repeated the order back just as she said it, down to the, “onions but just like five pieces.”
Her smile faltered for just a moment before she said, “Oh, you’re good.” Out of four people with customized orders they left a $5 tip. I still don’t know what her point was?
It really feels like this woman was there to show off or be nasty.
Then, when it didn’t work, she was genuinely gutted and probably feeling quite foolish too.
And the audacity to do all this and only leave $5 as a tip between the four of them?
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Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.
This person could relate to the memory situation, but thought the rude customer was pathetic.
While others hoped that the guy she was trying to impress had subsequently broken up with her.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who alerted their manager after seeing a customer sign the wrong name on a credit card slip.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that this was a great opportunity for a little sarcasm.
Honestly, people who try to catch out the folk who are just trying to serve them are the worst. Clearly this young woman had a complex about waitresses or at the very least thought that being mean was the best way to impress people. Because in order to apparently make her boyfriend and their friends swoon, she tried to trip up a waitress on the order. Unfortunately for her, the waitress was very good at her job, which did nothing except for make the spiteful young woman look like a fool.
Eventually, this woman will have had to have grown up, surely? Maybe it was when this boyfriend broke up with her because she was mean and he didn’t like that, or maybe it was when she got a taste of her own medicine. But if she is still this way, trying to bully workers for a cheap laugh, then she must have a very sad little life.
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