Customers Suck: Laser Pointers
Some days . . . I’ll tell ya.
So, I’m working last night. Just after I had punched in, a table of three came in — a guy and a gal between twenty and twenty-five years old, fairly clean cut sorts, probably from the local college, and a younger-looking physically disabled girl. They sat in the far back corner of the restaurant.
Well, I’m wandering through, and I notice a red dot shooting across the walls and customers. I immediately recognized it as a laser pointer. I glanced around the restaurant, and found the kids in the back corner playing with a laser pointer.
I don’t know if anyone else out there has had the sheer joy of dealing with dickheads in restaurants playing with laser pointers, but I’ll bet a few of you have. These little gadgets are a pain in the ass. They annoy the other customers, they annoy the workers, they’re just fucking annoying. And, we don’t allow them in the place — haven’t since they first came out.
So, laser pointer. I go over to the table and say to the guy, who was the one with the pointer, “I’m sorry, we don’t allow those in here. Could you not play with it in here, please?” I was stern, but I wasn’t mean about it. He said, “Okay”, all annoyed, and with this half-stoned look on his face of, “I’m going to continue to flash this around the second you turn your back.”
On my way back to the wait aisle, I mention this to the waitresses, and ask them to keep their eyes open for the damn thing. I get to the wait aisle and turn around, and there’s Mr. Man, looking all cranktastic and whatnot. “Can I do something for you?” I ask.
“Are the manager?” He asks.
“Yes I am.” I sigh internally. Now he’s going to be a dick about things.
“Well, you were really rude, so I want my food to go. We’re leaving.”
Lately, my give-a-damn has been broken, so I shrugged and said, “Okay.” I went to the back, and proceeded to get his order ready to-go. Meanwhile, Mr. Man is up at the register, hassling my lead server, Jamie. (Note: Jamie is PMSing, and has a toothache. Under ordinary circumstances, she takes absolutely zero shit from anyone. Under today’s circumstances, Mr. Man is probably lucky that she didn’t jump the counter and thrash the shit out of him for looking at her funny. Just sayin’.) He’s demanding my name and the number for our “main office”. We don’t have a “main office”, unless you count the cubby hole in the back where we go to count our tills. Jamie informs him of this, tells him my name, and curb-stomps him into oblivion for daring to speak to her. Okay, no, she didn’t, but it was a close thing.
So, I get him his food to go, he pays me, and tells me he’s calling my boss to complain. I tell him, “If that’s what you feel you need to do. Have a nice night.” And out the door he goes with his two companions.
As soon as he was gone, I went back to the general manager, who was in our cubby hole, counting his till and doing inventory, the whole time, and let him know what happened. He rolls his eyes at the mention of the laser pointer. We all hate the stupid laser pointers. In fact, every restaurant manager/worker I’ve mentioned this story to has given me the same sneering eye roll of utter contempt for laser pointers. I assume the feeling is universal.
Later on that night, Mr. Man calls back to complain, and was deeply annoyed to learn I was still managing. Dick. Unfortunately, one of my waitresses answered the call and told him I was still on duty. I was disappointed — if I’d got the call, I could have pretended to be Mary, the other supervisor, and taken my own complaint. Heh. Ah well.
The rest of the night was full of customers who were just pissy. For no good reason. It got to be vastly annoying. The only highlight of the night was that our newest server, Bitchface, quit. Her name pretty much tells you the story. She was one of those gals we get occasionally who thinks she is plainly too good to be working for the likes of us, and shows it in every word and deed. Also, she was just snotty and snippy and rude to us. We were more than happy to see her go.
