It began with a triple-seating. Not a bad one, mind you. It was a normal, semi-busy Friday lunch shift for me. I clocked in, greeted my guests, and got them their drinks promptly. One table wanted to order immediately; they were dining on their business lunch, which was also no problem. See, I arrive to work ready to go every time, expecting to be triple-seated. This way, when it doesn't happen (as is the case 60-70% of the time), I can be pleasantly surprised and relaxed. Today it did happen, so I simply went with the flow. You don't fight the flow.
Two two-tops of elderly people and a five-top family later, I was given a table outside my section. Again, if you've gleaned anything from my personality yet, you could guess I was not shaken by this turn of events. What made me pause for a split second as I strolled over to this new three-top was not that it was messing with my Seafood Feng Shui; the disturbance came, rather, from the details I noted, the finer points I perceived with my peripheral vision on the approach.
Oddity #1: The table, meant to accommodate four people, is usually set up with two chairs on opposing sides. The chairs had not been rearranged, but it was capped with an additional chair.
Oddity #2: Of the five chairs, only three were occupied. From the front without any chairs, a woman was seated at each of the two closest chairs on either side, and a third woman sat in the far chair at the back of the table. They kept a chair between them to maintain personal space, like toe spacers for a pedicure.
Oddity #3: The women were all the same size, shape, style, and disposition. I wasn't surprised by the fact that they were decked out in baggy, blingy, bright, contrasting clothes. The first three commonalities aren't all that strange; families or close friends often have some similarities in their physical features. But they all had the same perceived attitude and mood. It seemed, from a distance, as though an invisible mist of haughty displeasure thickened the air around them.
These oddities, especially the third one, piqued my attention and put me on edge. When I approach a table, as I've said before, I'm always cheerful. But what kind of person goes out to eat and begins the dining experience unhappy? That's like kicking off your own dance party and then breaking your own legs with a sledgehammer.
Alas, I needed to serve them anyway. Such is the nature of my job. It was worth trying to brighten the mood, I thought, so I mustered up a genuine smile and waved jovially as I said, "Hi! Welcome to the Scarlet Crustacean! My name is Calvin, I'll be serving you this afternoon. How are you today?"
The three of them glared at me in unison. The mood darkened, impossible as that seemed. I could almost see the gloomy shadow descending upon me, encasing me in their fog of fail. Tough crowd.
The first guest, I'll call her A, responded first. "Water."
I took a mental breath. Shrimpmonger Alert. Humongous Shrimpmongers. They were Shrimpmongous.
The second guest, B, said "I want a water, too. And nah," she looked at A, "you said yo' stomach was botherin' you. Get you a ginger ale or sumfin!" She turned back to me. "She want a ginger ale." A nodded along with her.
"Okay, I can get that," I said. "And for you?" I asked C.
"Get me one of them raspberry iced teas, Calvin," she grunted at me, eyes still fixed on the menu. She must have been looking through the menu, or she would have read that we don't have raspberry iced tea. Perhaps it was just for effect. Don't worry, lady, you look the part, all right. You could play Captain Shrimpmonger in The Shrimpmonger Stomps on the Scarlet Crustacean. It's a B movie. Or it could be.
"We have strawberry - is that all right?" I asked, hoping that it was.
"Yeah, whatever. Fine." She never even looked at me.
"All right. I'll be right back with your drinks, ladies, and then I'll take your lunch orders down." I took two steps towards the kitchen before I heard B start talking at me again.
"Nah, wait, I'm ready to order now. Y'alls ready to order?"
"Nuh-uh," C answered, shaking her head.
"Well I'm gonna order anyway," insisted B. "Gimme a make-your-meal deal, with some shrimp scampi and some o' them fried ones."
"Fried shrimp?"
"Yeah, whatchu think I was talkin' about?"
I thought, Oh, I don't know, fried clam strips, fried popcorn shrimp, fried chicken strips... I'm sorry, my psychic-waiter-powers are blocked by your aura of malcontent. But I said, "Okay, sure. And for your side item?"
"Lemme get a baked potato with some butter and lots of sour cream on the side. And bacon."
"I'm sorry, we don't have bacon for the potatoes. Can I offer you some cheese?" For just three extra dollars you can have an I.V. in your arm just pumping the fat and cholesterol straight into your body.
"Yeah. That."
"Excellent. What kind of salad would you like?"
"Gimme a regular salad but with Caesar dressing, on the side, extra dressing, extra croutons, extra cheese, no onions." By the time she finished describing her salad instructions, I assumed the other guests must be ready to order. I was wrong. I thanked her for her order and proceeded to the alley to get their drinks.
I made it to the alley and let out a sigh. Drake was there and said hello.
"Hey, dude. How are you? Did you just get here?"
"Good," he answered, "and yeah. I just clocked in. How you doin'?" He gave me a high-five.
"I'm all right, man. Except for this three-top of total Shrimpmongers I got. They're driving me nuts and I haven't even taken their orders yet." I put the drinks together on a tray, set up a dessert for my other table, whose dessert order I had taken what felt like hours ago, and moved to the computer to print out the third table's check. "Seriously, Drake, they're Level Three Shrimpmongers."
He looked up from the food window. "Level Three, eh? So they're messy, self-centered, and rude?"
"At the least."
"Wow. That can't be good." Drake trayed up a couple of plates. "So you probably don't have a second to walk this food right now."
"Survey says... no. Sorry, dude."
"That's all right," he said, "Mindy's coming in now and it's hers anyway."
I dropped the dessert and the check and returned to take the order from my three-top of Shrimpmongers. "Here are your drinks, ladies. Are you two ready to order?" I asked A and C.
"Yeah, they ready now," B answered.
"I wanna get a make-your-meal deal, too, with some crab legs and some of that seafood alfredo. And a baked potato with just butter, but extra butter on the side."
"All right, no problem. What kind of sal--"
"And get me one of these Big Shrimp meals, Calvin," interrupted C. She's a Shrimpmonger of the Name-User subtype. The kind of Shrimpmonger who pays attention to frequent-diner tips, such as the one that says using your waiter's name will make him more likely to attend to your requests. But alas, being a Shrimpmonger, these diners missed the fine print that indicates that treating your waiter with disrespect negates the courtesy of using his name. Silly Shrimpmongers.
"Surely," I answered, "A Big Shrimp deal for you." I followed up automatically with, "And what would you like on the side?"
"Baked potato. Sour cream only, extra sour cream." Wait for it. "No butter."
"And for your salads?" I asked A and C.
I won't bore you with the details of the last two salad orders, for as you might expect, there were many. Why these people have such specific preferences for their salads, I don't know. Why they care so deeply about the perfection of the precursors to their meals, I cannot understand. Surely, they didn't go out to a seafood restaurant for the amazing salads... did they?
They each changed their orders twice before settling into something they really wanted for lunch at that moment. This was getting to be too crazy to be real. I thought maybe I was getting Punk'd. Maybe I was on Candid Camera. Perhaps one of my managers was playing a practical joke on me. I have seen nasty, sloppy, ornery people before at this restaurant, but I did not know that there were people at this level of bad diner. It was like serving Jabba the Hutt's neanderthal ancestors while they were in withdrawals from heroin. After noting the mental image that presented and nearly vomiting, I jotted their orders down and slipped away as quickly as possible.
In the alley, I prepared precisely their preposterous salads and dropped them with fresh bread at the table.
"We ain't even got our meals yet and he already treatin' us like dirt?" exclaimed C.
Holdthephone. I'm treating you like dirt? I have officially entered Bizarro World. What the hell. I just brought you some FOOD. Start eating it! Please, occupy your talk-hole with chewing and let me go my merry way! "I'm sorry, is something wrong with your salads?" I asked.
"Yo, you gotta be kidding me. This is all the bread we get? This ain't nothin'."
"I can bring some more right out to you, and continue to bring more as you need; this is just the standard amount we generally bring to tables. I promise I'll have some more out to you right away, if you want."
"You're damn right I want. And bring me some more dressing, while you at it."
I came back with more bread and an extra side of dressing. "Here you go," I said.
"I need another dressing, too." said A. B opened her mouth to say what I thought would be the same thing.
I dropped the other two sides of dressing I brought out based on intuition. Bam. Psychic-waiter-powers trump stupid depressing aura. What now.
They wolfed through their salads like animals. Dressing sprayed from their salad plates and their teeth like there was a Caesar paintball war going on. I wanted to dive into a booth or duck under a table for cover, but I could only keep a safe distance while I looked over my other tables until their meal came out.
I brought their food out to them with extra napkins and another round of bread, having just refilled their drinks in advance. "This needs more of the sauce stuff," A snapped. "You gotta get me more of this, 'cause I'll be done with what you gave me in like a minute."
"I'll be sure to bring that out in a moment," I said.
"And another napkin."
"I brought extra napkins for you right here." I casually gestured to the napkins I had just placed on the table in front of her.
"I see like five or six. We gon' need like eight."
"And I wanna place a take-out order, Calvin."
I took the take out order. It was relatively uncomplicated - which, in this case, is like standing in a valley and saying a mountain isn't big compared to a planet.
"Drake, this table is driving me nuts. Forget level three. These people are Level Six Shrimpmongers. It's ridiculous."
"There's a level SIX?! Holy crap, man. Anything I can do to help?" He didn't have anything in the window because we were fairly slow, so he walked over to where I was retrieving more bread to chat.
"There is now. If there wasn't before, these women created it. They're horrific. Cruel. I swear they're trying to make my job difficult and frustrating."
"Well. At least you can write about it later."
"Hell yes."
I returned to the table. Heaven help me, I returned to the table. Because it's my job. I brought the take-out order and boxes for the rest of their food with me, as well as split checks, which they'd requested earlier.
"Cal, that won't work," said B. "I need a smaller box." A large box would contain their food. It wasn't like I brought them a container in which their food would not fit, but these Level Six Shrimpmongers were out for the perfect experience, and that meant they needed custom-sized take-out boxes.
"And get me another drink to go," demanded C.
I brought out new boxes, a drink to go, and cashed out B and C. A had a problem with her check.
"My ginger ale tasted weird. I don't want to pay for it." The ginger ale still sat in front of her, depleted by a third but therefore still mostly full. I promised to check with a manager for her and return shortly.
So let's tally up, just for fun, what I dealt with from this table so far.
Unenthusiastic greeting
Insistent interruptions
Indecisive menu selections
Ridiculously complex salad orders
Extra everything with their salads, meals, and take-outs
Eight napkins, because six wouldn't do, when they were making:
One hell of a mess on the table
Downsized boxes
General and continuous discontent and rudeness
And a check change that would cut two dollars and change off a forty dollar bill.
I have never wanted to hurt a guest so much. I was nearly shaking with violent indignation. I kept envisioning whipping a spinning backhand fist into A's skull, driving my elbow through B's temple and punching through C's face in a series of swift, graceful, brutal movements. I wanted to use a crab cracker to burst their eyeballs and drain the fluids into their scampi butter. I imagined shoving whole ramekins filled with Caesar dressing down their throats, lodging the ceramic in their esophagi. I wanted to drop their sagging, choking, eyeless bodies into the lobster tank and unbind the lobsters' claws. Of course, I'm not Dexter and they aren't murderers, so none of that would do. Instead, I went into the alley to ask the manager to remove the ginger ale from their check.
My manager complimented me on my composure and professionalism while handling this table -- which she had seen was "somewhat troublesome," -- and commended my perseverance. I'm glad she couldn't see into my brain and know the terrible retribution I craved. Anyway, she made the check alteration for me.
When I returned to bring A her new check, all three of them were gone. There was no way they all happened to go to the restroom at the same time. I left the check on the table, just in case I was wrong, but I wasn't wrong. They were gone.
It was like the miracle you didn't want to happen.
Yes, they were gone, but they had intentionally ditched the check, having used the "nasty" ginger ale as a cover story to get me out of the way. According to one of the hosts, they had left one by one, looking over their shoulders and seeming somewhat shady about the whole thing - it was their clearly self-conscious demeanor that caused her to remember them leaving. So not only had I dealt with the intense, demeaning admonitions of Level Six Shrimpmongers; not only had I not received a tip despite the fact that I'd worked harder on this one table than I had done on any of the previous five tables put together; but they had skipped out on a check, shorting the restaurant money. No, I didn't get in trouble for it because I went through the proper avenues and informed management immediately - there was nothing I could do about it.
I took a deep breath, silently rejoiced that they were gone, and got ready for my next table.
My two other tables had just gotten up to leave, also. It ended with a triple-seating.
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