DEFINITION OF A TOTAL PRICK

I’ve spent years waiting tables. There are two reasons I can imagine leaving a tip like that.
1) Breanna was a total bitch
2) I’d seen Breanna on TV marching for $15/hour mandated wage PLUS tips.

I erased what I was going to write about the fact that he might have received bad service, however as someone who has traveled on business and pleasure for decades, I’ve never received service bad enough to do that..The tip is horseshit in and of itself, the “get a real job” crap is a bit uppity….yeah, fuck that smart feller, I mean, well, you know..

“Get a real job!”

Good grief, is this for real? I feel like shooting that customer, whoever he or she is.

Waiting table is the only job I’ve ever had in my life that reduced me to tears. I lasted exactly 2 days as a server when I was a girl of 19. It is absolutely the most rugged, exhausting, and painful job I’ve ever done… and I spent 15 years on “male” blue collar jobs. I have horrible feet, and they were on fire after 2 hours… and I could scarcely walk at the end of the shift. I also couldn’t lift a tray loaded with 6 plates of food, and the customers seemed to assume that I and the other girls waiting table were there to be groped, patted, and get their apron strings untied while carrying a tray laden with food, trying to dodge small children let to run loose in the aisles between tables.

If I’m not prepared to leave a tip of 20%, I stay home. Like it or not, servers are still extremely dependent on tips for their incomes, from which are deducted the ENTIRE CHECK of customers in their station who decide to run out on, say, an $80 check. These people do hot, heavy, physical, exhausting WORK for their money, with no job security and usually no benefits or perks.

I’ve done that before. I was eating lunch at the Houston’s in boca raton with Brad stewart, who was the bass player in Marilyn Manson. Houston’s was a nice place, very prepped out, and Brad was a freak, purple dreadlocks, dressed insanely, quite a visual statement. The wait staff had a little too much fun at brad’s expense, so I gave him my amex, and when the check came, he played the part, to the waiter’s horror, and left the guy with nothing but an autograph and and some similar career advice. Well deserved, in that case. I was a waiter when I was a kid, so I’m generally pretty good, but that homer deserved exactly what he got.

I have relatives who have worked in the ‘server’ trade. A good trick they liked to play on the asshole patron who is the guy ‘picking up the tab’: “I’m sorry sir, but your card has been denied, (loud enough for all to hear) do you have any other means to pay…..or perhaps one of your guests would have the resources?”.