No, not where I work. Our tables have nothing on them but a small wooden box with salt/sugar/pepper/ketchup, so it's pretty obvious when one is not clean. And as SBA said, it doesn't matter whether it's fine dining or a shithole, it's like this persistent inexplicable pull that draws people to the dirtiest possible…

Yeah but you accused "us folks" of committing a crime, which is ridiculous. Having a change of server can happen for any reason. Most people would assume it was because the first server was going home soon, or because they accidentally took the wrong table at first, or anything else, at all. Nobody ever told this…

OK, you don't read well, and that's fine. I tend to write lengthy posts and responses, I can understand why you might have skipped over several key things I said. So: I, myself, would not do that. Get it? Cool!

For starters, if this woman had a medical condition like yours, I'm guessing she wouldn't have been eating the quantities that she apparently was. We're talking about several days' worth of calories all in one go. So, I don't really doubt the assumption of bulimia. Second, this is a building with one single-occupancy…

See, all of this makes plenty of sense to me - intoxication, bad manners, eating disorder... what I don't get is.... why, when you gesture to an empty room where every table is clean except for one and say "take your pick!", they always - ALWAYS - choose the single table that is not clean. Even sometimes saying that…

I want to buy Ian a drink, hear him tell that story, and then get nasty with him.

You know, I'd rather eat at the restaurant I work at - where we don't always clear every single plate from the table ASAP - than the ones that you've worked at - where people put bodily fluids in the food as revenge. That is something that true professionals do not do.

Oh my god you are great. We have a regular, he's a little odd, dude in his late 30s/early 40s, single, kind of quiet and humble but not shy per se, comes in several nights a week for hours at a time to work on some stuff for his job and hang out and just talk to the staff. He has OCD (we actually share the same…

My thoughts exactly. We had a regular who was this delightful, charming, educated, very classy older gentleman who'd come in alone or with his very sweet and polite and warm-natured wife. He didn't come in very often, but it was usually very late at night. I think he was some kind of professor, if I remember right.…

So, I have this cursed bedroom in my house that I'm constantly trying to rent out because everybody who moves in ends up being crazy or terrible or a hoarder or something else that makes them not be there as soon as I can arrange it. Last week, I had a response to a CL ad for it, and it was from a guy who said he was…

See, I make that face at my food sometimes, and it's the face of "Yeeaaahhh, that's right. You thought you could be this delicious and not be eaten? I will DESTROY you. You sexy little ice cream cone. You saucy wench, you."

You know, at first when I read that, I saw it the way you seem to see it. But after a second - and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm just taking your comment as accurately depicting what her advice was, I never read the article you're referring to - I started to wonder if maybe that isn't the absolute worst... college…

You are such a good person. Seriously, it sucks so bad when you get stiffed and you need that money for something important, but what really hurts about it is the weird personal insult feeling to it. Like, vandalize the place or something, but why take it out on me unless you specifically think I'm worthless? If I…

Oh man... I was bullied quite a bit as a kid, sometimes with nasty really scary stuff like this, but it was mostly from the neighborhood kids, not the classmates. At school I had friends, and was a nice person, so I got teased but it was mostly for being chubby and too smart. But the neighborhood kids were a bit older…

I get into somewhat similar situations at my job a lot. I generally just react the way you did. Down the road, I try to make very pointedly work-related comments to the person in question or to our mutual higher-ups to commend things they do well at work. I find that things are awkward for a bit, but after a while it…

Holy shit I lied and blamed something on a ghost once! I was like, 5, though so a little less totally nuts. I had begged to be allowed to cut my own hair, but my mom refused to have clumsy, ADD-riddled me wielding scissors at my own head. So one day, she goes out to talk to the neighbor. She leaves her coupon clipping…

They need to get more creative! Once after a bad storm during my junior year, I noticed that a utility pole in the alley behind the house had gotten tilted over a little towards our garage. Somehow I turned that into a week of not going to class and postponing assignments because "a utility pole crashed into our…

Hehe my mom once inquired about why I reeked of stale beer and cigarettes... I told her I had ridden the train home with a friend who was homeless and he fell asleep on my shoulder and I felt too bad about his position in life and didn't want to offend him to tell him to get off my shoulder, so I picked up his stench.…

Thank you, on behalf of all restaurant folk. Seriously, I can't believe how some people think it is appropriate to "punish" their server for minor errors, even if it is handled deftly and quickly and the server/manager apologizes and offers recompense. I had a guy a few weeks ago who stuck his credit card into the…

This stuff is silly because yeah most people do not have the time for it. But I dooooo... at least way more often than most. I work in the evenings because I stopped trying to fight my natural tendency to be a night owl. So unless I have some crazy amount of errands to do or have the odd work day that starts at 1 pm…