The "Well there are only (number) of us standing here!" bit (or the exaggerated looking around as if looking for other people) used to piss me off so much as a hostess. Yes, asshole, I can count - but I want to make sure no one else is joining you, or if someone's parking the car, or whatever else.

i would have fucking lost it. the old jerk and christie are both assholes.

I worked at a pizza restaurant for 5 months last year. It has a gluten-free menu with about half the obscene number of toppings as the regular menu. The menu says clearly that if you order a topping that is not on that menu it will likely be contaminated with gluten. This exact thing happened to me at least twice.

Custo…

I managed at a Subway for a while. I had similar experiences. Once, a lady flipped my chip rack over because Jared (the ugly spokes person guy) wasn't there. Another lady insisted we had "Azwaygo" bread. I tried my best to talk her through things and she wasn't having any of it. And, of course, there's that veggie sub…

Oh god. Customers who don't know what words mean. I've worked food service, I've worked teaching freshmen basic college skills (hell) but the worst customers by far were from when I worked in a public library. I was a teenager and the LOWEST person on the totem pole, but for some reason all the customers liked to…

The smoked salmon story reminds me of when I once worked in a ritzy French cafe style place, I served a customer steak tartar. I tried to warn him when he was placing the order, reminding him that it literally means "raw and chopped" but to no avail. Then I had another freak out because their duck confit was "fatty."…

I've got two stories:

If you've worked with the public in any capacity for any length of time then you have one of these stories. The short version of one of mine:

I once served a baked egg dish to a woman who complained that it smelled "too much like eggs."

My mom always said, "Don't judge people only by how they treat you - judge them by how they treat animals and people in the service industry." As I've grown up, I've found this to be valuable advice. Hidden superiority complexes tend to come out when people are around other beings they view as easy to be nasty to,…

At IHOP if a customer rejects a dish because who-in-hell knows, the corporation will charge the waiter and the poor guy at the kitchen. If the customer leaves without paying, they charge the waiter. They charge all clothing, everything.

Cocktail waitressing, NYC:
Man: I want a Ciroc.
Me: I'm sorry, we don't carry Ciroc. The vodkas we do carry are Goose, Belvedere, Ketel and Absolut.
Man: Nah man, I only drink Ciroc. You sure you don't have that? You should ask a manager.
Me: I'm positive we don't carry it. Can I interest you in something else?
Man: Nah…

This is one of my best serving stories in my eight years serving and bartending, because it resulted in legal action.

I used to work in a deli and there was one dude that would come in several times a week to get a sandwich. Every.single.time he came in he argued with me about the cost of his sandwich. The store charged for extra toppings, even the veggie ones, and he told me every time that he didn't have to pay for extra toppings.…

Sometimes I think about putting my culinary education to good use and opening up a cafe. Then I remember my experiences and how I would occasionally fantasize about yelling at a customer or throwing them out on their ass. Reasonable people with a complaint I can handle. I'd do what I can to make them happy. I loved…

I had a customer SHRIEK at me across the restaurant once because she had ordered chicken on her taco and she said it was wrong. When I scrambled over to her table and looked, she had a chicken taco sitting in front of her. When I gently suggested that the taco she had WAS chicken, she yelled at me some more about she…

I was a lousy, part-time bartender in college. One day, just as we opened, a middle aged Englishman comes in and sits at the bar. Asks for a Prairie Oyster. I let him know that I cannot serve him a drink that contains a raw egg in it. He asks why. I tell him it's the bar's rule.

I worked as a hostess at a Japanese restaurant during college. All of the staff were Japanese, except for me (white American female). One time a woman gave me her credit card and bill and told me she, "didn't trust giving her card to someone who couldn't speak English." I also got a lot of really invasive questions…

8 years going into Retail and Food service experience. One of my favorite stories is when I worked the grill at the local university. One of my favorite stories is the guy who ordered a Chilli Cheese dog.

One thing missing from these stories is children. Most people have some vague idea when they are being annoying and demanding for themselves, but there is no limit to what can be righteously demanded for "my kids".