I mean, it’s usually a byproduct of extreme narcissism. So they have no consideraton of circumstances. And there’s no limit to location.

Do you ever just...wonder? Like, how do they manage at universally awful places like...the DMV? Or traffic court? Or the doctor’s office? Or waiting for surgery?

kalebsback, you young whippersnapper!

I used to love those customers when I worked in a shop. The ones that would come in every day for like one thing and you kind of suspected it was because they were lonely, and yes would often tell the same jokes or same stories every day. I think its nice when people want to be there and actually want to talk to you,…

If you are a nice person now, you’ll be a nice person when you are older. There’s no magical “jerk” switch that turns on with old age. It’s a stereotype.

My old (Lutheran) pastor baptized his grandson in secret, because his son and his wife were Baptists, and the grandson wouldn’t get baptized soon enough.

The best manager I ever had was not in food service, but in a customer service job nevertheless. When a customer was a real jerk - and it only happened twice in the four years I was there - he said “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to stop abusing my employee and leave. You don’t seem to be someone we are going to be…

The science of this comment checks out. With elders who’ve entered what we call “benign senescence” behaviors the elder previous kept “in private” often show up in public settings via the process called disinhibition. Basically, if the elder used to be a secret rat bastard to servers, they’re now going to be a rat…

I used to work for a bar owner who would greet every customer who wanted to make a complaint with “Before you tell me what happened, I just want to be very clear that it is against company policy to give free drinks, under any circumstances.” 99% of people simply walked away without making a complaint.

For the last decade of his life, my grandfather recieved nearly 100% of his nourishment from a small rotation of restaurants he would frequent for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I am forever grateful to the wait staff of those 5 or 6 restaurants who for at least 10 years would read the same few newspaper clippings he…

This is so, so true. On the nice end of the spectrum my coffee shop had Doris, the sweetest old lady who came in at the same time every day, always had something nice to say to whoever was working, and who always asked so sweetly for help putting condiments in her iced coffee because she was too short to reach the…

oh a thousand times this!

Maybe she WAS a woodland nymph who had become incontinent due to age and was leaking. Those rose petals might have been nymph poop

Context — 38 is pretty damn old to be hitting on a 21-year-old.

Shortly after we started dating, my fiancee (who was 21 at the time—I was 25) told me about someone hitting on her in a bar, and referred to him as “some old dude.” I asked how old he was, and her response was “like 38.”

This isn’t a restaurant story, but you haven’t lived until a 90-year-old woman yells at you for 10 minutes because she’s only getting 10 cents while returning the $2 pair of socks she bought 10 years ago.

My favorite regular from my serving days was Mr. Bartle. Never a fuss, tipped well, knew our names and always asked how my college studies were going. When he took a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Galapagos Islands (in his mid-70s), on his return he came in one afternoon when he knew it would be slow to show us his…

This reminded me of the time my grandma cried during a family vacation. We went to a seafood restaurant, but Grandma decided that day she no longer ate seafood. She ordered pulled pork (at a seafood restaurant). When it came out with a mustard-based sauce, she burst into tears. The poor waitress and our family stared…

Oh, it’s great. But the question is if a place tells you that don’t have shrimp or cocktail sauce and then you berate them into giving you shrimp and cocktail sauce, what are the odds that you want to eat that shrimp and cocktail sauce? Also, how many times can I use the phrase “shrimp and cocktail sauce” in a…

In the last couple years of my grandma’s life, she stopped giving any fucks and would wear slippers out to dinner. She would get up from the table the very instant she finished her food and race out to the car, no matter where in the meal the rest of us were. And she upped her one glass of Sauvignon blanc with ice…