I’m not sure if I should have felt bad for these employees, or if they deserved what they got. You be the judge.

The Canada Day fireworks show in our little town was postponed until July 3rd due to the weather. The city’s annual celebration, the Salmon Festival, was also in full swing, including the carnival, which brings in a lot of people.

Now, it’s a Friday night, but the city core is dead due to everyone being either at the carnival (which closed at 11 PM) or at their chosen spot to watch the fireworks. Once 11:30 PM hits, though, the three restaurants in town that are still open get SLAMMED. Two of them are 24-hour but are drive-thru only after 11 PM. The other closes at midnight.

The fireworks ended at about 11 PM, and I walked home because waiting for the line of cars to get through the main road would have taken longer. I stopped at a sandwich restaurant at 11:10 PM, the only place whose lobby is open. When I walk in, everything is empty: no bread, toppings, cookies, nothing. I walked in to see four employees standing around talking and was greeted with “we have no bread left”. Not even a hello. They had been so slow all night that they had closed up early and were waiting for midnight to lock up.

I walked out, knowing they had no idea what was about to come. They clearly had no idea that the fireworks show had been rescheduled.

I sat outside, called a taxi to go the rest of the way, and watched the show. At 11:20 PM, the place was PACKED! I also checked, and they were still open to take orders on the app. For the next forty minutes, I watched them get swarmed and have to take everything back out and start baking bread.

They did finally get to close down, around 12:15 AM. My cab arrived right about then, and when the guys came out and saw me, they actually looked ashamed.

I get that sometimes it’s nice to close up early, but closing that early on a Friday? Come on now…

A customer walks up to a display of some fancy candles in a jar, ranging in price from $29.99 to $99.99.

Customer: “So these candles in the jars…”

Me: “Yes, sir?”

Customer: “Do they… last forever?”

Me: “…No, sir. They are candles. They get used up just like any other candle.”

Customer: “Yeah, but the fire melts the wax, but it solidifies again when the fire goes out, and since it’s in a jar it just fills back up, right?”

Me: “The candle wax is what slowly fuels the fire. It’s not an infinite power source.”

Customer: “Well then what you’re charging is a rip-off!”

Me: “You thought charging $29.99 for an unlimited source of energy was… reasonable?”

I work on the side as an Instacart shopper. I get a long (loooong) grocery list from a customer. In the notes section of the order:

Note: “You MUST purchase these items in alphabetical order. If you don’t… I’ll know.”

No way in h*** am I doing that! Also, the items weren’t even listed alphabetically on the shopping list, so she was expecting me to do the sorting AND then shop in that order. Heck no.

I got all the items for her, and she didn’t complain, so I guess she didn’t ‘know’ anything.

I work in a Mexican chain restaurant.

Customer: “I want [standard order of nachos].”

Me: “Okay, so that’s the standard nachos—”

Customer: “—But instead of cheddar I want Monterey Jack.”

Me: “Okay, so that’s—”

Customer: “—And can you sub pinto beans for the black beans?”

Me: “Sure thing, so—”

Customer: “—Also you need to swap out…”

She gave me about six more modified ingredients in quick succession. I repeated them all back to her, and she said “sure”, but when the food came out, she started moaning that I got this and that wrong. Since she was causing a scene, the manager just let her take it for free and tried to wash their hands of the situation.

Me: *To the manager.* “You know she’s gonna come back, right? She’s gonna try that again, as you letting her walk out of here without paying means we’re an easy mark.”

Manager: “If you see her come back in, call one of us over. We’ll serve her.”

Deal!

To no one’s surprise, she’s back a week later. As requested, my manager takes the order.

Customer: “So, instead of—”

Manager: “—No, don’t say ‘instead of’, just tell me exactly and only what you want.”

This annoys her a little, and she tries to work around it by saying:

Customer: “Well, I’m just saying instead of chicken I want…”

Manager: “—I’m sorry, I don’t want to confuse the chefs. Tell me exactly and only what you want, and the chefs will make that.”

Customer: “Can you sub—”

Manager: “—No ‘sub’ or ‘modify’ or ‘instead of’. Just list exactly… what… you… want.”

Customer: “I don’t know why you are making this hard.”

Manager: “Ma’am, I’m gonna bring you exactly what you want. We can EASILY make whatever you want, but I’m not going to let you confuse the chefs, so we will start with chips. What items do you want on the chips, and what items do you want on the side?”

She sighed, said what she wanted, got just that, ate it, paid, left, and was never seen again. Nice try, Nacho Lady, but try that scam somewhere else!

So tonight was a little slow. We’re not the type of place that you go for St. Patrick’s Day. But when I say slow, it was still busy, just slow by our standards… we’re one of the busiest restaurants in town (we’re a national chain, one of the busiest locations in the company).

I was the Manager On Duty tonight. We close at 11 PM, and by 9:30 PM, we had just our closers working (two cooks, a dishie, a bartender, and three servers… one for each section).

At around 10:30 PM, I come out of the office and look towards the lobby, where I see a very large group of people gathering. I immediately head in that direction. The conversation that I walked into the middle of went something like this:

Leader Of The Group: “We should have a reservation.”

Bartender: “I’m sorry, we don’t take reservations. How many in your group?”

Leader Of The Group: “A lot.”

Bartender: “We can’t put anything together for you until we know how many you have.”

Leader Of The Group: “Okay, it’s probably about seventy.”

Bartender: “I’m sorry, how many did you say?”

I arrived at the podium just at that last part. 

The bartender’s reaction (basically your classic jaw-drop), along with my blank stare, made an impact. Before I could speak, the bartender said:

Bartender: “You do know we close in about thirty minutes?”

Leader Of The Group: *To his group.* “Come on, guys, let’s just go to [restaurant next door].”

He turned around, and a bunch of them followed, but not all. I let them go without dispute.

Now faced with a much smaller group, who were willing to break into sub-groups, we got around to seating them. We ended up with about thirty-five to forty of them, and spread them around among the three servers, and I headed immediately into the kitchen to alert the guys.

Unhappy, they stepped out for a quick smoke before the chaos, so I manned the line. The orders started coming in before they returned, so I started cooking, and the guys came back just before all the main orders came in.

The three of us pounded out all of the food quickly, then I ran around to expo the trays up and help run food… then jumped out on the floor to help bus tables (the ones that were lingering when the group arrived had now left).

We got the entire group in and out within about forty-five minutes.

Amazing teamwork got the job done. Unfortunately for the cooks, the late rush reversed most of the cleanup they had done, so we all got done late, but I was proud of the job they all did.

But seriously, who brings seventy people into a restaurant thirty minutes before close?