It’s nights like Saturday night when I am reminded that sometimes, people are unhappy with their lives. Often, they will find a way to make you responsible for their unhappiness, even when it has nothing to do with you.
Saturday nights have been shit at The Bar, the patrons few and the tips even less. Often I will spend a good chunk of the evening filling in for an absent dishwasher, or prepping for a banquet, which is what I’ve essentially done for the past few weeks.
Last weekend, one of the waitresses rented out the banquet room and was having a private party. She’s a waitress whom I didn’t mind working with, who seemed, out of the lot of them, the most pleasant. A waitress I would regularly go out of my way to make blended drinks for when she’d request her evening shift drink. She raved about my strawberry margaritas.
An unfortunate characteristic of most of The Bar’s patrons is a general lack of tipping, especially at the bar itself, where I rely on most of my income. Call it the poor economy or culture of the people here, but the bottom line is that it sucks, especially when you’re counting on tips to pay your rent.
It seems to be even worse on nights when we’re hosting banquets. Party goers sidle up to the bar, order drinks, and don’t tip. Saturday night was no exception. After selling about $75 in drinks, I had pocketed $3. This made my mood go directly into the toilet. The only remedy I could see was to at least get home early that night. Friday night had been a late one. I was tired and ready to call it a night.
Waitress approached me shortly after the party had started and requested two margaritas. I was grumbling with the other waitress on duty, lamenting the fact that I would be lucky to walk out that night with $10 in my pocket. I told the waitress, “Sure, I’ll make them,” and added in a lighthearted tone, “because I know you’ll tip me well at the end of the night.”
She smiled and agreed.
I made her about $30 worth of blended drinks that night, waited on a few tables, but overall, it had been a pretty pathetic evening. As the party was wrapping up, she came to the bar to pay her tab.
I gave her a slight discount on the tab, being an employee. Her husband paid with his credit card.
He left the slip at the bar and went to gather up the party decorations. I turned the slip over.
He had signed the slip and left the total where the tip was supposed to be. And the tip: NOTHING.
I looked at it twice, figuring that this must be an oversight. She had stood next to him while he was signing the slip, giving him instructions while he signed. She was my co-worker, a waitress, someone who understood the protocol.
I handed it to the manager, who was having a beer at the bar.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said. “This has got to be a mistake.”
I spent the next ten minutes taking slow, deep breaths, pondering how I would approach her about this apparent oversight. But deep down, I knew that it was no mistake. She had told her husband not to leave me a tip. And the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I became.
As the last people left the bar, I decided not to approach her about it. It was a matter of a couple of bucks, and did I really think the confrontation was worth it? Not really.
“Give me the slip,” the manager said. “I’m going to go ask her about this.”
He stopped her on her way out to the car. “I just want to make sure this isn’t a mistake as I’m closing these out in the machine,” he told her. She looked at the slip, grunted, and pulled him into the side dining room. She’s embarrassed her husband didn’t tip, and she’s rectifying the problem, I thought.
She emerged, rushed, grabbed her husband, gave a curt goodbye, and left.
B walked up to the bar, crumpled up the slip, and tossed it on the bar.
I unfolded it. She had crossed out the amount with so much rage that she had ripped the paper. The new amount — which was the same amount as before — was written it in the correct spot on the slip.
The banquet manager walked in, wondering about the commotion. B recounted the entire thing, adding that The Waitress had given a slew of reasons why she should NOT tip me.
“She makes more per hour than I do!”
“I have bills to pay!”
“She gets to wait on the tables in the bar now!” (information that she could have only picked up via gossip, since she had not worked a single shift in two weeks, and I had only started taking bar tables the night before).
“Oh, there’s more,” said B, and I could tell that he was so furious he could barely speak. “And this reason is even more ridiculous than any of those.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. I was already so disgusted by her behavior, that I couldn’t handle one more reason to hate her.
At this point in the evening, the restaurant was empty, save a few regulars, fellow waitresses/service workers and friends of the Banquet Manager, who had come in for a few beers. They had seen the entire thing go down and were appalled.
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” said B. “When I bartended years ago, she would always cheat me/stiff me on tip-outs. She knows this bullshit doesn’t fly with me. I don’t know why she thought she would get some sympathy from me with those lame reasons.”
The thing is, did she have to tip me? Of course not. Gratuity isn’t required. But we’re co-workers. I pour their drinks, wash their glasses, help run food when I can. I go out of my way to do nothing but help her when she’s in the weeds. I made her at least six blended drinks that night. And her response, when it came to a tip, was a big fat FUCK YOU.
The fallout from this little event is going to continue, I’m sure of it. I won’t know fully what that entails until my next shift, and I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to working with her this weekend. “You need to act as if nothing happened,” Scott told me. “If anything’s going to be said, you need to let management take care of it.”
As for all of this, I’m over the anger associated with not getting a tip. In the grand scheme of things, a few bucks is miniscule. When I play the event over in my mind, I’m still incredulous that she has this much hatred for me, someone she barely knows. In her mind, I’ve wronged her by existing in my role as Bartender.
I hate that all of this has happened, but at least there are no questions on where we stand with each other. And as much as I don’t want to be involved, no matter what happens, I know that in her mind, I’m going to be the reason for her continued unhappiness.
And here I thought that working in a bar would be boring.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t envy your situation at all, but at the end of the day, you already know what the problem is: Some people thrive on drama. They’re not happy unless they’re unhappy. If nothing is going wrong in their lives, they invent something. In your case, it’s quite possible that she needed to create an enemy. She’s got to have someone to bitch about to her husband and friends, and now you’re it.
The way she’ll see it is that she was completely justified in not leaving a tip (because you earn a higher hourly rate), and you’ll be the unholy bitch for making an issue out of it. If you or your boss had said nothing, she would have simply tried another tactic – maybe leaving you extra work or doing an otherwise shoddy job until you complained. Once you open your mouth, the game is on, and it doesn’t matter if you’re right. She needed you to “start” something.
It’s the unfortunate part about working with irrational people. Irrational people don’t understand timelines, only events. Even if they wronged you first, they will see it as retaliation for whatever you did in response.
I think Scott is right. I’d continue on as if nothing happened, for two reasons:
1) Getting in her face about it only gives her fuel. It won’t make her see anything more clearly, because it’s possible she simply lacks the ability to understand.
2) It’s possible (although unlikely) that she feels horrible about the whole thing, and is sitting at home right now wondering how she’s going to face you. It’s a one in a million shot, but I’d hold off on the daggers until you see for sure that she’s got it in for you. She might have just had a shitty night.
If I had acted the way she did, I’d be the one sitting at home, stomach in knots over the entire thing. I really doubt this is the case. The more time goes by, the more ridiculous I think the whole thing is. I’m hoping my bosses don’t make a big issue of it. If they want to say something to her, it should be that she got an unholy deal on that party. They did her a huge favor pricing it the way they did. They have every right to be a little pissed that this is the way she chose to treat THE BAR.
I guess we’ll see what happens Friday night. Fun times!