That Time I Got Revenge on an Annoying Customer
“Miss! Excuse me miss!” I saw a man from one of my tables frantically waving me down. I was waiting tables at an Italian restaurant post-college, trying my best to look attractive in my black tuxedo pants and white pressed shirt uniform. But I really just looked like a penguin.
“What is this?” he asked gesturing to the bread basket.
“It’s bread,” I responded, perplexed by his bizarre question. I knew the low-carb diet was a thing, but I didn’t realize we were at a point in our culture where people literally didn’t recognize bread.
“I know it’s bread,” he said irritably. “Where are our garlic knots?”
“I’m sorry we’re out of garlic knots,” I said with a Chrissy Teigen-like cringey face. Our restaurant was known for its deliciously addicting garlic knots, but because of a major conference at the convention center, the restaurant was so packed the kitchen had run out.
“What do you mean you’re out of garlic knots? That’s the only reason we came here. That’s absolutely fucking ridiculous,” he snapped.
Stunned, I fumbled over what to say.
I love garlic bread as much as the next person, but a lack of it has never induced me to behave like a homicidal maniac. I stared at him looking for signs of zombie brain infection. I hate horror movies. However, I know there’s often someone who looks human but is actually one of the zombies or creatures that fools everyone until they have a crazy outburst. Or at least that’s what I get out of all those trailers I see. Instead, all I saw was the face of a man who looked strangely a lot like Fred Armisen.
I resisted the urge to tell him what’s fucking ridiculous is a grown man freaking out about bread. If he felt this incensed about bread, I could only hope he got this angry about climate change and people being mean to puppies. “Sorry, we just got abnormally slammed today, and the kitchen wasn’t expecting it. So they didn’t make enough. I’m so sorry. Can I make it up to you with some appetizers? Or a round of drinks?”
“I want those damn garlic knots!” he shouted.
The three other people with him silently looked down at the table. What a bunch of assholes. I think I even saw one of them urinate himself.
Dude this guy think he was at Olive Garden? I thought irritably. We did NOT have unlimited breadsticks. Or garlic knots as the case may be. He looked like a man gone mad. Driven to the edge because of a lack of carbs. I wondered what went wrong in his life. Did his wife leave him for someone with bigger pecs? Was he the underling to an evil boss? Did he not take his vitamins today?[1] Did he suffer from permanent erectile dysfunction? To be fair, that last one would make me angry too.
“Let me see what I could do. Maybe there is some dough they can unfreeze,” I said, uttering a bald-faced lie. I left Asshat’s table, took a few more orders, and headed back to the kitchen. Being an asshole to your server is kind of like sending unsolicited dick pics to women. Like, don’t we all know this is NOT cool? How is it there are people alive who didn’t get the memo? And yet here we are.
“Gustavo!” I hissed. “Come here!” The busboy Gustavo was gay and El Salvadorian, which is a combination only heaven could come up with. He looked like Guillermo from the Jimmy Kimmel show with fluffier hair. We were often paired together because I was the only one who enjoyed being called a bitch.[2] He loved it when I pretended to think he was Mexican[3]. He made fun of me for being so short no one could see me behind the bar. I’d like to think we were like Obama and Biden. But the truth is we were more like Karen and Rosario from “Will & Grace”. He was Karen.
“Hand me that breadbasket,” I said, motioning over to him. He had just cleared a table and was about to toss all the bread into the trash.
“Bitch, what you want this bread for? You gonna eat it? You nasty.”
“No silly, I’m going to give it to a customer,” I said grabbing the basket.
“Wha?! You is crazy! You can no do that!”
“Gustavo,” I said sternly, “This is serious. The guy at table 42 is freaking out because we don’t have garlic knots. He literally had a meltdown. He’s a fucking maniac. So I’m just going to give him these, so he shuts the fuck up.”
“Oooh girl! That’s a good idea!” Gustavo said in agreement.
“And don’t tell anyone!”
“Bitch, you think I’m crazy?” Gustavo left to clear some more tables.
I microwaved the garlic knots to give the illusion they were fresh out of the oven. Then I proceeded to rub them on the floor and the bottom of my shoes. My shoes which I could only pray had picked up some dog doo contaminants on the way to work. I examined them carefully. Nothing looked amiss.
“Here you go,” I said ceremoniously dropping off the garlic knots.[4]
“I thought you said there weren’t any left,” he seethed. “Where did you get these?”
“Yes, but I also said I would check and see if there was any remaining dough they could pull out from the freezer.” I was losing my patience with this asshat. “Do you want them or not?”
“Fine!” he snapped, grabbing a garlic knot. I watched with delight as he put one in his mouth imagining all the shoe dirt entering his mouth.
“You’re welcome,” I said walking away.
I periodically would spy out of the corner of my eye to see Asshat gobbling down garlic knots with the fervor of a dog eating kibble. I eventually dropped off the check, relieved this nightmare of a human would be gone soon. As soon as he left, I immediately picked it up to see what he tipped me. It was ZERO. ZERO ON A HUNDRED-DOLLAR CHECK! I was furious. It wasn’t like I personally was responsible for the lack of garlic knots!
I quickly scanned the room, but Asshat and his group were already gone. I wanted to curse the gods. Punch myself in the vagina. Scream into a dark abyss. Or at least scream into the walk-in freezer.
Then again, I thought to myself I did serve him food I rubbed on the floor, so I supposed I couldn’t be too mad.
Unfortunately, this was way before I joined the church of Oprah and started following Rumi Quotes on Instagram. As I result, I was lacking the insight that Asshat was just an unhappy person, and sullying his garlic knots was pointless and bad karma for me.[5]
Thankfully my server days are long gone, but sometimes Asshat will pop into my head. I wonder where he is and what he’s doing. I wonder if he’s busy screaming at other servers. Or taxi drivers. Or cashiers. In the end, there’s nothing I wish more than to know this man’s name so I can look up on Facebook and make sure he didn’t die of an aneurysm because they ran out of pumpkin munchkins at Dunkin’ Donuts on Halloween.
But alas, I cannot. And that is something I will have to live with. Wherever Asshat is, I hope he’s doing well. As for me, a massive pimple erupted on my face the next day. #karma
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[1] I don’t care what anyone says, I still think Flintstones vitamins are the best. I refuse to switch to adult vitamins.
[2] Which he did at least three times a shift. I think it was his version of “hey girl”. He literally couldn’t help himself.
[3] We both loved Clueless. If you don’t know what that has to do with pretending he’s Mexican, please google Cher and Lucy. We also liked to recreate scenes from Evita. The only problem is he often wanted to be Evita as well.
[4] At this point, 20 minutes had passed, so I had hoped he assumed they were baking this whole time.
[5] Though technically since I went to Hindu camp and temple as a kid, I really should have known this already.
