She came in at the very end of the night, alone, to this "fine dining" restaurant in rural New Hampshire. Point being, it's not like Manhattan, or LA, where people routinely waltz into restaurants, without reservations, alone or in groups, at 9:30 PM or later. The hostess was convinced to seat her somehow, through a negotiation I didn't witness and wasn't privy to the nature of. And who got the table, but unlucky me?
At first, it didn't seem like such a big deal. I was on shut-down duty that night anyway, and so had to stick around until all the diners had left, and take care of putting the dining room back together: setting all the tables afresh, restocking the stations with flatware, water glasses, salt shakers and pepper grinders. I figured I could easily take care of this lone customer while busying myself with my other tasks, and I'd pick up an extra tip, maybe $10 or something, for my trouble. Little did I know, that the strangeness of this woman had only been hinted at by her late and solo arrival; the real craziness began when she started ordering things.
She wanted only a salad for her meal. This wasn't an option on the menu; we served hot appetizers and soups, as well as a large array of entrees (rack of lamb, steaks of various description, lobster, fish, and some rather involved pastas and paellas and the like), all of which came with the house salad. No separate salads on the menu whatsoever. But, she wasn't budging from her seat, nor from her request that she be served a salad. The customer is always right, was her cliche argument.
It was the first of multiple trips back to the kitchen that night, to find out from management whether I could grant her wish, and what price I ought to put on it. She wanted dressing we didn't have; I should make it from scratch for her. She wanted more bread. And more. And then some more again. And it needed to be heated up better. And where's more butter? No, no drinks. But keep the water coming. Dessert? Why yes! She wanted a piece of pecan pie, heated up, and ala mode. Yes, we had pecan pie. No, we didn't heat up our slices of pie for customers. Yes, we had vanilla ice cream, but we didn't serve the pies ala mode, and so I could do that, yes, but would have to charge for a serving of ice cream, in addition to the slice of pie. Totally unacceptable! The ice cream must be free, and the pie must be heated!
Ultimately, all this was done for her, by me, as graciously as possible. In a restaurant where a normal check would come to about $45 per person, plus tax and tip, hers came to a paltry $12. And, in her last act as my customer from hell, what do you think she did? Yep, she not only stiffed me on the tip, she stiffed me on the entire goddamn bill, taking the opportunity to slip out of the place unnoticed, the dining room long since having emptied. Bitch! Restaurant policy was that her deficit had to be taken out of my earnings that night. I'll never forget it, and now it seems so silly to have gotten so upset over it, but I just broke down and cried... that a stranger would spend more than an hour humiliating me, and then steal $12 from my pay as her parting gift... it was more than I could take.
Hyland, a professional waiter (not just Summer staff, like me), had stayed behind with me that night, and took pity on me... paying half of the bill from his take that night, and wrapping an arm around me, he walked me back to his nearby apartment. We cracked open a bottle of red wine, and he read his original beat poetry to me. As awful a customer as she'd been, a huge pain in my ass, and ultimately creating such a ridiculous loss of my dignity, I have to admit I'm thankful she came in, and thankful that I was assigned to deal with her. The night of wine and poetry is something I'll always remember fondly, and I wouldn't have ended up with Hyland, listening to the rhythm of his thoughts mixing with the breeze outside in the woodsy surroundings, my body tingling with wine-warmed blood, without her.
