What?!? You’re Broke?!

Okay, here’s the deal. Don’t go to a fine dining restaurant if you are broke mother fucker.

I mean, I understand that you’re a redneck and might work 80 hours a week at a job that pays you a measly wage just so you can pay the bills and put a roof over your family’s head, and on occasion you want to treat your gap-toothed lady-friend to a fine meal, but a 4-star restaurant is well-above your budget.

I had this guy come in the other night with his beastly-looking wife. I mean, her teeth looked like a Vietnamese jungle booby-trap. It was obvious that this couple were from the redneck suburb of my city. The guy wasn’t much of a Dapper Dan himself. He seemed to me like one of those guys that would wear one of those black shirts with red and orange flames on it. These people were very much out of place, although they were dressed to the nines – well, maybe dressed to the threes. It was kinda obvious that this girl was wearing a dress that she hadn’t seen since prom because it was a little too tight on her rotund-ish frame. However, this nice black dress showed off her faded Denver Broncos tattoo very well.

At first, I figured that they were probably going to be one of those cheap-ass tables that drink water, ordered no apps or dessert, but spend their extra pennies on the entrees because they were already too expensive. But to my surprise, they not only ordered an appetizer, they ordered two! Score! I was already preening myself thinking that my first impressions were wrong and I began to attend to these rednecks like they were high-rollers. To add to my surprise, the guy orders the most expensive thing on the menu, a steak & lobster combination that costs $66. Sixty-six dollars on a single entree! Score, again, maybe? “I wonder if this guy knows he just ordered a $66 entree. He didn’t ask me what the ‘market price’ was that the menu lists” I said to one of my co-workers back in the kitchen. I didn’t care. I was gonna get a nice fat tip off this table because it was already a $110 check. I’m thinking a $20 tip is coming my way. Even moreso when the Broncos fan ordered a glass of Riesling (by the way, this is the wine that ingorant wine-drinkers order at restaurants when they dont want to look like an ignorant wine-drinker when they order White Zinfandel because they know it’s a sweet, white, cold wine).

So, after it was all said and done, the bill ended up being $124. Nice. I dropped the bill with my usual “I’ll take care of this at your convenience”. I started to get uncomfortable when they started studying the bill with wide-eyes. Hell, I think I even saw the Bronco on the rotund-bride’s upper breast mouth the words “what the fuuuuuuck?” I saw that guy sifting through his wallet, which is never a good sign. He handed me the bill the next time I came back and they got up. Oh shit. I knew what was coming. I hurried back to the kitchen opened the book and counted the cash in the black plastic folds: $127. That broke-ass white-trash redneck left me a $3 tip on a $124 check. I was FURIOUS. After I did the math regarding the amount of money I’d have to tip my busser off of that check, I actually had to pay the restaurant $1.87 to wait on that table.

You see, there were three things wrong with this situation: one, he didn’t ask me about the price of the steak & lobster; two, he didn’t think the bill could possibly be over $120 so he didnt bring more than that; and three, he didn’t have a credit card.  I wonder what would have happened if they had ordered dessert and the bill was $130?

Later, I asked my manager what would happen to me if I saw that guy at his favorite hangout, Wal-Mart, and confronted him about being a cheap bastard. Unfortunately, she said I’d probably be fired if he complained, but oh well. The only thing that made me content was thinking about how big of a dent I had put in his checkbook and how many hours he’d have to spend at his mechanic shop to pay for that one meal.

You see, just down the street from my restaurant is an Applebee’s. This was probably a better choice for him and his personal linebacker, but because my restaurant is a “nice restaurant”, he wanted to treat her to a dress-up meal. Which is great and all, people do it all the time. The funny thing is that they stick out like a sore thumb. Usually they look around awkwardly, can’t pronounce words like “demiglace”, and generally just look like they’re trying too hard. The sad thing is that the waiter ends up suffering because these people generally don’t eat out, which is an indication that they don’t know how to tip. Getting a tip of $3 on a $124 check, or like my co-worker had once a $2 tip on a $98 check, can hurt us just as much as it hurts you. Any normal couple that comes into my restaurant would have left me $20-$24. That’s a wasted two hours of work if you go by an hourly wage.

There are still “nice restaurants’ that can fit your budget. Any average restaurant that the waiters wear a tie will do. You know, like, Olive Garden.