Originally Posted by
Druid
lol this is always the main response! I honestly love it. I think I'm lucky in that I'm built to find this kind of interaction funny and baffling more than frustrating, and it's not often I have to deal with anyone truly mean. by customer service I do specifically mean hospo, but being super busy / having a lot to juggle and keep organized, making people laugh, not working in the morning, getting to be kind of crass and sassy and have it considered a positive, having access to food and drinks that I don't have to make and/or pay for, and just like the overall goal being "help these people have fun"? love.
THAT SAID buckle up for my crown jewel horror story, Vomit Lady:
This was at a previous job managing a restaurant with board games. This table came in at like 1pm, didn't seem drunk, didn't order booze from us. Within 15 minutes of their arrival, one of them approached one of my staff like "excuse me? I just vomited over there," gesturing vaguely toward the side. Then she went back to her table and resumed her board game.
The server she'd told came and told me, I went and found it - not in a bathroom, not in the hallway leading to the bathrooms, just in the middle of the floor in the section nearest the bathrooms (which BLISSFULLY had no tables seated at the time) and mopped it up. That took a couple of minutes, 5 max. I then printed the table's bill and brought it over to them like "heyyyy I'm just gonna get you guys to settle up."
She said, verbatim because it will haunt me forever, "to be clear, this is because I was sick earlier?" (OBVIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!)
Instead of screaming OBVIOUSLY I stayed in painfully polite and accommodating customer service mode, saying things like "yeah it's just like a health code thing." She pushed back a genuinely unbelievable amount, with arguments including "it's just that your bathrooms are so far" (1. they're not and 2. if you need to be seconds from a toilet at all times you are not currently capable of being in a restaurant), "I hope you aren't assuming that I'm drunk, I'm not drunk" (okay so you're ill which is potentially even more of a biohazard), and "I just feel really weird being asked to leave like this" (you PUKED on the FLOOR). She did not attempt to provide any context - not that it would've changed anything, but with everything else she was saying it feels really bizarre that there was nothing like "I'm pregnant" or "I have a condition" in a tone meant to make me feel ashamed of myself for discriminating against her. It really felt like in her worldview it's normal and reasonable for anyone to vomit at any second, and ~ugh~ this place makes you walk 10+ seconds to the bathrooms amirite??
And like I have some health stuff and I want to sympathize, but I just, the audacity??? I can actually imagine a world where I'm suddenly that nauseous out of nowhere and through no fault of my own I don't make it somewhere appropriate in time. But if that happened in a restaurant in the middle of the floor? I'd leave cash for 3x my bill with my friends and you'd never see me again???? I cannot process her UNWAVERING confidence that it was me being unreasonable. It lowkey gaslit me? I texted my boss like "um I'm allowed to kick someone out for puking right?" and she was like "....yeah you literally have to. what?"
Didn't she want to brush her teeth?????