Sometimes too much good food and drink can be a bad thing. Especially in the case of this terrible restaurant patron. Not only was this guy horrible, but the restaurant manager’s response was almost worst! See what happens and how these upset workers respond!
“When I was 17, I was a server in a fairly good steakhouse. One night, I was serving in the bar area. It was me, another server, and a bartender in that section. During dinner, a guy who was not in my section grabbed me by the arm. He demanded that I find his server, because he needed another drink now. He eventually got his second Manhattan, and third, and fourth. Every once in a while, I saw him grabbing his server’s arm and yelling, but I didn’t think it was hard enough to hurt. I just tried to find the manager to tell him what was going on.
After I noticed he was on his sixth Manhattan, I went to the bartender, who hadn’t seen the manager either. He wanted to cut the guy off due to behavior. The manager not only said no, but told him the next drink would be on the house. So the wasted guy ordered a steak, and he kept on saying it was not well done enough and yelling, ‘Take it BACK!’ while getting even more wasted. I couldn’t find his server at all, so I called the bartender to take my tables for a minute.
I found the server. She was sobbing in a closet. This idiot had grabbed her arm a whole lot harder than mine, and she had bruises. She couldn’t find the manager either. I told her to take a minute, and gave her my section so I could take care of this guy so she wouldn’t have to. I finally found the manager, and between me and the barkeep, we told him he should be tossed out by cop if possible for hurting staff and being just too wasted. Our normally nice manager said no, you guys are going to go back out there and give him what he wants.
I get back, and he’s on Manhattan #8, and he sees me and starts yelling loudly. Other servers are looking in at this point. The guy grabbed my arm and crushed it like his hands were the Jaws of Life. I got a bruised arm too, but that wasn’t the worst part. He grabbed me, shook my arm, then got out his steak knife and pressed the tip against my cheek. He screamed that he WOULD get his steak done right. The manager (finally) comes in, and the bartender yells ‘Please, sir, now he’s a danger. Throw him out!’
The guy went, ‘Doesn’t matter, this was the worst dinner I’ve ever had! I’m leaving!’
You know what the much-loved-until-this-point manager did? ‘Sir, I’m so very sorry. If you’ll just come with me, I’m going to get you a $50 gift card.’
And then he yelled at me, the other server, and the bartender for not taking care of guests properly. As soon as I saw him walking away with the manager to get his free cash, I undid my apron and said, ‘I can’t do this. I quit.’
I went home and cried. The next day, the manager called me. He begged me to come back. He told me he thought he handled things well the previous night. I said, ‘So you were okay with a very wasted man roughly handling two of your waitresses to the point that both got bruises, caused both to cry, and you’re okay that he almost stabbed me?’
He got huffy and said, ‘I did exactly what a manager does.’
I told him to never call me again. The bartender called me an hour later. All but one person working in that restaurant quit that night. The one who didn’t was a brand-new line chef and didn’t get what was going on. Within a few months, that placed closed down.”