u/Procrastal

Tried doubling for the first time in 6+ months at my AYCE KBBQ last night and I regret it so bad I need to rant lolllll sorry this is a lot longer than I thought it’d be

Got assigned a 10 top reservation at 7. Pretty cool, everything is set up right on time. Party is like 20 minutes late but it’s an unusually slow Saturday and I didn’t have any other reservations for that table so we let it slide. They’re enjoying themselves; I cook a little bit for the kids but for the large part they’re a relatively needy, loud, rude but sufficient table. At the very beginning we established that they have two eight year old kids and a seven year old. Lots of seasonal drinks, automatic gratuity was looking good.

I get ready to give them their checks. They want it split five ways. I don’t remember which kid was what age so I ask and that’s when they realize that our AYCE prices for kids are separated in the 4 - 7 and 8 - 12 range. Suddenly ALL of the kids are seven. I try explaining to them that I’d rung their ages in hours ago but they’re not having it so I grit my teeth and get my manager to help me out. This is like the fifth red flag at this point but I’m tired, don’t want to cross them and just want them out.

They were in no rush with putting their cards in their checkbook and I had just been sat again so I decided to just process payments for whoever had put their money in, greet my table, and then come back to them. Only one of our POS systems accept cash so I had to rush there first for one of the payments.

When I’d circled back to them again I just needed one last check from this lady who only had herself, her boyfriend and six (!!!!) seasonal shots that she ordered for the entire party. She then directs me to her boyfriend who is sitting at the front lobby by himself basically guarding the checkbook that his girlfriend said SHE was going to pay for. Says his chair gave out on him and he suffered a bad hip injury and is currently waiting for the manager (who’d been informed before me) who is currently rolling back cameras to check what happened. At this point I’m stressed out but I still had multiple tables waiting to put in new orders so as soon as the manager comes back to talk to him I rush to my other customers to check in on them. The rest of the party already left at this point so it was just him.

Anyways. I check up on my tables and come back and the manager informs me that he just straight up left without paying. No clue if anyone tried stopping him or not. Doesn’t matter because all of the stress catches up to me and I start bawling for the next hour. I’m literally cleaning my grills sobbing because I was so tired and full of guilt over having my first ever dine and dash not knowing if I’ll get punished for this or not.

While I’m cleaning the manager comes up to me and shows me the camera recording of the chair-breaking incident. He was purposefully leaning all the way back, full grown ass man weight angled against the poor chair causing it to give out. And he caught himself midair. He didn’t fall. And then he proceeded to lie flat down on the floor to pretend that he’d fallen which was when another server noticed him and helped him up. Wowwww

I’m well aware that days like these happen in the serving industry but I clocked out with $170. For a 14 hour shift. The second lowest another doubler earned was $280 and even that was much lower than her expectations. Mind you I’m also on my period and am recovering from a nasty kidney infection 🫠