When restaurant customers become a pain in the ass
Like many former restaurant servers, I have a lot of memories of customers who were almost too impossibly difficult to deal with. I try not to think of them. I learned, over the years, to become more tolerant to the customers who insisted on customizing their dinners with a lot of substitutions: “Can I have half-chicken and half-beef with my pasta instead of just chicken? Can it have green peppers instead of red? Can you make it with ricotta instead of parmesan?”
As a server, I frankly didn’t care if the customers asked for the moon instead of red sauce. What I did care about was the kitchen crew screaming at me because making a lot of custom substitutions on the line was time-consuming – particularly on a busy weekend night – and often required upgrading the cost of the dish. There’s a good reason why “No substitutions” is frequently seen on modern menus. You want a complicated custom-made dish? Make it yourself at home.
One thing I never experienced, in all those years, was a customer handing me a list of requirements and a bag of pasta and insisting I have the kitchen prepare their meals to their exact specifications. I’ve known chefs and managers who have kicked patrons out of the dining room for less serious infractions.
And that brings me to a recent fracas in New Jersey involving a vegan couple claiming to have been cheated by a restaurant after they brought their own whole wheat pasta to the restaurant and were not given a discount on their tab. New York Magazine headlined its report on the story “Are These the World’s Worst Restaurant Customers?”
