I leave two pennies on the table and say nothing.

That's my two cents any time I ever get bad service. It's rare that I'll ever do it, but I've had to do it a couple of times in the recent past.

The way I look at it- they know they're providing poor service and when they return to get their tip and they only see two pennies on the table, I hope they think about the consequences of providing poor service 'cause after all- they are primarily living off of these tips.

I save myself the embarrassment of arguing with managers in front of others and I just walk out quietly into the night knowing that I evened it up.

Even when I try to be nice, they sometimes pour hot espresso on me. No telling what would happen if I complained.

That was our senior prank when I was in high school. Everyone met up at the bait shop in the morning and bought a bag of crickets, which we let out in the school first period. It was awesome, though the halls soon looked pretty nasty from all the people stepping on the crickets.

I remember reading a blog based on a book called "Manhattan Waiter" Based on a series of interviews of people who waited tables in NYC. Always foind some interesting stuff...a perspective from the other side of the table...

Some funny stuff...interesting stuff.

http://blogs.salon.com/0003612/2004/04/30.html

I was at Applebee's once, about 2 hours before close, and they were NOT busy, but not slow. My wife and I got there and it took about 15 minutes for someone to even ask us for our drink orders. When a waitress finally came over, she took our drink orders. Took a while to get those, then she left without taking our orders. Came back, took the orders, left. Didn't check on us until the food was ready (we had to ask another server for refills and silverware). When she brought my wife her riblets, she asked for extra napkins and another refill. The lady disappeared and came back about 5 minutes later to see how the food was. My wife, again asked for the refill and napkins, and the girls frowned, scoffed, and said... "I'm busy." Not a "sorry" or even a "sorry, I'm busy." Just a very rude "I'm busy." After already having a night of poor service, this pushed me over the edge.

When the check came, I paid with a credit card so they'd have to keep the receipt and a manager would see it. I left no tip, and wrote the following: "If you too busy to do your job get out. I was going to leave a tip, but I lost it. I was too busy to look for it."

ROFL I liked that.



My wife and I walked out of a restaurant a while back because we sat and sat and no one would wait on us. We made sure to inform the two other couples who were walking in as we walked out. One extra server, and our profit would've covered half of their labor cost for the night. What a shame.

Wow! Nobody puts a tip in a drink then turn the glass holding the drink upside down? Works great with clear liquids where they can see the tip but can't get it without making a mess.



Actually, I had such a bad experience at the Ryans in Joplin Mo that I won't go back to ANY Ryans Steakhouse. The service was so bad that after 20 minutes, I got up, when to the soda fountains behind the counter and got our drinks. When I was asked what I was doing, I told them (as politely as I could at that point) that we'd been waiting for 20 minutes on drinks and I thought I'd help them out. Incedentally, our table was located between the drink counter and the rest of the restuaraunt so EVERY waitress had walked by us numerous times. Add in that the food on the bar was either cold, stale, or both AND the fact that if we had came in less than 5 minutes later the kids would have eaten for free but the cashier charged us anyway, I was extremely disgusted.

Even sent an email to the corporate office about my experience. Never heard a word back.

I haven't done anything like that except leave a bad tip. I did have an ex girlfriends father, do the Here is your base tip. For everything you do that I don't like, I will take a dollar away. If you do something good, I will add that dollar back.

This was at Olive Garden in KC. He was visiting his daughter and lived in Las Vegas. So I am just assuming it must be a different life style because he bitched about everything. I couldn't believe it.

First he wanted Angel Hair, not spaghetti. I know the difference but Olive Garden got it wrong, so he took a dollar away. She took the order back and came out with Spaghetti again. Again he complained. This time the chef came out and said, this is Angel Hair, he continued to argue with them. By this time I was about done with my food. So was my Ex.

He ended up throwing such a fit he just looked at us in front of the manager, and said lets go. I am not paying them a damn thing. So we all walked out without even paying for our food.

I never felt so uncomfortable in my life.

What a dick.

I worked my way through college bartending and waitering. The worst possible insult you can give to a waiter is to kindly ask the manager to be seated in another waiters/waitress area then have everything go well and leave a big tip.

Don't take bad cooking out on the waiter/waitress however.

Bartending is much easier to make people happy. Don't like your drink? Pour it out and make another one. Busy? Get the bar back in there and start serving beers. Don't like the fact I don't want to listen to your sob story for another hour? Go tell my manager, I'm busy.

Moral of story: bartend if you have to go that route

Hey at least be glad you didn't marry into that.

I've left notes on receipts before. It's a good way to vent if you don't want the confrontation part of it.

The guy who runs Zug.com got horrible service and tried to leave a negative tip, but he was still charged the full amount. But that is a novel idea.

Hehe. We did the same thing except we cleaned out all the local pet stores and we released them in the ceiling. My g/f at the time was a year behind me and said they were dropping onto desks and crap the next year.

Off topic, but back when I was a young buck I made a very bad girlfriend decision. When I met her family, it was like meeting a dysfunctional Addams family on drugs. From top to bottom, there wasn't a single person in that family that wasn't seriously screwed up in one way or the other.

The dad took the cake, though. He literally could not stop talking, ever. If you wanted peace and quiet, you just had to leave. I remember going to their house for Thanksgiving once, and there was a time when it was just me and the dad standing around outside. I kid you not, I stood there for probably close to an hour and never said a single word. The guy didn't stop talking the entire time, and never even tried to ask a question or have any kind of two-way conversation.

Hope you checked your food for extra ingredients. I saw that stunt pulled a couple of times in my food service days and both of them involved additional flavoring.