“I was treating a friend to lunch after he took the day off to take me to a doctor appointment, where I wouldn’t be allowed to drive home. We went to a place owned by a famous local chef with amazing reviews. It has the best burgers I’ve ever had in a long time. It wasn’t extremely busy, so maybe three other tables were occupied, so we had our waitress’s full attention. She was talkative, making jokes quick with our drinks and taking our order and bringing our order as soon as it was sent out, all around the PERFECT waitress.
We happily chowed down. She came around a few times to check on us, but then all of a sudden just stopped coming by our section. This group of young college guys walked in fifteen minutes before, and I don’t know if she knew them or what, but she never left their side, laughing and carrying on with them.
After waiting for her to bring our bill, we asked another employee to get it, but since she wasn’t our waitress, she couldn’t. She promised she would tell our waitress, but another ten minutes passed by, and still no waitress. It was now getting close to 2:30 pm and I needed to be home by three to greet my daughters after they got off the school bus. My friend needed to pick up his wife from work at four.
I just said let’s just leave the money on the table and go. We looked up the menu online and totaled up our order, including drinks, taxes, and even a tip. We even left a little extra to cover anything we forgot. We left the money on the table, with a note showing our tally and the total, tax, and tip all written out and my Official LEO Business Card, which had a badge on it with my dept name, my full name, and my badge number.
As we were walking out the door, the waitress and the manager come running out the door yelling, ‘STOP! WE’VE CALLED THE POLICE ON YOU, STAY HERE UNTIL THEY GET HERE!’
When we asked what the issue was, we found out the waitress was accusing us of dining and dashing. Apparently, she saw us walking out the door and ran to get her manager, who got the bartender to call the police. I said we left payment on the table and walked back inside to the still cluttered table, to show him the sixty dollars cash with the note showing our tally and then what we left.
He said, ‘Why didn’t you wait for your waitress to bring you an official bill?!’
Before I could say anything, my friend spoke up, as he is usually quiet and doesn’t like confrontation, but he had enough with being made to wait and then being accused of theft. He shouted, ‘We waited for over 20 minutes for her to bring our bill. Instead of bringing us our bill, your waitress decided she would continue to flirt with that group (points to the group of six guys at a table nearby) and refill their drinks TWICE! Ever since they walked in, she ignored us. My friend needs to get home to his daughters, and I need to pick up my wife. We don’t have all day to just sit around waiting for her to decide which guy she wanted to sleep with, so we paid our bill and left. Apparently, without even checking first, she decided we were stealing and my friend is even a police officer!’
The manager was speechless and then turned to the waitress and said, ‘This is the third time you’ve been accused of ignoring customers to hang out with guys from your school. Then you took it a step further and accused them of stealing without even checking the table first. Now, the police are coming to investigate a theft, so I’m sorry but you’re fired.”
The manager apologized and offered to refund our money, We told him no, we ordered and ate the food and it was great, so we’ll pay for it, but we did accept a $20 gift card each. I don’t fault the restaurant and will go back, it was just the waitress.”
