My girlfriend and I recently went out for dinner. It took them a while to seat us as they were short staffed.
We ordered an appetizer to split as well as a meal each. I noticed that they were really trying to rush us along, bringing out our meals at the same time as the appetizer. The server kept grabbing things off the table, asking, “All finished with this?” and beginning to walk away with it in her hand, before I stopped her and told her we weren’t finished. After the third time, first the bread, then my half-filled beer, and then the appetizer. I had enough.
“I understand you have a job to do. Please do not touch anything in front of me until it is cleared and off to the side. Stop interrupting our meal, please go away,” I said very sternly.
A friend of mine came in and was seated at a table nearby, I turned around to greet him and engaged in chit chat for about two minutes. When I turned around my meal, which I had barely touched, was gone. My girlfriend hadn’t even noticed it go missing. I called the waitress over, who handed me the check and asked, “Will there be anything else?”
I told her my meal had disappeared.
She blankly replied, “Oh, I thought you were done.”
I said, “No, I am still eating. Go get my dinner and bring it back here.”
She replied, “Ummm… it got thrown out? Because you looked like you were done, so yeah…”
I told her to go get her manager. She responded that he didn’t have time to see me. I told her that he needed to make time because I was about to make a scene in four seconds.
She left and a minute later came back and said that he was too busy. I told her to reprint the check without my meal on it. She refused saying I ordered it, I had to pay for it, and walked away.
I let my girlfriend finish her meal. Took the check, put a line through the cost of my meal, pulled cash out of my wallet to cover the appetizer, drinks, and my girlfriend’s meal, wrote, “No Tip: Your server was rude, incompetent, and threw out my dinner”, and handed it to the cashier as one bundle as I walked out.
My girlfriend thinks I went a bit overboard and that I should have at least tipped for the other employees involved. My mother, a retired waitress, is furious that I took it upon myself to alter a check and leave without paying for food I ordered.
She thinks it was an honest mistake and I need to be more understanding.