Amid the debate surrounding tipping culture, encounters between staff and customers in restaurants are often shared by both sides. At the same time, however, there are several incidents of entitled people misbehaving towards waiters, which has sparked outrage online. A woman known on Reddit as u/misquoted_unicorn04 recounted a similar incident when she witnessed a family treating a waiter like “scum.” She began by writing, “This particular day was special. I don’t remember exactly why, but we were at a perfectly nice steakhouse. It was a chain restaurant. Well, this chain restaurant was pretty empty, aside from a family sitting across from us. There was a mother, father, and three kids who were just hideous,” adding that the incident happened more than a decade ago when she was a child, around 6-8 years old.
She talked about how the family made life miserable for the waiter, mentioning, “The father was yelling and arguing with the mother, the mother was constantly arguing with the poor waitress, the toddler in the car seat was screaming and the two older kids were running around like they were headless. It was horrible to watch.” She also talked about how the waiter asked the parents to pick up their children and after several refusals, the waiter called for backup. “Now the manager tried to talk to them and got frustrated. Eventually, the situation escalated and the father started threatening the waiter and the manager,” she added. The user also mentioned how her family happened to get the same waitress who was constantly seen wiping her tears, so she decided to be as nice as possible to her while giving the other family a “death stare.”
The situation escalated when the waitress decided to give the woman and her brother an ice cream on the house for their good behavior. “She then turned to my brother and I and thanked us for being good kids and sitting quietly during dinner,” the post said. She described how her brother caught the attention of the other children, who soon began screaming because they didn’t get ice cream. “They are yelling at the waitress and their parents because they wanted ice cream. Now the other family is demanding to get ice cream because they did it for us. The manager basically tells them to fuck off and calls the police to make sure they leave the restaurant,” the user added.
After the annoying family left, the manager decided to give the narrator’s family all the food for free, as well as a gift card. “It was a very nice gesture. My family gave the waiter a decent tip and we all took turns apologizing for them and making sure the manager and waiter were OK,” the post ended, with many in the comments section expressing their sympathy for the waiter.
u/Zoreb1 asked, “Did the demon family pay their bill?” to which the woman replied, “No. The manager was so adamant about kicking this family out because other customers were leaving that he didn’t care. I can’t stress enough that everyone in this family was constantly screaming and yelling.” u/Reasonable_Star_959 added, “Nice! I once got my meal for free at a restaurant that my then-boyfriend and I used to go to a lot for similar reasons. After that, we always got the employee discount or free dessert, etc. if someone was working who had been there that night (which was almost always). We tipped generously!”
