Sucky customers friends

[Automan Empire]

Very true, Nightwatch. If you're serious about the person, invite their PARENTS to dinner early on, and suss out their treatment of waitstaff too. VERY revealing.

[ThePhoneGoddess]

As Dave Barry says, someone who is not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.

My paternal Grandfather and my Step-grandma were both classic EWs when I was a kid. She was lazy, cranky and 'old' (meaning, she bitched about how old she was and how the world owed her because of it) and he was a lecherous, egotistical, raging alcoholic. They were nightmares to go out with.

Blanche would treat service people like her personal servants. She had a deaf sister who was very sweet, but Blanche would use her. She'd randomly accuse service workers of treating her sister badly because she was deaf, basically because they didn't realize it right away and would speak to her. And when I mean she'd accuse, she would screech to the heavens in the middle of a crowded restaurant "SHE'S DEAF YOU STUPID GIRL! WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM? WHY ARE YOU PREJUDICED AGAINST OLD PEOPLE!" and my sister and I would have to restrain ourselves from crawling under the table.

My Grandpa thought he was hilarious and would make horrible racist and sexist cracks in public to waiter and such. He'd leer at pretty young waitresses, and if they got a male waiter to take the table, he'd get all offended and accuse the waitress of slacking at her job and then storm out of the restaurant.

Finally my Mother figured out why we hated going out with them so much and she put a stop to it. And my father backed her up. thank God.

I think they are part of the reason I am so nice to everyone I deal with who is on the clock. It's like I'm trying to make up for them.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I try to be good with the tipping when I go out to eat and I'm paying my own way. (Not very often, alas.) I had a girlfriend who was a driver for Domino's, and she was the one who got me started on good tipping, because I know that the drivers/servers don't always get paid very well.

Last night, after a wrestling show I'd gone to, my friends and I went to the nearest IHOP for food. It looked like there was only one waitress, so she was busy seeing to all the other people who'd come in (such as some of the wrestlers, and some of the fans who'd also stopped there). I thought nothing of it, and this IHOP had instituted a policy of "no check splitting between 11pm and 6am on Fridays & Saturdays," so my friends and I had to pay all together.

The check came to $30+, so one of my friends put down a $5 bill as a tip. Since I couldn't pay for my own meal myself, I left an additional few dollars as my own tip, a very generous one, and defending myself saying, "I'm tipping for MY meal."

[penguingeekgod]

I dated a SC (didn't see a need for tipping & the clerk was always to blame) and my mom has sometimes been an SC. I only dated the girl for 3 weeks and when my mom is a SC, I step between her and the clerk and take her on myself. Makes for interesting car rides home.