When I was a Durgin-Park waitress back in the day, it was not uncommon for one of “the gals” to take on a customer who left a rotten tip, or entirely stiffed her. Durgin had a reputation for mouthy, even surly, waitresses, and part of the restaurant’s overall schtick was to have us engage in badinage with the diners.
Personally, I never actually confronted a patron over a tip, but I did witness many confrontations. One time, my roommate was stiffed by someone for whom she’d gone out of her way to nicely wrap up the prime rib bone he wanted to take home. As he headed for the door, I watched as Joyce grabbed the bag he was holding as say, “If you want the bone, you’d better give me a tip.” Wide-eyed and gaping from the shock of being accosted, the guy handed Joyce a buck, and us working girls had a good laugh over it all.
Mostly, though, it was the older waitresses – a.k.a., the old bags – who got into it with the bad tippers.
There was one heavy drinking old waitress – whose two heavy drinking daughters worked alongside her – who always seemed to be in some set-to with a customer.
One time I watched as N leaned out the window and rained a handful of change down on the head of some bad tippers, while loudly letting them know in which f-ing orifice they could stick their tip.
But these days just about everything has gone electronic, and dealing with lousy tippers is apparently one of them. Or so I learned from an article on Bankrate about card-skimming at one Florida restaurant.
The restaurant where the scheme was being worked is called Mugs ‘N Jugs, so I think I’ve got a pretty clear picture that they were hiring more Hooters wannabes and fewer of the old gals/old bags that Durgin specialized in. But that’s just a guess based on the clever – ho-ho – name, and the fact that they feature a “Girl of the Month.”
I take it that Kathryn Shana'e Perez will not be in the running for “Girl of the Month.” She’s the waitress who scanned patron credit cards and passed the info on to an accomplice, who used it to buy goods (largely at Radio Shack, where one of the other alleged perps worked), then turn around and sell them for cash. She was paid for her services with a TV and a laptop, which she may or may not be able to take with her to the slammer.
Anyway, Perez’ rationale for choosing her victims was that they were nasty customers.
Pasco County Sheriff’s Office detective John Suess questioned her, and he got this response:
“She identified that the people she skimmed were the ones that ... ran her around and made her work real hard and the ones that were bad tippers,” said Suess, with the economic crimes unit. (Source: New Port Richey Patch.)
It seems that while crime doesn’t pay, neither does treating a waitress badly.
As Suess notes, however:
“The bad tippers story doesn’t quite jive because the tip wouldn’t have been left until after she returned the card. … It was comical. That was her rationalization for why she did this.”
On the other hand, the bad tippers could have been repeat offenders that Perez had waited on before.
While some people think you can figure out bad tippers in advance – via profiling, as it were – in my experience, you can’t always tell the good from the bad ahead of time. There were some rough rules that seemed to hold in my day: a group of young men who were drinking a lot were generally a better prospect than a group of older women ordering the specials on separate checks and wrapping up the left-over cornbread to take home.
But you couldn’t always tell.
One time, when I was at the Union Oyster House, four of us – on a very busy day – were dragooned into waiting on a bunch of Wisconsin high-schoolers on a church trip to Boston. Nice kids, but were didn’t figure they were going to be worth much, and it was a drag to have to add taking care of them to our already busy lunch hour rush.
When we looked at the table after the kids left, one of us glanced over and noted that they didn’t seem to have left a tip. Marilyn, the head waitress, collared the minister as he left and told him we’d been stiffed. Embarrassed, he told Marilyn that the kids weren’t all that experienced eating out, but that he’d told them they were supposed to leave a tip. He then gave Marilyn $20 for the four of us to share.
When we went in to clear the plates, we found that each and every one of the kids had left a quarter or fifty cents under – and I do mean under – their plate.
Oops!
I can imagine how wronged those kids felt when their minister talked to them about stiffing waitresses when they got back on the bus.
(Forty years later, I still feel bad about this.)
In any event, I don’t think it would have occurred to me to get back at a lousy tipper by stealing their credit card information and using it to rip off loot from a Radio Shack.
But that’s just me, and Kathryn Perez is not me.
Perez was released from Hillsborough County Jail on $50,000 bail Thursday morning.
Perez faces seven charges of criminal use of identification information, one charge of scheme to defraud and one charge of possession of a scanning device.
Ah, wouldn’t it have been easier to just tell the crappy tippers off?
But I suspect that’s not part of the Mugs ‘N Jugs dining experience.
Me, I may well get my credit card ripped off, but it won’t be for bad tipping. Having been a waitress, I’ve always been a pretty good tipper. A server would pretty much have to pour a glass of Chardonnay on my head, tip a plate of linguine with clam sauce into my lap, and call me the c-word before I’d stiff them.
When I am getting poor service, I’ll generally try to give the server an out. “Busy, huh?” “Things crazy in the kitchen?” “Some days nothing goes right.”
I know it’s a demanding and taxing job, and that kitchens, bar tenders, and waiters can have bad days.
If they don’t accept the life line, they won’t get 20%. But they won’t get stiffed, either. (Unless the conditions noted about hold.)
Still, you never know when your credit card is going to be compromised. My brother-in-law had someone buy expensive girly shoes on his. It was only when they ordered multiple TV’s on it that he was contacted about possible fraud. My husband had someone use his number to buy a plane ticket to Las Vegas. Whee! I had a bunch of charges for a UK dating service on one of my cards last year.
And not a one of us is a bad tipper!
Still, best not to tempt the gods (and the waitrons), apparently.
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