Canary Yellow Sweat Suit Lady

I waited on this lady the other day who apparently doesn’t live in the same normal world the rest of us live in. 

She came in with her husband (who must be as loony as she is).  They both had matching sweat suits; his was pale blue and hers was bright canary yellow, complete with perfectly matched canary yellow socks under her sandals.  No I'm not joking.  

As my manager was opening several doors around them to let a disruptive pigeon out of the restaurant, the lady told her, “Thank you for opening the doors.  This place needs to air out.  It felt like grease in here ever since we walked in.  It’s practically suffocating me.”  On top of that, the canary yellow suit lady was the lone guest who actually seemed to be enjoying the pigeon’s presence in the restaurant.  She was actually feeding it bread.  No wonder why the pigeon stayed around.  Gross.

When it came time to order, the canary yellow suit lady asked me if she could get our crab cake appetizer on top of a house salad.  “Of course,” I told her (I simply ordered our crab cake appetizer, ordered a house salad and asked the chef to put the two together on one plate).  She then demanded Thousand Island dressing for her salad.  I told her we don’t have Thousand Island, but then proceeded to give gave her several other options.  She snobbishly replied, “I know you have mayonnaise, ketchup, relish and lemon juice back there.  I know your chef can make it. It’s easy.”   To which I replied, “I’ll see what I can do.” 

On a busy day, I most likely would have just said, “I’m sorry we can’t.”  But because it was a rather slow day, I decided to go ask my chef what we could do.  Although she was - in many ways – way off her rocker, she did have a point. 

I asked one of the line cooks what we could do.  He told me he could probably mix our tartar sauce with ketchup and that would be about the closest recipe to Thousand Island he could make on the fly.  “Tartar sauce and ketchup. Genius.  Love it.  Do it, ” I said with a slightly mischievous grin. 

A few minutes after her special made-to-order salad was served, I went to go check on her.  I took a deep breath.  Lord, help me. What is she going to say.   Ironically enough, she asked, “What kind of dressing did you say this salad normally comes with?”  I giggled inside.  Apparently she didn’t like the on-the-fly Thousand dressing.  Well, duh.  I brought her the lemon herb dressing it’s usually served with and she ended up using almost all of it (she did consume about half of the tartar/ketchup combo, but it was obvious she enjoyed the lemon herb much better). 

{This kind of behavior drives servers crazy.  When we tell you we don’t have a dressing, it’s best to just take what options the restaurant has available.  If they don’t have you’re “go to” dressing, branch out a bit.  It won’t kill ya.  There’s a reason restaurants have the dressings they serve.}

Here’s the kicker.  When I dropped the check off, canary yellow suit lady was flabbergasted at how much I charged her for her specialty salad - that she created.   I charged for one order of crab cakes ($16), and one house salad ($8).  Because that’s what she had.  There was no smaller portion of anything.  She bolted at me, “A $24 salad!  The greens were practically just out of a bag!”  So rude.  As politely as I could I reminded her that if she ordered each item on it’s own, as a first and second course, that’s how much it would be.  She immediately demanded to see a manager.  I told my manager the situation and she decided to give her the side salad price of $5 instead of $8.  Apparently that was good enough; all of that rudeness for a mere $3 bucks savings.  Some people just want to feel like they’re getting a deal (and/or love bossing servers around and/or are just crazy weirdos). 

Let me review the oddities of this lady’s visit in one (albeit very long) sentence: 

Upon her entry she tells the manager the place feels like grease, then I notice her feeding bread to a pigeon inside the restaurant, she demands to create her own menu item, then demands us to make her a dressing we don’t’ serve, ends up eating a dressing we do serve and enjoys it better (although she never admitted it), then complained about the price of a salad she created.

This lady really got me thinking.  She probably left the restaurant actually annoyed with the price of her salad and was upset that her Thousand Island didn’t taste like it usually does. 

She was so far out there she couldn’t even comprehend the concept of normalcy.  To her, that was just another lunch out on the town.  To the staff, she was Tweety bird who had flown over the coo-coo’s nest a long time ago.   Some people have no clue of how demanding, odd and crazy they truly are.

And that’s why some days I love my job.  I love knowing crazy people like her actually exist in this world.  They definitely aren’t the easiest type of person to wait on, but they sure give us normal people something to talk about.  

And that's a great reason to keep serving the crazies of humanity.  ~ HK ~