I just HAVE to share these two stories, because although they took place 2 & 3 days ago I am still MAD over them! Is anybody else a server/waitress? I am 22 years old, and I have only ever had 1 retail job, the rest I’ve had were either hostessing or being a waitress in restaurants. I am in college and have a 2 year old daughter.

Well about 3 days ago, I get this large table of about 14 people. Few adults, over half were kids. The restaurant I’m currently in is an arcade/restaurant, (it’s a pizza place) so I’m used to almost every table I have, having at least a child. Anyways, the company I work for has a few VIP hotels they’re in connection with (I live in a tourist city so there’s hotels everywhere) they give out these $25 vouchers towards their food. This one specific table had 5 of the $25 vouchers, so they can basically get $125 worth of free food, sounds great right? Come to find out, they also had 3 prepaid American Express gift cards from this specific hotel company, which they used towards the arcade- getting 3 game cards. To make a long story short, they ordered $100 worth of good & asked if I can just keep the last $25 voucher as my tip, I said no sir, unfortunately they are only valid towards food. He then tells me, how about you just keep it & use it on your next table, don’t tell them you have the voucher & pocket their cash. I said no sir, unfortunately your name is on all of the vouchers and my managers look through them, especially at the details because people in the past have made their own copies of them, and that would get me fired. He says, oh okay, we’ll figure something out for your gratuity then, but now we have to spend the last $25 so give me (...) this gentleman orders $25 worth of margaritas (on top of the other 5-6 he had ordered prior) the family got like 5 large pizzas, a few appetizers, subs, salads, and plenty of alcohol. They were there for 2 and a half hours, and I busted my ass for them the whole time. Their bill came to $124.66. They left me a huge mess, and $2 in cash, and the 3 prepaid cards that all had $1 left on them. 🙄

The next one happened yesterday it was a family of 12. There were 2 female adults and the rest were children none of which were older than 7. I again, busted my ass the entire time they were there (about an hour and a half) I made sure they were always good on drinks & asked a decent amount of times if I could get them anything. The women had overall a bad attitude, they were so rude to me the way they spoke, but I always made sure to remain polite & smiling. What really sucked was when I realized I wasn’t even left a dollar. Not even a penny. Both paid by credit cars & had a big 0 under the tip. The mess they had left was the worst mess of a table I had ever had in my years of serving.

It really sucks, considering the man (from the first incident) was telling me how he used to be a server and knows how stressful it could be at times.

I am a single mother of a 2 year old, and I am in college, (currently on summer break, but I have debt I am still paying off from 3 years ago) I have bills. I have a dog. I make $2.13 an hour.

Before anyone says, “you know what your in store for when applying for a serving job” or “there’s plenty of hourly pay jobs out there” I know all of this, and I will agree, some 8 hour shifts I’ll walk out with $250, and some I’ll walk out with less than $50. I love my job as of right now, but it doesn’t mean I can’t be frustrated at times. Anybody else have any horrible waitress stories?