Night of the Living Pricks

Last Sunday was a delightful time.

It was pretty OK, actually, until we closed the cafe and these three people just stayed at the tables we have out front. One of them asked to use the bathroom just as we were closing, so I let her (after which my manager told me, "Don't let anyone else in.") After a little while of cleaning the place, we just turned off the outside lights.

About 15 minutes after we closed, another one of them started knocking on the door. I left the chain on, but opened it to see what he wanted. He was asking if he could use our bathroom. I explained we'd been closed for 15 minutes, I'd just CLEANED the bathroom, and no he really couldn't. "It's all soggy anyway."

"Really, I don't mind," he said, playing up his "really gotta go" shtick. I apologized, closed the door, and went back to mopping.

15 minutes later, everything inside was clean and I needed to get the tables inside so we could go home. But they were inexplicably still there. I went out and told them that they'd have to get going, as we'd been closed for a half hour.

Bathroom boy: "My understanding was that it was customary for restaurants to stay open until everybody's finished. We're still eating." (If there is such a general policy, which my manager later denied, it certainly is not followed where I work)

I surveyed their cardboard cups, purchased at least forty-five minutes previously and if not finished, then certainly stone cold. One of them (there were two guys and one girl, this was the girl) had a mug, so I asked her if she was done, suggesting that I could get her a to-go cup if she wasn't.

"Are you going to physically remove us?" asked bathroom boy as I stacked the other chairs. I reached to pick up a chair at the table next to them, realized that it had a bag sitting on it, and picked it up to get it out of the way.

"HEY! You don't TOUCH his STUFF!" said the same guy, who then stood up and started walking toward me. "Are you going to physically remove us!?" So I took the stack of chairs I already had and carried it inside without another word.

Now here's the part that kills me.

As I was retreating back inside in the face of what was essentially an implied threat on my person by some asshole with a chip on his shoulder, the guy whose bag I'd moved started saying, "You know next time instead of being all hostile you could try asking nicely..."

These were the people who knew we had been closed for a half hour, who were quite plainly finished and just standing between me and my skewed Monday/Tuesday weekend for the pure hell of it, who supposedly should have left fifteen minutes previously to avoid kidney damage, who refused to leave when I asked and then started waving their dicks around, essentially trying to pick a fight, telling me that I need to be nicer?

How about I find out where they work and come over some Friday afternoon when all they want to do is get home and start their weekend and make their lives more difficult just because I can and I happen to feel like it? I wonder how nice they'd be?

But no, I apparently wounded their precious and overblown senses of entitlement by turning the light out on them instead of going out on bended knee, clasping their hands in mine, and explaining with a tear misting in my eye that, despite how much we enjoyed their patronage and loved them as human beings, it was our greatest regret that we had to close and could no longer serve as the location for their all-night-long gabfest. Please accept our profoundest apologies for such an inconvenience as having to throw out their empty cups and walk somewhere else.

I shoulda called the cops, let them explain to the nice officer their odd theory about their god-given right to sit there indefinitely, even after they'd been asked to leave. It would have been so fun to see their narcissism shatter on the rocks of reality. But instead I got my manager and he nice-talked them away... which means those self righteous prick-twigs might be back later.

Shoulda called the cops.

The punchline? My manager served these folks, and he specifically remembers that they didn't even leave a tip. Always the ones that don't tip...
- posted by Bob @ 10:26 AM