Don't Trust Your Waitstaff!

Waitstaff. They cannot be trusted.

Ok, so that is kind of a crazy thought. Just last night I went to Friendly's with my wife's family, and our waitress Natasha, was AWESOME. She dealt with a family that could be politely called difficult, and made sure that everyone walked away happy. But she is the exception to the rule. Well her and my girl Stacey from Toronto, but that is another story!

Let me set a scene for you. New Year's Eve 2008. A beautiful club, nice people, nice tunes, seemingly nice waitstaff. But that's where everything went wrong. The bar staff started the evening by pouring DUBRA for the cosmos and vodka crans. Not exactly the top shelf that I thought we were paying for (in fairness they did have absolut and skyy, you just had to specifically request them). A little sneaky, none the less.

Next, the waitstaff began to pass out warm appetizers. If you were unfortunate enough to be sitting at what we jokingly called "the Kids Table", then you had to flag the waitstaff down to get any of these delicious tidbits. Twice I was the only person at the table not to receive an appetizer (I missed out on the delectable pigs in a blanket and fried calamari), as the waitstaff only had enough for 9, not 10. In general our table missed out on many really awesome looking appetizers due to age-discrimination by the waitstaff.

Finally, I had been one of the designated photographers. Obviously nobody wanted to memorialize my super amazing dance skills. In my drunken haze, I decided that it would be fine to put down the camera on the table with people's wallets, I-Phones, LG Dares, Blackberrys, money belts, purses, and gold bars. I didn't think twice about a little pink camera (it really matched my shirt). So I added the camera to the pile of expensive goodies and went to get my groove on to some Journey. At the end of the night, we all collected our belongings, but the little fucking camera was gone. Not the wallets, I-Phones, LG Dares, Blackberrys, money belts, purses and gold bars. All of those were still there. I was flummoxed. So we began looking under tables, in ceiling tiles, in my pants, everywhere. It was gone. We asked the bartenders (but they were busy pouring Dubra into Absolut bottles). We asked the waitstaff (they were busy running for doors). We would have asked the other guests, but they had long since gone home (it was similar to Jack and John's wedding in that regard, minus my helping load someone's car, that I hope was a relative's, with gifts). So I asked our waitress point blank, did she know where it was. Suddenly, she could barely speak English, it was all Polish (really, I'm not making that up, one of the friends I made that night was Polish and he told me that was her native language). I figured we weren't going to get anywhere with her, so we gave our contact info to the bartenders (I guess they were in charge) and left in a huff.

So what did we learn here? Not much. If I were waitress I might have taken the I-Phone, or maybe the money belt. Not a crappy camera (no offense to the owner of the camera, which wasn't me). Just be careful, and make sure to give all of your waitstaff full body cavity searches before you leave for the evening. And maybe keep that stupid little camera in your pocket.....