I’ve been working at a local chain restaurant for several months now.
I get along well with all my customers and with my coworkers, and
though I have gotten jipped on tips before, it’s never really ruined
my day.
Until now.
Backstory: I have red hair. It’s short and usually pinned back with a
flower (my server trademark – I’ve had people come in asking for ‘the
girl with the flower’ when they can’t remember my name). Usually I get
great compliments on my hair and it’s a real ego boost. Sometimes,
though, it gets downright creepy.
So one night, we were beyond busy. A party of 20, a party of 18, and a
party of 35. The restaraunt recently started a policy that tables of
over 14 get two servers, but the two smaller ones only had one this
night since we were all slammed. The party of 35 took up the sections
of three servers, including myself, so we all took care of the tables
in our own section and combined the bill at the end of the meal. Easy
enough.
Turns out, the party was a boy’s soccer team. I had eleven boys and
the four coaches. The boys were fantastic – hilarious, a lot of fun,
and one of my fondest memories of serving. The coaches were quieter
and much more reserved, obviously exhausted from dealing with thirty
boys for a weekend. There was one coach, however, who seemed perfectly
happy being a little more disturbing than a girl is used to. I’m only
twenty, for one, maybe with an appearance of 21 or 22. This guy was
about 40, if not older, and he had bright red hair and a big bushy red
beard.
He saw my red hair as he was ordering his beer and smiled at me,
totally friendly, and asked if it was natural. I told him yes, it was,
took his beer order and moved on to the next coach.
The man interrupted. “So does that mean you’re Irish?”
I nodded at him and repeated my question of what the next coach wanted
to drink. He started to answer, but shut his mouth again when the red
man asked yet another question:
“You know that redheads are going extinct? Only like 2% of the
population. Scientists say that we’ll be extinct by 2050.”
I smiled and told him that yes, I did know that, and somehow managed
to take down his fellow coach’s order. I repeated the order back to
them, no big deal, very friendly, thinking that red man was done. He
wasn’t.
“You have a boyfriend?”
I wasn’t prepared to answer that question, and was a little taken
aback, but lied and said that yes I did – no need to have people
asking for anything else, as they tend to give up when they find out
you’re taken.
“He have red hair?”
“Um, no.” I started to move toward the next table, where five of my
eleven boys sat.
“Well, you know that since we’re all gonna be extinct since 2050, we
gotta work on rebuilding the population.” He winked at me. I glanced
at his fellow coaches, hoping that they would stop him from going any
further, but they were pointedly ignoring my eyes.
The man continued. “You get rid of that boyfriend, honey. Let me know.
We’ll rebuild the redhead population together.” Another wink.
I stammered something out and quickly left the table without another
word, hoping that my face wasn’t too flushed with embarrassment and
anger when I went to my next table. I had another server drop off
their drinks and told my manager, who basically told me to suck it
up.
Tip for customers: please, please don’t insinuate rebuilding any sort
of population with your waitress. Not cool, not funny, and really
quite disturbing.
Tl;dr some people suck.
- Redhead Server
