Bartender
Arch was working a slow afternoon shift alone
in the bar at a large hotel convention center
when suddenly, without advance warning, one
of the conference rooms burst open,
spilling fifty to sixty thirsty, hungry women
into the bar. Lucky Arch: the adjoining dining
room didn't open for another hour. And these women were thirsty and
hungry.
Arch did the best he could
taking care of the demanding women, singlehandedly
taking lunch orders and mixing drinks, serving the food and then
mixing more drinks, and ringing
up tickets. But after a long, grueling hour and a half he thought he
had everyone satisfied. There had not yet
been any complaints.
As the room
emptied out except for a few tables, Arch began clearing
plates. As he pulled the dirty
plates from a table where
three well-dressed women
sat, in his best Fridays/Applebees/Chili's waiter spiel, he
said, “So can I interest you in some key
lime pie, turtle cheesecake,
or maybe just some coffee?”
“Um, we're still waiting
for our lunch,” one lady said
haughtily.
Arch looked down at the
dirty plates in his hands that he had just
removed from her table.
“Yeah, and we've
been waiting forty-five minutes,” snarled another.
Dumbfounded, Arch didn't
know what to do. He looked around at the now
deserted dining room for clues. The bar area had been completely
clean before the avalanche had descended on him; he was positive no
one had sat at a dirty table. He took the pile
of empty, dirty plates back to the kitchen and talked to the
manager. They were both positive the ladies had been
served their lunch, and indeed, a quick
search produced a used, time-stamped ticket for that table showing as
much.
“What should we do?”
asked Arch. "They clearly already ate their
lunch."
“Fire up the grill,”
said the manager with a shrug.
Ten minutes later, Arch
brought another round of entrees to the table and apologized for the
long wait. The "starving" ladies
each took a tiny nibble of food,
pushed pack their chairs, and asked for to-go boxes.
Since their food
sort of, took so long to get to the
table, the manager comped their meal. Make
that meals,
with an S. And they left no tip. Why should
they, for such rotten service?
This is like breaking into
a grocery store, stealing a hundred pounds of beef,
then walking past the night guard and asking him to validate your
parking stub. And then pointing to the beef and saying, “Oh and
could you supersize this?”
What's really amazing is
that this was an entire
team of women pulling
it off. It's one thing for a lone
sociopath to attempt
such blatant theft with
a straight face, but how do you get three people to do it? I
would argue that it takes a lot of training to accomplish such a
feat.
And
I suppose you have to
work your way up to that
level of expertise and daring.
I imagine
Level I begins with a
first-timer being
required to go into a
convenience store, carry a magazine to the checkout counter, then
grab a pack of
cigarettes
and stuff it in her
purse
while the clerk is busy ringing it up.
Then the clerk says, “Oh
wait, that's five
dollars for the cigarettes.”
“What
cigarettes?” the thief-in-training
replies.
“The
ones you put in your purse.”
“I
ain't got no cigarettes.” Then she has to calmly
light a cigarette in
front of the clerk and walk
out with a straight face.
From
there, she can work her way up to Level
II: stealing gas;
preparing
a meal at a grocery store salad bar
and consuming
it while standing at
the salad bar;
pouring drinks from a
bar while
the attendant isn't looking and
then
denying
it. After
those, perhaps she's
finally ready for
Level III:
The Full-Service Restaurant Double Whammy Power Punch Team.
I'm
not sure I have ever
heard or will ever
hear a more brazen
story. However, the same convention is booked for the same hotel next
year. We can only hope that the
Level III team can top themselves. You go, girls!
