Syd (@poorandhungry) is no stranger to relaying her “Tales From the Shift” in her job as a server, and usually does so in the form of long-form skits in which she re-enacts various roles from the situations she finds herself in.
In a recent one-woman show she uploaded to her TikTok account, she depicted a scenario involving a customer who was responding to her queries in very rude, demanding, and downright disrespectful ways.
When Syd asked the patron what was going on, she managed to get to the bottom of why the customer was being so mean to her: because Syd reminded her of the woman her boyfriend cheated on her with.
Here’s how Syd’s two-person skit went down:
“Hey, thanks for coming into the restaurant, beautiful day on the patio, what can I get you started with?” Syd says.
The customer lowers their glasses and sizes Syd up. “This fork fell on the floor I need a new one,” she says.
“Yeah, no, I can definitely get you a new fork. Can I get you…” Syd tries to continue before the customer cuts her off.
“New fork, now!” she shouts. “Don’t do the rest just bring me a new fork and then we can do the rest.”
“I’ll be back in about three to five minutes because I have to go all the way back inside cause you’re on the patio, anything else I can get you now?” Syd asks.
The patron waves her off. “Fork, go!”
When Syd eventually returned to the table to get their drink orders, the customer demanded she bring more napkins before anything else. Once the napkins had been delivered, the patron snidely placed their drink orders.
“Don’t rush us, we’ll start with a round of Diet Cokes,” she said.
Syd delivered the Diet Cokes to the table, but the customer immediately complained about the amount of ice in her drink. “I want Diet Coke, not ice with Diet Coke,” she said.
At this point in the conversation, Syd finally decided to address the fact that the patron was being unnecessarily rude and short with her.
“Excuse me, is there some kind of problem here?” Syd asked. “I feel like I’ve been very accommodating, and there seems to be something that I’m missing.”
“Yeah, there’s a problem, you look exactly like the girl that my boyfriend just cheated on me with,” the customer responded.
“So you’re treating me absolutely vile because I look like someone that’s in your life?” Syd asked, bewildered.
“Yes, you look like a lying, cheating, skank that I know,” the customer said.
“But you’re also fully aware that I am not that person, correct?” Syd asked.
“I don’t care who you are you look just like her, and you disgust me,” the customer countered.
At the end of the clip, Syd claps her hands together in defeat and looks at the camera, acquiescing that there’s no logical way she can rectify the situation or fix the customer’s issue with the fact that the woman simply isn’t a fan of her face.
@poorandhungry Guest story from @Ashley Lesnick-Gille !! #server #customerservice #restaurant #serverlife #longervideos ♬ original sound – $yd
Numerous folks who responded to her video replied that they wouldn’t have been able to contain their emotions if placed in the same scenario.
“I am not made for the service industry i would end up in JAIL,” one person wrote.
Another penned that in these types of instances, it’s imperative that managers support their employees’ best interests. “Owners and managers- Normalize telling these people to leave early on,” they said.
This was a sentiment echoed by someone else who replied: “She would be asked to leave.”
“‘Get out.’ Is the next line I think,” another said.
A third wrote, “I would’ve never came back to the table. There’s no way you’re gonna talk to me like that.”
In a Quora forum that asked servers to share some of their biggest on-the-job gripes, a recurring concern multiple people seem to have were “bad/arrogant/entitled/cheap” customers and equally frustrating-to-deal-with managers.
In one Reddit thread posted to the r/TalesFromYourServer sub, the phenomena of terrible customer treatment was also called into question by a restaurant industry worker who said that it seemed as if there was an outbreak of patrons who made it a personal mission of theirs to make employees’ lives miserable. NPR also reported that “rude customers” were one of the main reasons (on top of low pay without benefits) why throngs of restaurant workers decided to call it quits in the kitchen.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Syd via Instagram direct message for further comment.
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