The Lemons Are Turning You Dramatic & Sour

There's a lot of people waiting to hear about this customer, Lemon-Lady. It is in fact one of my all time favourtie ones, and I must admit it didn't really piss me off in, just left me dumb-founded. Then again, don't they usually?

King Prawn Cutlets come in a serving proportion of six. There is also a complimentary wedge of lemon served with it, in both Take Away and Dine In. While some customers use the lemon wedge, some actually enjoy it with a side of Sweet and Sour. Everyone is different.

Lemon-Lady is regular Take Away customer. On this unique night she orders her usual King Prawns Cutlets. We receive a call from her later on in the night.

Lemon-Lady: There is something wrong in my King Prawn Cutlets.
Me: I'm sorry about that, what seems to be the problem?
Lemon-Lady: The lemon has no juice in it.
Me: Okay, so the King prawn Cutlets themselves are fine?
Lemon-Lady: No, because now I can't eat them without lemon.

Golly gosh, really now? This was not one that I had heard before. There was nothing wrong with the actual food, yet she could not eat it without the lemon? I stood there kind of dumbfounded, in fact this was one of the times that I really wished our Take Away phone had a loudspeaker, because I'm sure all the other waitress would have loved to hear this one for themselves.

Me: I can give you another lemon, even a a double serving of lemon, if you want to come get more, or I can make a note that next time you order we will make sure that you get a better lemon wedge.
Lemon-Lady: How can you give me a lemon with no juice in it. Don't you guys check it?
Me: We buy them from the local grocery store.
Lemon-Lady: Well, you should quality check them when you give them out.

Oh man. Lemon-Lady was fighting with me over the phone about a piece of lemon! But the funny thing was that at this moment in time, I wasn't pissed off about a stupid complaint as I would usually be, in fact, I thought it was amusing that we were fighting about lemons. That's probably why I started to get a little smart mouthed after that.

Me: Well, we just buy them from the groceries so if there is a problem with the lemons then maybe you should bring it up with them.
Lemon-Lady: I'm not going to go to the groceries to argue about lemons. You gave it to me.

Yet, it seems perfectly reasonable to still be on the phone with me about a wedge of lemon. 

Me: Sorry, but that's where we get them from.
Lemon-Lady: Like I said you should check them.
Me: So, you're saying I should squeeze them, so I know if the are juicy, before I give them out.
Lemon-Lady: Yes, you should check them.

At this point I think Lemon-Lady has eaten too many lemons because it's really gotten to her head. I felt like saying that well next time I will squeeze the lemon and then tell her about all the juice that came out of it, and then give her the wedge because I have quality tested it. But of course I had to hold my tongue. By this time a few other waitresses were listening on this conversation and realised that I was getting pretty fed up with it.

Me: Look, if you don't want to come down and get more lemons, I will just write it down for next time.
Lemon-Lady: Well, I want a credit for the King Prawn Cutlets.
Me: Is there anything wrong with them? [Knowing that there wasn't because she had told me there was nothing wrong with them.]
Lemon-Lady: No, but now I can't eat them without lemons.
Me: I can't give a you a credit for something that has nothing wrong with it.
Lemon-Lady: But how do you expect me to eat them now without lemons.

How about, bite, chew, chew, swallow? Not hard.

Lemon-Lady: I don't mind paying for extra lemons but I can't eat the Cutlets without them.

I like to tell everyone that waitresses do talk about you. You may think that we don't, but we do. Lemon-Lady had previously ordered a whole lemon with her King Prawn Cutlets, we charged her an extra dollar. After all, you don't get extra things for free. She complained about how we charged her the extra dollar for a lemon and never ordered extra lemon again. So obviously she was now lying to me to get her own way. I still had to hold my tongue, so I said nothing.

Lemon-Lady: I always order the King Prawn Cutlets from your restaurant, and I love lemons with them.

So maybe, just as a suggestion, Lemon-Lady should buy some EXTRA lemons on her own so that she can suck on as many of them as she wants.

Lemon-Lady: So now, I can't eat them without lemons.
Me: Look. We make the Cutlets, there is nothing wrong with them. We buy the lemons and when we cut it up it seems fine. So I cannot give a you a credit for the whole serving of King Prawn Cutlets.

It baffles me completely. The wedge of lemon is complimentary, we don't add it to the cost of the King Prawn Cutlets AT ALL. In fact, there are places that don't even give you the wedge of lemon. How can I give you a credit on a wedge of lemon that is not charged when you really plainly just refuse to eat perfectly good King Prawn Cutlets?

Lemon-Lady: Well that's just not good enough.

Lemon-Lady would not get off the phone with me. Really it was just wasting my time. Finally one of the waitresses tells me that if she puts the wedge of lemon in the microwave for a few seconds it might help with the juice issue. So I tell Lemon-Lady this.

Lemon-Lady: Well I'll see if it works.

Then she finally hangs up.


Now don't get me wrong. I love King Prawn Cutlets, I love lemon, and I love to eat the two together. So I do understand that she was a little pissed off that she wasn't getting enough juice out of the lemon. But if she orders it ALL the time, refused to pay a dollar for an extra lemon, and not buy her own extra lemons. What in the world was she complaining about? I understand if it was a case of wanting to inform us, as some customers do, but really she wanted a reward for it as well.


Never, in my line of work, would I have ever thought that I could spend ten minutes talking about a wedge of lemon.


After that incident, she ordered her meals under a different name (she orders the exact same things every week). I think maybe, just a little, that she knows she was being slightly dramatic over a wedge of lemon. She now also gets her son to come in the pick up the order instead of showing up herself. However, just in the last week she has started using her own name again, but she still has not come to pick her meal face-to-face in Take Away, but instead has her son picking up the order for her.

The moral of this? Don't argue for ten minutes on something that is not charged, and assume you will get some sort of credit for perfectly good food that you simply refuse to eat.

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Apologies for not updating in almost a week.

For once there was something else going on in my life that wasn't work/customer related.

It was nice even if it was short lived.

Forceful Eating

There is no pleasing some customers. No matter how well you think your service is, or how great the food has been prepared and how wonderful everything is going these customers will forever complain. Why? I simply think its because its the only way that they can feel satisfied with their meal.

When I first started off as a waitress I was shy, gave in a lot and would be scared at the first signs of conflict. The truth was I always thought that in fact the customer was always right. Now I know better, customers are not always right and customers can be difficult and do cause a scene over nothing. In fact, sometimes I feel like customers think that you are a mind reader and know exactly what needs they want to have satisfied.

Friday-Regulars are a group of these customers. They are four couples. They demand to have separate bills, pay separately, and all waitresses must remember the couple's names and what they ordered so that when the meals come out they must be taken to the right person. As if the demands were not high enough, they always have something that is 'wrong' and on occasions we might actually have a good night with them. Yet they come back almost every Friday night. So somewhere, I'd like to think we are actually doing something right. And most likely its because we are the only restaurant that seems to tolerate such 'royal' requests.

One of the Friday-Regular's sister complains tonight that the Cantonese Steak being too salty. Another waitress had already checked on this table before she complained and there didn't seem to be a problem at the time. By the time that she finally does voice out her opinion she has a quarter of the original dish on her plate. Of course this would be the moment where she decides that indeed it is too salty. The rest of the Friday-Regulars straight away jump onto this complaint and say that they indeed have tried it too, and it is definitely too salty. A waitress asks her if she wants a replacement meal, which in fact is quite a generous response. She does not.


The problem only arises again when it comes down to paying the bill. Customers who complain ultimately strive for this part. The truth is that they just do not want to pay for the entire meal that they have ingested.

The actual customer who ate the meal is not the one paying, but her sister, Friday-Regular-SB is paying. Now everything is actually going along okay until one of the other Friday-Regular, MG, decides that they shouldn't have to pay for the Cantonese Steak at all. This has nothing to do with her bill what so ever. Yet she just can not help herself.

Friday-Regular-MB tells the waitress that she doesn't think that they should have to pay for a meal that was too salty. She also points out that everyone had a taste of it and also thought the same thing. The waitress calmly tells her that by the time anyone said anything, there was FOUR pieces of meat left on the plate. Most of the dish was definitely consumed.

All of sudden none of the Friday-Regulars want to pay for this now. Once one starts they all jump onto the bandwagon. Peer pressure? 

Finally it is decided because the fact that they have consumed the meal, they would receive 50% off the meal. They seem to be satisfied with this. After it has all been settled Regular-Customer's sister then says that it was only getting salty towards the end of the meal.

You have got to be kidding...

Cantonese Steak is cooked in an Oyster Sauce. This was the first complaint in the four years that I have worked there about this particular dish. The sauce can be a little salty but most Chinese dishes, especially main course ones, should be eaten with rice, no matter Fried or Steamed, and most people do. In this particular case, the customer who consumed the dish only had a small amount of rice spooned onto the steak dish. This would also explain why she complained about the saltiness of the dish later on.

The one thing that I cannot understand is the fact that Friday-Regular-MB had nothing to do with this complaint at all really. It was not her dish, not her bill and not really her business. Yet she has no problems causing a fuss over something that she forcefully involves herself in. Just so that we make this quite clear, she is a main offender to complaints, on every occasion that she can possibly find.

I have not always liked every meal that I have eaten, but I feel that if I wanted to complain about it then, yes, I would do so at the very beginning, not right at the end where I have eaten most of the dish. My logic and understanding is that if it is so unworthy to eat then you should not have consumed it at all. If you want to place a legitimate complaint, do so at the start of the meal and not at the end.

Why would you really force yourself into eating something that you disliked? And if it was consumed, really was it that bad after all?

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Epic Satay Battle

I was waiting for dreading the clock hitting 7:30pm. Why? Because I had known for TWO days that a booking had been made by "Dunk". There are so many many stories about this group of people that usually consist of eight couples, friends and family around 50-80ish in age.

So this entry is about the one thing that started me on dreading the Dunks. Also the fact why I have lost respect for people like this in society. It started with a complaint about our Satay Chicken.

The sister of the main hostess, had decided  that she wanted Satay Chicken. No problems, it was cooked, served and nothing out of the ordinary happened with it. It was then she proceeded to pick up her Satay Chicken and take it to the bar were I was currently standing.

I've dealt with many complaints before, they range from quite understandable ones to crazy completely stupid ones. This one is my favourite to tell because it is on the outer edge of completely stupid.

"Satay Lady" decided to tell me that she did not like the Satay. Which is fine, not everyone enjoys everything. I apologised for the fact that she did not enjoy it but also told her that there was nothing wrong with it either.

She continues to complain telling me that it is in fact NOT  Satay. Here is where I start getting a little dumbfounded... NOT Satay? It clearly was and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. She explains to me that she has had Satay before from other places and that our Satay did not taste the same. I try, and believe me I truly try, to explain to her that different places do different types of Satay and no two independent restaurants will have the same flavour. She of course, does not accept this logical explanation.

By this time I am annoyed by her complaint stupidity and her inability to even comprehend what I am trying to tell her. I keep my cool for as long as I can and then tell her once again that I apologise (which at this point I do not really mean at all) that she didn't like the dish. She now decides to tell me that she does not want to pay for something that she does not like. I refuse to let her off as once again there is nothing wrong with the dish and that it was just the fact that she, personally, did not like it. I also tell her that in fact Satay is among one of the most popular dishes on the menu and which in fact is still true.

And here is the kicker for me. She then tells me that maybe my customers do not like it either. So does that explain the fact that its a popular dish? Once again, lady, not listening to me. I tell her once again that a lot of people order it and re-order it quite often. Apparently in her head and she also voices this out aloud, that my customers do not tell me that they do not like the Satay. Oh yes, that also explains why they continue to buy it right?

By this time, I've had enough. I'm not angry or annoyed anymore. I'm just tired exhausted by this lady's explanation. Her reasoning was ridiculous and unbelievable. If it was me I would have just looked at her dumbfounded because I think its the only way to fight stupidity.

In conclusion of this epic argument over Satay my boss lets her off by replacing the meal. If it was me, I would have fought tooth and nail. The one thing that I really cannot believe about this battle is that she thought she had the right to claim insult all the my other customers by claiming that they proceed to order a dish that they do not like over and over again. Lady has complete logic, complete.

After making a fool of herself, the whole table of course at the end of it is quite embarrassed by Satay Lady's show, she now still comes in regularly with the group. And let me tell you, I have not let her live it down since then. If you want to insult my customers to fight you're own personal battles I don't particular think you deserve my utmost attention.

So this is what I have learnt as a waitress to such insane complaints.

1. All  restaurants will not cook food exactly the same to suit your needs.
2. Disliking a dish, which has no problems with it, does not mean you get a free dish.
3. You are embarrassing yourself, even your table party are pretending they don't know you.
4. Do not insult other customers claiming that they continue to order the same dish to torture themselves.
5. If you wish to come back and be treated with perfect waitress hospitality causing a scene over Satay Chicken will probably not achieve that.