People have this habit of forgetting that anyone outside of their immediate circle exists. That's especially true of service workers who have a way of disappearing into the background - we're talking about you, wait staff ninjas.
We'll admit, we've gotten lost in conversation and not noticed a server walk up to the table before, especially way back in ye olde theater days.
The servers at Ruby Tuesday must have heard so much more than they ever bargained for. Then again, theater kids just have a way of standing out, ya know?
Maybe the servers knew exactly how ridiculous things could get with us...
Whether the customers just looked like the type to bring the drama, like the dad in the Mother's Day story, or not didn't seem to matter. Guests overlook service staff and get lost in conversation. They talk too loudly. They're oblivious.
Cheater
I was clearing some tables after a wedding. Overheard the bride talking to the grooms mother. She was trying to justify having cheated on the groom the night before (which seriously seems to happen way too often for both genders, wtf.)
The part that made it really bad is that she kept trashing her now-husband and his mother was trying to be as sweet as possible, telling her it's understandable and she is stressed and all that; telling her to give it time. Part of me respects her calmness but seriously, she cheated on your son, don't tell her that's okay! I've seen it so many times before. But this left me livid.
Delivery
GiphyAs a delivery boy I was handing this young woman her pizza while she was on the phone talking about how her mom is in the hospital for attempted suicide. It was really sad and awkward.
- amhylo
Porn Is Terrible Sex Ed
There was a group of high school girls near the server station and overheard one girl say "wait, I shouldn't have given him a bl*wjob after we did it? They did it in a porno though and he had a condom on before."
A Military Town
Once worked as a waiter. I was clearing a table when I heard the following from a table behind me. "Ok, we'll need assault rifles, sidearms, machetes, and full gear. Don't forget four full clips for each weapon."
That got me curious. I turned to see four guys in military uniform sitting at the table. It would've been fishy if the restaurant wasn't in a military town. It was a small town which was right next a military camp (infantry) and a military academy.
Buenos Aires
It's not mine, is my mom's. She passed the table where this rich couple from Buenos Aires was and stayed close so she could eavesdrop when she heard the word "abortion."
Apparently their daughter and nephew had sex, and she got pregnant.
Keeping It In The Family
Back in high school I was a host for a small sushi restaurant. The host stand was about 2 yards away from the closest bar stool. On one particularly slow night a couple came in to sit at the bar for dinner.
After a happy hour large sake bomb, the woman was talking loud enough for me to hear. Her sister came up in their conversation and took a turn for the worse. She started accusing her husband of always looking at her sister a little too long and said her sister used her obnoxious laugh (?) whenever he was around.
I leave the host stand to do some work around the restaurant fast forward 10 min.
Now both the lady and man are visibly upset when he stands out of his chair and loudly for the whole other 4 people to hear "Yeah I think her sisters hot and I slept with her too" and stormed out.
My manager just quickly gave the lady the bill even though she was sitting there crying. By far the most interesting night I had working there.
- dooidoo
An Immersive Experience
GiphyFrom the opposite standpoint; Definitely not something I was supposed to overhear from my waitstaff.
Anyone who knows anything about Disney World knows that they make it very immersive. You are never supposed to see anyone out of character at any time for any reason, even to the point where they keep dancing after going into the tunnels just in case someone can see.
That's why this story sticks out so much in my memory. I was in Disney back in my teen years and at a character breakfast. Alice and The Mad Hatter were very snippy at each other while they were entertaining, and finally they went aside and had it out around the corner toward the kitchen. They thought they were quiet enough, but my sister and I could hear the whole thing.
Alice and The Mad Hatter just had a coital rendezvous a few minutes earlier. The Mad Hatter was complaining that Alice totally took advantage of him, and that he was uncomfortable with the entire thing, and even more pissed off that she hadn't told him that she wasn't on birth control. She was snapping back that he never expressly objected to anything, so he can't be angry now.
The entire experience was absolutely surreal - watching two people in full costume that were supposed to have permanent smiles on their faces bickering over a very adult conversation. It was unforgettable.
- SLagonia
April Fool's
I was eating at a restaurant one day and a boyfriend proposed to his girlfriend. It was very sweet, not attention-seeking at all, and seemed very genuine.
She started crying and said yes.
He grinned and said "April Fool!"
She. Was. PISSED!
Josh
It was Mother's Day '19, and I work at the best breakfast joint in my city, at the most popular location. We were on a 3-4 hour wait pretty much all day. At around 11 or 12, I had a 3 top get sat in one of my booths. A little miffed about it because it's the busiest day of the year and they were in a family booth, but whatevs, let's turn and burn them. I creep on them from the kitchen a lil bit to see who I'm dealing with. A mid-late 30's woman, in decent shape, Karen hair cut. Teenage daughter, completely enthralled with whatever boy is trying to convince her to show her skin on Snapchat. A early 40's behemoth of a man, 220lbs of rock hard muscle and 6'5" AT LEAST. He's red in the face and mad already, I assume because of the wait. I'm already thinking, "oh these poor women"
I walk up, do my little song and dance, go get drinks. All is well. All is normal. Guy is a lil stiff, but I saw that coming from a mile away so I do my best to defuse and disarm him with some directed charm. Made a joke about black coffee that got the tables around me giggling and the two girls, but he just gave me a Stoney glare. Soooooo this is awk. Let's take their order.
I'm at the point-of-sale(POS) adjacent to their table, just around the corner, and I begin ringing their order in. As I'm ringing it in, I hear in a gruff voice, "...well JOSH didn't have a problem with that, did he??" Then, in a timid voice, "...nothing...going on...Josh"
Uh oh, I'm listening to someone being accused of cheating on Mother's Day in front of their daughter this just got AWK
So I leave them alone till their food is up. As I'm walking up with the tray, big guy is roaring his head off screaming how she's a whore, how she doesn't deserve happiness, how she should just go sleep with Josh again, the nines. All in front of the kid.
Then he goes to stand up and I'm close by because I have their food and don't wanna be blamed for it being cold so I'm still tryna drop this food off, forget their their argument. I try to back away but there's another table WAY TOO CLOSE.
He jumps back and stands and cracks his head on my tray, HARD. $80 worth of omelettes and pancakes come crashing down, on top of a table of 10 halfway through their meal, in a fantastic display of shattered ceramic and flying berries. The guy storms over to me, gruffly apologizes and shoves a crumpled $100 bill in my shirt pocket and stomps out of the restaurant.
The lady is crying, the daughter has both headphones in now, I'm laying in a pool of strawberry syrup and whipped cream, and I got to re-fire 20 plates of food and got a terrible tip from the 10.
Karen-hair says, "That should teach me to ever go out on Mother's Day with my ex husband." and starts crying into her oatmeal, which was the only plate I was able to save. I gave her and her daughter and awkward Christian side hug and related my experience of growing up in a divorced household and got them new food.
Def should have walked away when I could have.
Passing On Their Wisdom
I work at a small cafe that has outdoor seats close to the counter. As I was collecting some dirty plates from a table, I hear these two elderly women talking to a younger woman about sexual topics. What also sucked was that every time I went to clean a table, the elderly women were still talking about sexual stuff.
One of the things I can remember one of them saying word for word was "Trust me, if he wanted to be a virgin he wouldn't have slept with you, now its time for you to cheat on him"
Redditor Jarvis_Strife wanted to hear about the times the price tag left people a little shook, so they asked:
"What turned out to be A LOT more expensive than you anticipated?"
Used cars.
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD?!
How does a 20 year old car with 250,000 miles on it cost THOUSANDS of dollars?!
MADNESS!
Open Wide
Dentist GIFGiphy"Root canal with a crown. I understand now why a lot of people just get the tooth pulled."
Bitey_the_opossum
"Dental insurance barely covering anything is crazy to me. It’s extremely important to keep teeth healthy, being that an infection can kill you, so you think it would be covered under preventative care, but nope."
Jamie9712
The Usual
"Car repairs."
BlackLesbianTroll
"My usual shop tried to charge us $700 for a coolant flush, engine air filter, battery, and spark plugs. I did all of it but the spark plugs myself in an hour for about $120. I have started doing my own oil changes and it's about 50% cheaper. It's crazy how much places by me charge for cheap and easy stuff."
gaybatman75-6
"The fact that every service ends up being an extra $100+ is frustrating sometimes too 😮💨."
-Tired_Phoenix-
Flooring
"Rugs. Biggest shock when I got my own place."
spnginger3
"One of those things I can’t believe people pay full price for. Those things are like 85% margin if you buy them from retail. Find a local auction website and search through it to find a rug distribution center that usually does quarterly (or so) liquidations at auction. You can get thousands of dollars in rugs for a couple hundred bucks."
FairState612
Window Dressing
"When I bought my first house about 5 years ago it was a new build, as such it had no blinds or curtains etc. I’m a blinds guy so we got a company Dunelm Mill to make us measure blinds for the whole house. It was a couple thousand pounds but we had allowed for it when buying."
"The blinds ended up being a little delayed, not a crazy amount but a bit of a frustrating amount - maybe 2 months or so. They straight up gave them to us (and still fitted them for us) literally for free, and they had given us a temporary more basic blind for our bedroom in the meantime!"
jw205
Why so much?
Angry Organized Crime GIF by Law & OrderGiphy"Kitchen garbage can. Why are they $50+!?"
redheadscorp
"Man mine was double that! Options are apparently either a five-dollar plastic bin with no lid that is borderline useless or a $100+ Ferrari trash can. I just wanted one with a lid and a foot pedal to open it."
BellicosePost
Seriously garbage bag prices have gotten out of control.
There has to be a better way to sell this product.
Get Another Quote
Doors Doorways GIF by Joe MerrellGiphy"I had someone come out to the house and he quoted me almost $20k to replace four doors. I passed."
stoneman9284
"I'd get another quote. I spent $1,500 to have an exterior door replaced last year. I had quotes come in from $1,500 to $7,500 for the same scope of work."
Milehighcarson
In the dirt
"Landscaping. Even by yourself."
alwaysyardening
"There's that saying 'cheap as dirt' but soil/dirt is expensive AF."
notjanelane
"Getting quotes on having some landscaping done and wow... it is insane. Four quotes ranged from $1500 to $8500 for the same work. To the point where I called the $1500 and told them maybe I forgot to include stuff because their quote was so much lower. LOL!"
Miserable_Emu5191
"Landscaper quoted us $20k to re-rock flower beds that already had [some] rock in them. We were getting more of the same rock to just freshen it up. I laughed them out of my house. We did it ourselves... very. very. slowly. And very painfully. Still spent $12k after everything was done."
thatChickinBFE
Chronic
"Being sick/chronic illnesses/becoming disabled. Everyone thinks that having a chronic illness or becoming disabled is a great excuse to sit at home and watch TV all day. The constant doctor visits, surgeries, prescriptions, medical devices, and therapies add up to thousands a year."
"And the more you make the more you spend, when I could still manage to work I’d pay for or buy any type of treatment or device I could that promised some relief. $100 massages every week? Ok fancy chiropractor at $40 a visit, sure. $100 massager tool, ok. I’ve spent tens of thousands just because I got in a car accident that left me with chronic back pain and surgery that left me disabled."
"And these are just the monetary costs, there are plenty of costs that aren’t money. Want to enjoy a day out, well now you need to be on bed rest for a week. It’s constant and unrelenting, and unless a miracle happens it will be the rest of my life."
PinkPrincess1224
Every Week
"Seriously, groceries, it's insane how high the prices have risen on everything."
Ddowns5454
"The really shi**y thing is it keeps going up basically on a weekly basis. I work for a major national grocery store and I hang the sales tags for the grocery department. We apparently have this AI that will see how much money they can milk out of customers."
"It will set a price higher and I think based on how much we well over a specified amount of time the system will lower the price if the changed price cuts too much into their profits. I've seen crazy price jumps of like $2 or $3 because they are just trying to f**k with the prices until they hit that sweet spot."
jpaugh69
Every Breath
life GIFGiphy"Life. Even just sitting in my apartment doing nothing costs $2000 a month."
Eyfordsucks
"For real. I pay 1600 for half of a beat-up duplex. After everything, it's like I have my Xbox and that's it."
Lovetopuck37
Life. What a scam.
Even breathing feels expensive.
