Friday, January 29, 2010

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood...

To round out Wedding Week here at Lizzie In Progress, I've decided to share one of my favorite wedding-related stories.

Before I worked at my current job, I worked at Applebee's for 8 years- and let me tell you, I saw a few things. I think my second year in, on a Saturday morning around 11:30 a party of 200 just showed up in cocktail dresses and suits. Twenty mintues later a bride and groom walk in. Evidentlly these two oh-so-classy people just got hitched, and invited their family and friends to Applebee's for the reception.

Now, for those who don't know, we don't have a lot of servers on a Saturday morning. There are three people to open the store, and the other 3 or so don't show up till noon. So we have 3 people to cater to this party of 200+. Don't get me wrong- I was a pretty kick ass server in my day, but at this point I am trying to get appetizers, drinks and meals for about 70 people. I am in hell.

The 12:00 servers come in, but by this time all they could do was help us run the food and wait on the other customers. Oh, that's right, we still had OTHER people trying to come in and enjoy a simple lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

So for the next three hours, this party of 200+ people have a full on reception in our Applebees- bouquet tossing and all.

When it was all said and done, they procceded to pay for it with $500 worth of $10 gift certificates- and this was before those fancy gift cards that you could just swipe through. The certificates had 10-digit numbers on each of them that had to be manually entered, one at a time. Talk about a PITA.

After showing up unannounced, hogging our restaurant for 3 hours, making a HUGE mess, and just generally being obnoxious, they only left a $35 for the three of us to split. That is about 8%. My manager was so furious, he chased them down in the parking lot and told them never to show their faces there again.

..and that, my friends, is classy folk.

Always & Forever,
ME

3 comments:

Amanda said...

Oh LB--that is a horrible story!!

I can't believe people actually talk about doing that and think to themselves "oh, that sounds good". What a nightmare!

Ashley M. [at] (never home)maker said...

LB -- My jaw just dropped. That's SO AWFUL! What is WRONG WITH PEOPLE!? Hahhaha. But also a hilarious story to tell. Wow.

There aren't words . . .

<3 Ashley M. (have a lovely weekend!)

Kasey at Thrifty Little Blog said...

Wow, that is honestly one of the craziest wedding stories I've ever heard! I'm sure all of the guests thought it was the tackiest wedding ever so it's not like the couple really won out by going the cheap route. They're lucky your manager didn't decide to refuse them in the first place!