Customers showed that they absolutely don’t understand what’s happening behind the scenes

I was bartending today, and had these two guests who were loving the food, and I was able to kind of drop the customer service persona and talk to them like real people. They were expressing their love for a certain dish they ordered which prompted me to tell a funny story about how how a customer once when I was serving, slipped me $100 to order happy hour food (the dish they were enjoying) after I said no. Which was insane. Needless to say, $100, I’ll break the rules for, lol.

This is where the disconnect happened. I laughed and said “it’s like a complicated situation because I’m the middle man, and I have to enforce these rules, but at the end of the day, the restaurant isn’t paying me, the customers are. So it puts me in a weird spot.” They were confused and said “what do you mean the restaurant doesn’t pay you?” And I said “we literally make $2.13 an hour” they were shocked and couldn’t believe that. I thought that was common knowledge. At least it should be.

Then they were confused why can’t people order bar food and happy hour at dinner. And I just plainly said “because we are here to make money. And if we sell apps and chips and salsa all day, the restaurant and the servers won’t make money”

This has happened A LOT where I work. Even to the point where people will leave negative reviews because they can’t order a certain happy hour dish/ bar dish while being seated in the dining room at dinner.

Like first of all, that’s so normal. Restaurants have different menus at different times of the day. The kitchen changes the line throughout the day to accommodate menu changes.

I’ve started just saying “the POS won’t let me do it.” And they usually give up.

But anyway back to my bar guests, like wow. The elite class really thinks this is like a free for all, and does not understand how restaurants work. I don’t usually “break the fourth wall” with people but I was connecting with them, and couldn’t believe they didn’t know servers don’t get paid by restaurants, we get paid by guests. And happy hour is happy hour for a reason, and that reason is because the object of for us all to make money at our jobs. Crazy.

Also yes, they were the elite class because she told me a story about flying to London to eat at a restaurant she was “craving” and flew back that night. Like okay Taylor Swift.