I messed up (but the customer was a dick about it).

So, the other day, our hostess just jacked us all up. The kitchen was behind, going on 30-minute ticket times. I told her more than once to put us on a wait because although there's empty tables and the servers are okay, it makes more sense to have customers wait for a table than have to ask us why their food is taking so long. Instead, she triple-sat every section.

So, I'm doing my best, honestly. My poor manager is doing comps left and right because everything is taking too long and coming out wrong. Now, what I did wrong was put table 26's order on table 16's check. Not a big deal, I can ring it in on the right check as a "don't make" on the right table, so they have the right tab, and I can split it off of the wrong table so it can be comped later. I missed one item, a $2 side. So table 16 is charged an extra $2, on my mistake.

Now, instead of saying something to me (at this point things have died down enough I was able to pay more attention to them), and letting me fix it, they walked out after signing the credit card receipt - circling the $2 side and writing, "DID NOT ORDER THIS - TAKEN OUT OF TIP."

Now, with that two dollars, I would have gotten just shy of 18% from them. Without it, it was maybe 15%. Which is fine. It just feels to me that they weren't searching for a reason not to tip, but that they knew they should have left more and were looking for a way to justify it. .

In better news, a table of 6 who got completely screwed up due to kitchen issues dropped me a 20 and was super nice about it.