You're Better Than That, Vol 3

I had dinner Saturday night in the atrium of famed Lambeau Field at Curley's Pub. There was a group of 10 (3 couples and 4 singles) getting ourselves some dinner before heading over to the Resch Center for some Green Bay Gamblers hockey (they won 3-0.) Our waitress Liz came over to the table to take drink orders. That's when everything went horribly, horribly wrong.

Liz asked us for our drink orders and brought them out promptly. Then dinner orders commenced. I found it odd that she didn't ask if the bill was to be split up in some way, but I thought, "Well they can do that when we are ready to pay." No biggie.

I had mac and cheese. Some of the best mac and cheese I've ever had. I'd recommend going and having it at least once in your life, but I can't. Thanks for effing that up, Liz. Read on...

First of all, she had someone else bring the food out and we spent a good 5 minutes telling him which plate went to which patron. Not that uncommon, but kind of annoying. Homegirl Angie's food wasn't even brought out, so they had to go back in the kitchen to actually complete the order. Once again, it happens.

Then it comes time to pay the check. Liz brings the bill over. (Going forward, I swear to God that this is a decent facisimile of what she said and did. You may think I'm embellishing, but I and the people with me can assure you that I am not.) She says, "YOu can figure out the bill now." and DROPS IT in the middle of the table from about 10 inches above the table. We all look at each other. Some folks have debit cards. Some have cash. None of us have $190 of disposable income available to cover the tab for everyone.

We ask Liz to split the bill.

"We can't. It's a real annoyance to us to put everything on seperate bills. So, someone will have to pay it and then you can all figure it out later."

We let Liz know that we need to have this split up on seperate bills.

"I'm not even sure we can do that on our computer system. I'll see if it's even possible."

At this point, all of us are thinking, "Are you kidding us?" I'm done calling her "Liz."

The solution that Spawn of Satan came up with was (I'm not kidding), "Can you all just pay $19 a piece." We let Sexually Frustrated Divorcee know that we all had meals of varying cost and some had more drinks than others. "Do you really need this bill split up?" I think this may have been accompanied by an eye roll, but my eyes had kind of half glazed over with rage at this point.

Trying With The Makeup But Not Working comes back and lets us know that "When I take the orders, I don't even need to remember who orders what. If you want this split up, you're going to have to go through this print out and tell me what each bill should have on it." I AM NOT EXAGURRATING HERE, I SWEAR TO GOD!! It adds, "For future reference, we don't allow people to split up bills. It's just too hard for the waitstaff."

So, we are at the table, (I am not joking) adding up our own bills. I just payed $9 for mac and cheese, and now I have to help add up my own bill. This takes approximately 15 minutes.

Should Not Be In The Service Industry In Any Capacity reiterates, "For future reference, we don't do this. You're lucky its not busier, or we wouldn't be able to do this." You don't split checks? You see a group of 10 people and assume that one person is paying? Really? And you think I'm actually ever eating here again? Are you high? She slithers over one more time to let us know that we didn't account for two sandwiches. Not surprisingly, this was The Crypt Keeper's mistake, not ours. We were then finally able to leave to go over to the game. I made damn sure that when I ordered a beer from the concessions that I was very clear that I wanted this on a seperate bill and that I wasn't paying for the beers of everyone in line and we would figure it out later amongst ourselves.

Bottom line, I have never been so insulted by someone in the service industry. This includes an episode at the Shell gas station in Manistique, MI when a cashier rang up my items while on a phone call that was obviously personal in nature and POINTED at the amount I owed without even breaking stride in the phone conversation. Should Maybe Be A Busdriver And Not A Waitress has now knocked that one from the #1 spot of sucktitude.

So, to Curly's Pub in the Lambeau Field Atrium, I would say, "You're better than that." But if this is the kind of waitstaff that you employ and tolerate, maybe you're not.