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Me: “Will there be anything else for you all tonight?”
Woman #1: “No, I don’t think so.”
Me: “Okay, well, let me get these plates out of your way.”
Woman #2: “Thank you.”

Three minutes later.

Me: “Here’s the check, you two.”
Woman #1: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Handing off the…check?”
Woman #1: “You didn’t ask if we wanted any dessert!”
Me: “Oh…I thought I asked if you wanted anything el…”
Woman #1: “I know what you thought. I’m telling you what you did.
Me: “Okay. Would you all care for any dessert?”
Woman #1: “No.”
Me: “No?”

Wait for it.

Woman #1: “It’s just customary to ask is all.”
Me: “It’s customary to ask for things you don’t want?”
Woman #2: “Where’s your manager?”

Every once in a while, a customer will come into our restaurant that says one or two words that makes me lose my frickin’ mind.

And I’m sure you all have had the same thing happen to you. Someone just says something and you lose. your. shit. They’ll just say something so retarded, so inane, that you have to step back and say, “You know that little piece of your brain that had to die for you to say what you just said? Yea, I think it’s dead in me too.”

I’ve had idiots in my store too:

Grown men coming in day after day with their wife and then not thinking you’d notice when they bring in some random chick that smells like a bus stop and checks her watch like nobody’s business.

Or when some asked me if the coke was “carbonated.” I still get a chuckle out of that one.

But when our soda machine ran out the other night, this woman had to take the cake.

Her: “What do you mean you don’t have soda?”
Me: “I mean that the soda is not working and that it won’t be fixed by tomorrow.”
Her: “Well, do you have coke?”
Me: “No, ma’am. That would be considered ’soda’.”
Her: “But I have to have it. I have a coke dependency!”

And then I lost it. I couldn’t hold back. I laughed at this lady until she turned red in the face. I couldn’t help it. A coke dependency? This is probably the same woman who’s going to freak the hell out when we only have one kind of iced tea.

I regained my composure but the damage had been done. This lady knew she was dumb as hell and there was nothing she could do about it.

Whatever. Michael Jackson has a little-boy dependency, but that doesn’t make it right.

I don’t understand women. Hell, I don’t even think women understand why they do half of the stuff they do. But they do it. And there’s no stopping them.

Ever.

So you can imagine my frustration when I’m slammed with half a dozen tables on a Friday night between 7 and 8 o’ clock and I absentmindedly introduce myself with:

“Hey, you guys, my name’s Ryan.”

Whoa. Double whoa. Triple frickin’ whoa with a cherry on the frickin’ top.

Woman #1: “Excuse me?”
Woman #2: “Did you just call us ‘guys’?”
Me: “Uh…I don’t remember?”
Woman #1: (Disgusted sigh)

Listen, how’s this for a deal? I pretend to care about what you have to say about the new “Sex and the City” movie and pretend you don’t look pregnant in that new dress you bought and you pretend to not care when I call you, and every other customer I have, “guys”.

What is it about women in crocs that gets me so angry? Regardless of what it is or what it tells me about a person, a chill always runs up my spine when a woman struts in showcasing a pair. And when I see a customer sporting those ridiculous, looks-like-they-were-made-with-playdough things on their feet, I immediately know four things about them:

1. There’s no way they can do long division.
2. Their favorite movie is “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” because (and I’m quoting a girl I went on two dates with last summer) “it speaks to me like no other movie.”
3. They’ll giggle profusely after saying #2.

…and…

4. They will not tip worth anything.

When Lucy, our hostess, sat me the woman wearing crocs and her hipster doofus of a husband, the smile she was wearing told me she knew the Rules of the Crocs.

Her: “What is filet mignon?”
Husband: “I think it’s a kind fish.”
Her: “I’ll have that. With a little lemon on top.”

Wow. Virginia Woolf would be rolling around in her grave.

Me: “No, ma’am. Filet mignon is a steak.”
Husband: “And I think it’s pronounced fil-et, not fil-ay, dear.”
Her: “No, it’s fil-ay. I took a year of French in community college. (Giggle)

Double wow.

Her: “Well, I’ll have the mignon.”
Husband: “Me too. Medium rare.”
Her: “Yea, medium rare.”

So I bring out the fil-ET mignon dinners and think nothing of the table until I hear the woman waving me over.

Me: “Is there something wrong?”
Her: “It’s pink inside.”
Me: “Yes, it’s medium rare. It’s suppose to have a little pink inside the…”
Her: “I want something else.”
Me: “Ma’am, that’s how medium rare works. I’m sorry if…”
Her: “I want a scallops dinner. Medium rare.”
Me: “Ma’am, firstly, I can’t just give you a new dinner if you didn’t know that medium rare came pink. Secondly, scallops don’t come pink.”
Her: “I want scallops.”
Me: “But the filet is perfectly fine. I can’t just throw away a dinner.”

By this time, April, my manager, comes over to “solve” the problem.

April: “Just get her a side of scallops and get her out of here.”
Me: “But…”
April: “Just do it. She’s come in before and she doesn’t know chicken from steak. Just get it to-go.”
So I get her a side of scallops to-go and bring her and her husband the check. As I’m taking up the plate, I notice that the filet is almost all gone. I just ignore it and try to walk away before I hear…

Her: “These scallops are slimy. Aren’t they supposed to crispy? A little burnt?”
Me: “No, they’re supposed to be exactly how they came on your…”
Her: “I want chicken. You can’t mess that up.”

What an ungrateful, croc-wearing twit. I’ve given this lady manna and water and she’s grumbling for meat. You want chicken? If it were up to me, I’d feed her chicken until it came out her nose. But I’m not God, and she’s not Moses. So I did the only thing I could do…

Me: “Ma’am. You’re going to have to leave.

There it was. The very first time I ever told a customer to leave the restaurant. And they did. They paid their tab and stormed out.

As fate would have it, she tripped on the curb leading outside of the restaurant. Whether or not the crocs were harmed remains to be seen.