Introduction and "The Camper"

Hello, my name is Hillary. I am a college student, and work part time at a local brew pub/restaurant/bar. I love my job a great deal, and where I work. I have been working at my current job for a little over a year now. During that time I have witnessed quite a few things which have made me scratch my head, shake my head in shame, gasp, become disgusted, been angered, annoyed, confused, and extremely saddened. I have also been extremely happy, marveled at the kindness of strangers, been glad to have wonderful co-workers and friends, gotten extremely drunk on more than one occasion, and have learned a great deal from each experience. In this blog I will catalog each experience I have had as a waitress. These experiences will be my most memorable, funny, and probably horrifying. It is my sincerest hope that upon reading this blog, maybe someone will look back on their own behavior when they go to a restaurant and think, "hmm...perhaps I shouldn't keep calling on my server for extremely trivial things while she is running around like a chicken with her head cut off." or, "you know...I have been sitting at this table with my date for several, several hours now, taking up a table in my server's section when she could have been making money. Perhaps I should close out my tab and tip her extra because she has been extremely awesome and patient with us." And on that note, I will begin with my first lesson: The Camper.

The Camper

Camper- someone, or multiple persons who stay at a table in a server's section for several hours, refusing to leave and usually refusing to order more drinks or food. Thus severely depleting the server's earnings for the night. This is also known as, "The Cock Block."

4/27/12- 

The day shit went down.

At the brew pub I work at I'm the closing server on Fridays. I don't mind being the closer. Sure it means I stay much more late than all the other servers, but that also means I usually get to make more money. Almost every single Friday now, I have had Campers at at least two of my tables, sometimes three. This does not mean two individual people, oh no. The situation is much more sinister. Three tables. This could potentially mean 16 people (three 4-top tables). On this particular evening I thankfully had only one 2-top table of Campers. Unfortunately, they decided to stay at my table for 4 hours (I should mention now that my record time for a Camper is 5 1/2 hours), and only ordered two very appetizers, and two drinks each. They were thankfully very nice people, but also very clueless. If you sit at a table for that long and barely order anything when your server could potentially be making a lot more money off of that table, expect that even the most patient of servers is going to get super pissed off. Thankfully I'm able to handle myself with a great deal of decorum, and smile through the bullshit, and tell my table that really they're no trouble at all, when in fact they definitely are. So to begin with when I got to the table I asked the customers what they wanted to drink. I showed them our beer list, and house drink mix. They said they needed time. Usually when this happens I offer them water while they're deciding. There are those rare instances, and this did indeed happen, when the customer looks up at me with an extremely confused and exasperated expression on their face, just about ready to throw their hands up in the air and simply give up on life, and says..."I don't know, I just need more time." At that point I usually smile, say it's not a problem, and walk away while trying not to laugh.

Just take the fucking water.

I walk back to the table about two minutes later and they finally order extremely simple drinks, which probably would have taken them all of 30 seconds if I had stayed at the table and waited for their order. I get back to their table with their drinks and ask them if they're ready to order their food. I should have seen this coming, but again, they had no idea what they wanted. So again I smiled and told them I'd be back to check on them in a little bit. Half and hour later, I shit you not, they had still not decided what they wanted to order. 45 minutes went by before they finally decided one 2 appetizers... 

So that was annoying, but whatever. I had other tables to deal with. The restaurant got a little bit more busy, and I was dealing with other tables. My Camper table was blissfully ignorant to the fact that I was slowly beginning to hate them, and continued to talk amongst themselves, in their own little world. It was getting a bit late, now being 10pm at this time, and almost all my other tables had left except for my dear and darling Campers. I had been checking on them periodically, and they had stopped ordering almost two hours ago. I came back one final time and asked them if I could get them anything else. The dude looked around at the rest of the restaurant, which by this time had become a ghost town, looked back up at me and said, "are you going to be leaving soon?" "Well yes actually, now that you mention it." "Oh, ok. We can close out with you then, if you'd like." (Yes I'd like that very much, dip shit.) "Oh, thank you very much. I'll be right back with the check for you."

Sequence of Events:

• Prints out check
• Drops it off at the table
• Waits half an hour for them to actually put their damned card in the check book
• Runs their card
• Waits two more hours for them to actually leave the fucking table

My question at this point is this...You've just asked your server whether or not she'll be leaving soon, and she has said yes, right? Then why the hell would it be cool for you to sit there for two extra hours, knowing that she has to clean off that table? I didn't finish closing everything up until nearly 1am.

Moral of the story, don't be a Camper.

-Bon Appetit Douche Bags