How to deal with the no-tip table

I once worked as a waitress and I can tell you this one thing. The job of waitress is almost as thankless as the job of mother.

Waitresses pretty much only hear from people for one of two reasons:

1) They want something: Hey, where’s the diet ginger ale I asked you to bring me? (This question is posed to me over and over again in a recurring nightmare about waitressing).

2) They are not happy: My food is cold. This isn’t what I ordered. This tuna salad has too much mayo. Where the hell is that ginger ale I asked for?

And much like the job of mother, you spend your time running back and forth to the kitchen, your heart beating wildly, your hair disheveled, and your clothes stained with the remnants of other people’s food. You never hope to instill happiness in your patrons. No, you simply hope to prevent the opposite: unhappiness.

Yet, just like children who wake up on the wrong side of the bed, some patrons walk into the restaurant already unhappy. Who knows why? Maybe someone took their parking space. Perhaps it’s too cold outside. They might be in the middle of a hunger emergency. Or they your restaurant might serve Italian food and they were really in the mood for Chinese.

Well, I don’t know about you, but when my daughter wakes up cranky, I know the temper tantrum is going to happen no matter what. What’s the use of trying to placate her? She’s going to blow. She just is. There’s no preventing it, so I instead encourage it. I ignore her. She whines. I tell her to go whine in her room. She runs to her room, slams the door and screams for a while. Then she’s fine.

And this is exactly how I used to treat unhappy restaurant patrons. There was no use trying to make them happy. Noooo, these people were permanent grumps. Even a brain surgeon could not give them a happiness transplant. These folks were natural complainers and natural no tippers.

From the moment they walked in the door, these folks were looking for a reason not to tip. They were hoping for it. They were going to find a reason not to tip if it was the last angry thing they did.

I knew this. I saw it written all over their angry little faces.

Why should I have wasted my time trying to bring happiness to a No Tip Table? No matter what I would have done, this table was not going to tip, not to mention smile. If someone’s food order had to be late, it might as well be have been theirs.

The No Tip Table

And, I’ve learned, it’s a good lesson for life in general. We all encounter No Tip Tables in life. These are the people who are just waiting for us to screw up. You know the types.

No Tip Table people have nothing positive to say. Really, they don’t. If you asked one of these people to compliment another person—any person, they only need to find one out of the millions of people on the planet—the No Tippers would come up empty. According to No Tippers, everyone else is a screw up but themselves.

Interestingly, it’s usually the other way around, but there’s no telling these folks that. Oh, noooo.

Now, if you have my personality, your natural tendency will be to try to please these people. You’ll take it on as your personal mission. You’ll think, “I am the one person on the planet who can make this person happy.”

Yet, that’s just impossible, because you can’t make this person happy. Remember: even a happiness transplant is out of the question. Nothing you do will change the situation.

It’s like this. The No Tipper says, “Jump!”

The Enthusiastic Pleaser says, “Sure thing! Whatever you say. How high?”

The No Tipper says, “Not even remotely high enough you good-for-nothing screw up!”

You see what I’m saying? Yeah, you know someone like this. I know you do. We all do.

My great aunt Dorothy, God rest her lovely soul, was the perfect example of a No Tipper. Just about everyone she knew—perhaps with the sole exception of me (I, ah hem, was “brilliant”!)—was a “stupid idiot!”

And everyone was a “stupid idiot” until they proved themselves otherwise which, by the way, never happened. Once a stupid idiot, always a stupid idiot.

So think about the No Tippers in your life. They are:

• The so-called friends who berate you, make fun of you, and constantly ask more of you—without ever offering anything of substance in return.

• The family members who keep asking for money, favors, and other things, and complaining when you don’t give enough.

• The colleagues who have nothing positive to say and who can’t own up to their own mistakes.

You know who they are.

Stop trying to please them. Just stop. These folks are never, ever going to be happy. They are never, ever going to thank you for trying your best. They are never, ever going to tip you.

Never. Why try? Focus your energy where you can truly make a difference.

PROJECT POINTERS

Stop trying to please. You can’t make anyone else happy but yourself.
Don’t take No Tippers personally. They hate everyone, including you, but they are the ones with the problem. They are frying in their own personally created hells. Let them simmer.