Well, more accurately the drinks were on my poor friend. Literally.
You see the rather clueless and clumsy Maître d’ was serving us a tray of drinks when he forgot the single most important trick to serving… keep the tray parallel to the ceiling. It seems the laws of gravity escaped him.
I watched in slow motion as 2 vodka’s, 2 beers, a glass of wine (a really good pour I might add) and one ginger ale (for the designated) went flowing down the back of my dear friend. Sadly for him, the Maître d’ reacted in equally slow motion. Even sadder for him, he made the poor choice of trying to mop up the floor before making an effort to placate the patron.
Bad choice.
Bad to worse as the best he could do was tell us that ‘accidents happen’. Even after a pretty good tongue lashing from the irate husband of the sopping victim he still did not get the basic principles of restaurant groveling and could not come up with a way to make good on the disaster. Granted, said husband took perhaps a little too much sport in embarrassing the fool, but he was an easy target. To his credit he did agree to a round of drinks
At one point the entire restaurant was listening, the couple at the next table left and still neither he nor the owner (his dad, btw, who he told us was not in just minutes earlier when we asked) could figure out what to do.
That is when I could not help myself and jumped in. I felt bad for the guy for no reason other than he was just so damn STUPID.
“Listen”, I said, “Here is a little restaurant 101. Do anything to quiet the miserable customer. Buy them a round of drinks, offer to comp dinner for the dripping wet wife and pay for the dry cleaning bill. In other words… damage control.”
His response was somewhere between deer in the headlights and boxer who took too many hits to the head. To his credit he did agree to a round of drinks and dry cleaning at some point but unfortunately it was somewhere between too little and too late.
Fairly certain they spit in all our dinners before delivering the bill…
with only one round of drinks comped.
Hey, at least it wasn’t a boring evening.
i could cry but i don't have time 
drinks $50
food $80
dry cleaning bill $75
dinner with friends (albeit dripping wet) and a good laugh –priceless…
I was eye balling the wonderful pour! Usually the restaurants are so skimpy with the pour, but unlucky for Joyce, this one was a good one!
In the scary but true category. We, my business partners and myself, were out for lunch last week when one of us ordered the fried shrimp appetizer. When they showed up, the one who ordered was so hungry, he ate the first one without thinking. Wow, he says, these seem cold and chewy. He looks at the next one and sees that it is blue. Uncooked shrimp, disgusting. The manager says, sorry, I will take it off the bill. Nothing else. We will never eat there again. Some places just don’t get the buyback idea.
thank you for all that information very nice article
“….In other words… damage control.”
LOL LOL LOL.
Yeah. That just fits. Thanks for the laughs.