Apparently, this is the second in what's shaping up to be an ongoing series! Last weekend it was Best Buy, this weekend it was the Colorado Rockies' "Mountain Ranch Club".

The Mountain Ranch Club is actually pretty cool. It's the swanky club level glass-panelled restaurant located just next to the the right field foul pole in Coors Field. I took my dad on Friday night.

It wasn't too busy, but it took us 20 minutes to get our drink order. The drinks came without napkins. My dad ordered iced tea... and wasn't given any sugar or an iced tea spoon. It took 15 minutes for them to bring him sugar. No iced tea spoon ever arrived, so he ended up using his dinner knife to stir it. We had to flag our guy down to place our dinner order.

Dinner came about 45 minutes later. During that time, we had no contact with our waiter. We had to flag down a lowly errand boy to get refills. A different guy droppped off our food, then ran. My dad needed salt and had to flag someone down for that. Usually, an experienced food service guy will automatically bring PEPPER with the salt. Nope..we just got salt.

The food was good, but our empty plates sat for about 30 minutes. We finished our meal around the fifth inning..and hoped to close up our bill and get down to our seats for the 7th inning stretch. Didn't happen. Suddenly, a set of ARMS dashed over my shoulder, about two inches from my eyes and forecfully grabbed our empty plates.

Again, we had to flag down someone to get our bill. We had no idea who our waiter was, so I tracked down the hostess chic to solve this mystery. We were trying to leave, so just gave 'em our credit card in hopes of speeding things up. 15 minutes later, our waiter finally shows up, throws the bill in our face and runs away.

We figure the guy was a complete nincompoop and that the service was attrocius. So we gave him a shitty tip... rounded it up to the next dollar for a whopping 63 cents. That's what we do when we're ignored and the service SUCKS. It's an urban legend, but TIP sometimes stands for "To Insure Promptness". We had waited all night. I had one beer and my dad had none..so we weren't belligerent assholes at all.

We get up to leave and within 5 seconds, our waiter has run over and snagged the receipt. Hmm..he hadn't been attentive all fucking night. He then YELLS at us, across the restuarant, "you always tip like that?". What a fucking dick. I turn, face him and yell "you always WORK like that, turbo?!" The asshole waiter then sarcastically says: "you guys are niiiice guys. Hope to see you again soon".

So we drop by the front desk and ask for the manager. She comes over and does her job as I calmly relate our complaints. During this, our asshole waiter runs up to the front desk, interrupts the manager and says "if you guys keep THREATENING people like that, you're gonna' end up in jail!!". Huh? Threaten?! WTF? He did this in front of his boss!! My dad storms out, saying they should fire the butt-cheese...but I stay and watch the manager scold our asshole waiter. The manager then took my number, apologized and said she'd call me to resolve this.

Got that call last night and things are cool. They're sending out a gift check for next year. Turbo the Asshole Waiter apparently said he'd even call to apologize. Didn't need that, as I'm sure a lengthy career in the food prep industry will be enough indignity and punishment for the putz.

Moral: whether you do a good job or bad job...don't be an asshole about it. Also, I guess when I stand up, use my "Coach Voice" and stare at someone, I can be "threatening"! Cool..I have awesome Promo Skills!

Yeah, I've had a lot of similar experiences. I've noticed over the last 5-6 years that there's a growing sense of entitlement from wait staffs. They expect to get a good tip regardless of if they work for it or not. It always pisses me off when I run into asses like that one.

I hate when waiters get visibly angry with the tip you left. Saying something would cause me to punch them. You're not my fucking stripper Venus with 4 kids to support, get that fucking look off your face.

And the thing is I tip extremely well if they do a good job. I'm not going to reward jackassery though. My one friend will even leave them notes detailing why they aren't getting a good tip from him.

I'm easy to please. Keep my drink full, do everything in a timely manner, don't talk and or flirt with me too much.

See, what I do is take a $1 bill and write across the top "This Could Have Been Lincoln" with an arrow pointing down.

Huh, ES is not having good luck with public places this month. That service does sound lousy, I hope that 63 cent tip left a message.

My recent troubles also included the cunt at PetSmart who wanted to charge me 80 bucks just to BRUSH my dog. Then another 45 to wash and trim him.

I like that "this could've been Lincoln" idea, but I'm guessing most schmucks wouldn't notice or read it. I've had lousy service and left shitty tips before. It's usually the end of the story, but ol' Turbo there had to be SPECIAL. It's like a road rage case...as a waiter, you have to learn to leave it alone.

Heck, in retrospect it's not that bad. Next summer, I'll get to enjoy watching the Pirates at Coors Field, in air-conditioned bliss with a big ass gift check.

See I have a little system for this myself.

I do tip extremely well when the service is good. All I ask that the waiter/waitress is prompt and polite. If the food sucks, I realize it's not their fault.

But if they suckass at service in everyway I leave a fucking PENNY. I've had waiters try and fuck with me about that, then I change my tone (I've been told I'm quite intimidating when I'm pissed) and they usually do to. I even told a waiter that attempted to threaten me before that "That two bucks you were expecting isn't worth a week's stay in the hospital" and that shut his ass up with the quickness.

I do the same thing. Leave a nickel, or something. It gets the point across.

Is there any pet store that isn't a huge ripoff?

I've actually always been lucky with waiters...never had one that I had to flip out on before.


Now, salesmen, however....

I should point out, as someone who works in...the Irish equivlant of Wal-Mart - I've been accused of being a downright prick to customers, and I won't deny it. I won't brag about it, but I'm denying it. Saying that, any customers I give short shift to are just as rude, demanding stuff, being pricks about the stuff we have, not seeing that we're busy (a customer called me an asshole when I was trying to help another customer)

I remember when I was working at a grocery store in high school some lady got all pissed off when I told her I couldn't help her. She started getting all shitty with me until she realized that I had cut the fuck out of my hand off of a store shelf. She goes "HOW COME" and I have to basically say, "well I CAN help you, but can I do it after I stop bleeding".

I have a similar problem with customers at Best Buy. They'll come into my department (music, movies, games, software) and ask for help in home theater or digital imaging, etc. Now most of the time, it's okay, I just say "let me find someone to help you." But sometimes they get all pissed off and think I'm just being lazy and don't really want to help them. They need to realize that what they are doing is the equivilant of going into a grocery store and asking someone who works in produce to slice deli meat for them. In theory, I could help them with those other departments, except I don't know shit and would be giving them false information.

I really hated the Best Buy I used to live near.

Twice, the cashiers would put their magazine scam on my credit card without mentioning anything about it. If I didn't check the receipt that said "WE WILL BILL YOU AFTER THE 4 WEEK TRIAL PERIOD", I would have been out $30. This shit annoys me to no end. Luckily, it was easy enough to cancel online immediately.

Plus, all the workers would either 1) Talk with their friends and flat out ignore customers, 2) Would only talk to the most attractive (and usually dumbest) customers and babble on forever just so they didn't have to deal with a lot of people. Which led to unnecessary long waits.

Having been a cashier at Best Buy for three years, I will say that those magazines are a real pain in the ass. It sickens me that there are stores that will put the magazines on without having the customer be aware of it (though I don't know how it's possible, because wouldn't customers wonder why their are swiping their cards twice and signing twice?). Management really hounds the cashiers for those magazines, so there is a terrible pressure.

An organized "prank" against Best Buy from April of this year:
http://www.improveverywhere.com/mission_vi...p?mission_id=57
(Lotsa' pictures on ONE page. Might take awhile to load)

Not mean-spirited.. but kinda' funny.

go to the improv everywhere home page and check out their mission at Yankee Stadium. It's hilarious

HA! That's great.