The Case of the Missing Credit Card Voucher

Thursday, 9:58 PM

I'm closing the place down and waiting for my last two tables to pack it up and move on out. It's a dark and rainy night outside and the warmth of the restaurant is no doubt keeping the customers here longer than normal. I can't blame them for not wanting to go out into the elements, but as Sherril Holland, manager at Houlihan's, used to say: "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here."

Finally, one of the tables begins to put on their coats and it signals to the other table that it might be a good idea to ask for their check. I remind them that I placed it on the table twenty minutes earlier. The woman laughs at her own absent-mindedness and she digs into her purse to hand me her Visa card.

"Good night, folks," I say to the exiting customers as I walk to the credit card machine. "Stay dry. Thanks for coming in."

I swipe the card and am annoyed to learn that the magnetic strip is not working. I swipe it again in the hopes of avoiding having to punch in all the numbers manually. It still doesn't work so I dig my reading glasses out of my apron to read the card. The total is $72.63. The machine prints out two vouchers; one that says Merchant Copy and the other that says Customer Copy. As per the norm, I take the Customer Copy and fold it up along with the original receipt and then wrap it around the credit card. On the other copy, I circle the words Merchant Copy and place it in a folder.

"Here you are folks. Thanks for coming in and have a good night," I tell them.

I move over to the other table and begin to clear it, placing the empty water glasses and napkins onto a tray and head to the dish room. When I return to the dining room with a towel and cleaning solution I see my last customers walking away from their table ensuring that my night is nearing an end. I say good night again and they are gone.

I head to my last table to clear it and pick up the credit card folder. There is no voucher. I run to the door of the restaurant to see if I can catch them, but they have disappeared into the darkness and all I see are people walking their dogs in the rain.

They took the fucking voucher.

I know that I gave them two vouchers. I know one was very clearly marked Merchant Copy. I know I will not be getting a tip.

Where did that voucher go? Could it have been stuffed into her purse with the other one? Did she eat it? Did she shove it up her ass to avoid tipping me? I will never know. All I know for certain is that when people walk out of the restaurant with the signed copy of a credit card voucher, I will not be getting a tip. I know that I served them for absolutely no reason other than for the sheer joy of serving and we know how much that is worth.

Don't take the signed copy. I can't just assume that you left 20% and add it because the second I do that, a call will be made to Visa and my ass is in trouble for credit card fraud. Yet I can't make a call to Visa and charge your ass with stiffing me.

Maybe it was taken by accident, but maybe it wasn't. Is it that hard to believe that people would willingly walk out with the signed copy just to avoid that $14.00 tip? It is feasible and very very likely. 

I close the card with no tip. I don't risk getting fired by adding a tip that I didn't see. It's a shitty ending to night. What do you do when someone walks out with the signed copy?



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Dumb Ass at Table Four

We all hate customers who forget to leave their signed credit card slip thereby ensuring that we don't get a tip. It's annoying and I am not 100% certain that it's always an accident. Surely there are some less then moral folks who do that in order to make it appear as if it was a slip of the mind and save themselves the few extra dollars of a tip. It's similar to mailing your electricity bill and "forgetting" to include the check or not sealing the envelope so that it looks like you did enclose payment but it must have fallen out. I was stiffed last night on a $75 check but I think it really was unintentional because the man who did it is a regular who always seems half a step away from complete and utter dumb fuck.

As per the norm, I sweep the room and drop checks as soon as the show is over. I then sweep back and pick up any checks that are ready to be paid, run the cards or make change and then go back to my section to return those checks and pick up the next round. The man at booth four last night watched me walk by twice without ever coming up with a form of payment. As I stood at the bar swiping the credit cards of the four tables who did manage to hand me payment, Mr. Village Idiot wandered into the lobby with his check in his hands and asked nobody in particular, "Who do I give this to?" The man was not the brightest bulb. The lights were on but nobody was home. He was hit in the head with the stupid stick. Now, I ask you, is it that hard to figure out who to pay? There were only two servers, I was the only one who dealt with him and I was also the one who gave him his check and said "I'll pick that up whenever you're ready." To me, it seems pretty obvious, but then again my brain is not the consistency of mashed green peas mixed with bottom shelf scotch. (Truth be told, my brain is the consistency of refried beans and bottom shelf tequila, but whatever...) Enrique the bartender says, "Sir, we go through this every time. You pay your server, who is right here." Old Foggy Forgetful handed me his credit card and I told him I would take care of right it after I get through the stack of checks of people who did not stumble to the bar like lost lambs who just had lobotomies. He was put out by the fact that he was going to have to wait so I realized he was just playing dumb because he thought it would get him out faster. I took his credit card and put it at the bottom of the stack. "It'll be right here on the bar when I'm done with it." He told me he was going to go say hello to someone and would be right back. I very quickly got to his card and placed it on the bar for him to sign when he was ready. Fifteen minutes later, the card and unsigned slip was right where I had left it. Absent Minded Nutty Ass Professor was nowhere to be found. Perhaps the person he wanted to say hello to lived in New Jersey and he just wasn't back yet, but it's more likely that he saw something shiny on the sidewalk and went out to chase it.

After about ten more minutes, it was clear that he was not coming back. Maybe the shiny object he saw was the taillight of a taxi and he was now lying face down on Sixth Avenue and wondering why he suddenly had a perfect view of the back of his own ass. I had no other choice but to close the check without a tip and accept that I was getting stiffed on his $75 bill. Less than moral servers would add a tip but credit card fraud is not on my bucket list so I was willing to eat the loss. A message was left for Shit For Brains on his voice mail telling him that he could come pick up his credit card at his earliest convenience. He'll probably show up today and act all embarrassed and ashamed but you can be certain that he won't leave the tip. That would just be too kind. And we all know that shit for brains foggy forgetful absent minded professors who have mushy green pea brains mixed with cheap scotch will do anything to save themselves seven dollars and fifty cents. (You just know that he was going to leave 10%, right?) The next time he sits in my station, I will make sure to give him his check right away and I won't leave until I see him scrawl out his signature (in the form on an X, no doubt) on his credit card slip. There still probably won't be a tip but I can deal with that. If he can accept that his brain is smoother than the humus on our menu, I can accept that he can't understand that I live on tips. I just hope he doesn't mind that the bottom shelf scotch on the rocks he orders might be in a smaller glass with a shitload of ice and a little bit of water that went over my thumb on the way into the glass.

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Credit Card Fraud is Not Cool

We food-slingers work for tips and it's no secret that we depend on them to make our living. Anonymous, let me stop you right there before you say some stupid ass shit like "get a real job" or "tipping is optional." For whatever reason, we wait tables. And for whatever reason, in this country tipping is expected. End of story. When we look at a credit card voucher to see what our tip is, there are many scenarios that can make it confusing for us. (And Anonymous, it's not confusing because servers are stupid. It's confusing because too many people don't understand how to fill out a freakin' credit card slip. Zip it.)

How many times have you gotten a voucher where they just scribble in a total without bothering to write how much the tip is? You know what I mean? Say their bill is $72.23 and they don't bother writing a tip in. They just put $100 in the final line. Not a huge deal, but it means that I have to pull out my third grade math skills and subtract subtract $72.23 from $100 to find out what I have to put into the computer for my tip. (It's $27.77, Anonymous. I'm not stupid.) It's just an extra step that I have to take and it can suck when you are looking at a pile of 40 vouchers that have to be closed.

Another irritating thing is when people write the tip in clearly and the total in clearly, but the the two don't add up. Then I have to decide which one do I accept as correct. For instance: the bill is $40 and they write as the tip $8 but then they total it as $50. What to do? If I put in $8 for the tip, then the total will differ from their copy and wreak havoc when they try to balance their checkbook. So I go with the $50 total and assume they meant to give me a ten dollar tip. However, if the bill was $40, they wrote in $10 for the tip and they total it as $48, I will have to take the ten dollar tip. I will always take what is going to benefit me the most. If there is a problem (and there never has been) all I have to do is show that the ten dollars was very clearly written.

Finally, I fucking hate it when people just scribble random numbers in various spaces that don't mean shit and I have to pull out the goddamn Rosetta Stone to decipher what the hell they meant. Sometimes we just have to hope for the best and guess at what the tip was meant to be. That can be dangerous though because you don't want to be all guilty of credit card fraud and shit. This woman was just arrested for adding $953.19 in credit card tips between February 3 and March 12 of this year. That's almost two hundred bucks a week. That silly goose must have been adding zeros left and right and she thought no one would notice that shit? Uh, honey. If someone meant to tip $13.28 and you try to close it out as $132.80 cents, they're gonna notice. Dumb, honey. Real dumb. And to top it off, she worked at Outback Steakhouse. Hopefully, the judge won't throw her ass in jail and will just tell her she has to work an extra shift every week for two years. I would imagine serving Bloomin' Onions all day is a prison all its own.


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Cash, Credit or Scamming?

We have all had people who have tried to skip out on their check and the occasional walk out who actually succeeds at getting a meal without paying for it. It happens rarely even though it seems like it would happen more often. A few days ago, I encountered a man who was either trying to skip out on his bill or he was incredibly forgetful. Either way, he got on my nerves and as I was trying to fix the situation a thought popped into my head: at least I have something to write about.

At my job, we place all the checks down at the same time immediately after the show is over. Therefore, we have to make change for everyone at once and it can get very confusing when you have ten or twelve tables all throwing credit cards and cash at you at the same time. Table six had a pile of money on the check presenter and when they told me they didn't need any change, it went to the bottom of the stack since I was finished with them. About ten minutes later when I started closing checks, I came across their $129 check and saw that the pile of money was only twenty dollars. Hold up now, wait, what? Frantically, I hurried around the club to see if they were still there so I could squeeze out the remaining $109 (plus tip) from their pocketbooks. At first they were nowhere to be found. Fuck, I had let them leave without double checking their total? What am I, a hack? An amateur? I ran downstairs and then back upstairs looking like a chicken with his head cut off who didn't want to have to cover $109. Then, I spotted one of them up at the front of the room chatting to a group of people. I went up to the man. "Excuse me, but I just wanted to make sure of something. You said you didn't need change right?" "That's right," he said. I looked down at the twenty dollars and then looked back at him with a "so what the hell?" expression. "That's your tip," he said. "I gave you my credit card, remember?" I was really busy so I though maybe he did and I had forgotten. Or maybe he gave it to someone else and he thought it was me. "Oh, alright then. Well, I don't have the signed voucher, maybe you took both of them by accident?" He looked confused. I went to the computer and pulled up his check and there was no credit card info on it meaning it was not swiped by me or anyone else. I went back to the potential scammer.

ME: Can I see your credit voucher just to make sure it didn't get rung under another server's number?
HIM: I dunno if I have it.
Well, can you look?
ME: Did you give me your credit card?
HIM: Yeah, and then you handed it right back to me.
Without going to swipe it? Why the fuck would I do that?
ME: Are you sure you gave it to me?
HIM: I think so.
ME: And you don't know if you have the copy that you signed?
HIM: Uh, I dunno. I don't remember.
Okay, it was like ten minutes ago and he doesn't remember? Is he playing dumb? He seemed too young to be in the early stages of dementia. And I must ask, if one is in the early stages of dementia, how long does it take to be fully demented? (Stole that line from Naked in a Fishbowl).
HIM: You can swipe my card again if you need to, just make sure I don't get charged twice.
Listen buddy, I don't wanna charge you twice. I wanna charge you once.

I took him to my computer and showed him the check. I showed him how there was no credit card info on it and then after I swiped it there was meaning this was the first time it had been swiped. He shrugged his shoulders and said "Okay, if you say so." I do say so, ass. You didn't pay. Maybe you forgot or maybe you were trying to be slick, but you didn't pay and I caught your ass. I do think it was an honest mistake, because if he was trying to skip out, he would have left immediately. But what irked me was that he was acting like I was the one doing something shady. In the end, he paid his check, left me a decent tip and was nice about it, but I don't really get it. Can someone really forget something that quickly? Maybe he was so wrapped up in my attentive and stellar service that he was unable to focus on anything else. Yeah, that's it.


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Miracles Really Do Happen

I recently wrote about how frustrating it is when someone takes both copies of the credit card slip effectively keeping me from getting a tip because I don't know what they had written on the tip line. It really sucks when this happens, but a few days ago a miracle occurred. Let's play a game and you decide which miracle is true.

Miracle #1: I woke up late and was rushing around getting ready to start my day. I was out of Cheerios so I had to go to breakfast option number two which would be two pieces of toast with grape jam. I put my bread in the toaster and two minutes later I sat down with my breakfast ready to eat. All of a sudden, I noticed an image peering back at me from my multi-grain bread. Jesus had appeared on my breakfast food. I quickly took a picture and sold that shit on Ebay for $23.99. It's miracle!

Miracle #2: In my backyard, I have a statue of the Virgin Mary. Every day, I go to her and thank her for watching over me and keeping me safe. I talk to her and explain my day and when I am done I feel better. Well, one day as I was telling her how thankful I was for the ten percent tip that someone left me on a $100 check, I looked into her eyes and saw that she was crying. The Virgin Mary statue was crying real tears and I knew that I was on the path to righteousness. It's a miracle!

Miracle #3: A few days ago, someone came into the club and told me that they had inadvertently took the credit card slip that had my tip on it and they owed me twenty dollars. It's a miracle!

Can you figure out which one really happened? I'll give you two clues. Never am I out of Cheerios and I do not have a backyard. Uh huh. Someone actually came back in to tip me from the week before. It made my night and it also restored my faith in all humanity and made all things right in the world. Like Anne Frank, "in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." Until someone asks me for a glass of water, a bowl of lemons and Sweet and Low packets and then I go right back to hating all people.