Grandfather finds "PLEASE SPIT IT IN TOO" printed on his restaurant bill

boing
42

So, at the risk of over semanticising an assumed typo …

“Cut in half” - cut vertically:
https://goo.gl/images/Q5cjE6

“split in two” - ‘cut’ horizontally
https://goo.gl/images/NkmqSQ
(aka an ‘open burger’)

(edit: my general baseline assumption is that people act in good faith and that misunderstandings are common. Hence; in this case I’m assuming that the waitress was acting in good faith, there’s been a misunderstanding, and I’m trying to figure out how that occurred. Which marries up with her claim “I didn’t write that!”, because IF she had meant to write ‘please split it in two’, then in her mind she didn’t write what was on the bill. I don’t rule out bad faith on the part of the waitress, but that just seems … weird.)

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43

It reduces the likelihood but does not preclude him from wearing a MAGA hat.

44

Fair enough.

I still doubt the veracity of the lame excuse, because the server just denied writing “the typo” at all.

See, that’s the part of my “faith in humanity” that I lost long ago.

That’s logical, but unlikely; given that there was no mention of the customer’s apparel.

A man wearing a 45 hat would have been the lead in the story; doubly so if it was a Black man wearing one.

Long story short;

I may not know all the factual events involved, just as I don’t know the actual motivation behind them… but I think the server’s excuse is complete bullshit based upon what I do know.

That so many people seem so willing to bend over backwards to extend ‘the benefit of the doubt’ to the server is no surprise to me.

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45

Yeah, but if it was a typo - or an sbellczech autocorrect - then in her mind she didn’t write it.

Yes, that’s several probably unwarranted assumptions (including … why the fuck would a POS machine have sbellczech?),

On the one hand: the waitress is a cold hearted bitch who smiled to their face while hating him in her cold heart. But she was also so stupid that she outsourced her hatred (rather than just spitting in the burger herself between kitchen and table) and publically expressed her hatred on the bill in an irrefutable way.

Alternately: she was doing her job, including honouring the request that the burger be presented in the way the guy wanted, but through clumsy fingers or unhelpful software that request got mangled, then was too confused and flustered to be able to adequately analyse the situation and explain herself when everyone was yelling at her before the owner just sent her out the door.

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46

I don’t think that it’s bending over backwards for the benefit of the server,
I’m sure there are times when a server spit in the food, but if you’re going to do it
why not just do it why record it.

I just think logically it makes no sense to write something so obviously incriminating,
(unless she just meant to cut it two)
the other point being is the customer thought she was friendly,
and the restaurant has an excellent record,
throughout all this we really only hear one side,
and she may be ESL given that it is sort of an ethnic restaurant, and may have had difficulty explaining it.
It is a lot of suppositions, but then again it is kind of stupid to write down “spit in it too”

Now how would you like your rat prepared? (from Basil Fawlty)

47

Indeed, it is.

To my knowledge, specialized POS registers dont have spellcheck.

In fact, unless they’ve changed since I last worked one, they’ve very streamlined to make entering food orders more efficient; with specific hot keys or commands for most variations or adjustments to a meal that a customer might request, eliminating the need to type everything out by hand.

(Certain special requests might need to be typed in, but “cut in half” or “cut in two” seem like those would be standard requests.)

Furthermore, in my experience, the printout of the order that goes to the cooks is rarely ever seen by the customers; they usually get a different itemized bill, that includes the individual pricing of each item ordered and tax/gratuity, if applicable.

I’m not saying that’s the exact scenario at play here; I wasn’t there so I don’t know.

What I am saying is that based upon my personal experience as a server and the limited info available, I don’t believe her excuse.

Good for you.

Lots of terrible behavior that people do makes no logical sense; kinda like every recent instance of recorded bigotry and racism that’s gone viral over the last several months.

Again, I’m not saying that’s what this particular instance is.

I’m saying the story the server told doesn’t hold water for me. And all the devils’ advocates in the world, playing every game of “what if”, ever, won’t change that.

I wouldn’t trust any ‘food or drink’ that any stranger on the web put in front of me; feel free to eat it yourself.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch.

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48

Of course. Clearly, though, this one does have the facility to enter free text. How else to explain the space wasting “please” in there … or the presence of “please spit in it too” as a selectable phrase at all?

I happily admit to a degree of editorialising :slight_smile: But it seems to me that that basically is what Mays is suggesting happened.

On the other hand, I wasn’t there either, so I also don’t know. And while Mays was there, he also doesn’t know what happened outside the narrow bubble around his experience at the table.

What story? We haven’t heard from the server, except second hand through Mays (“she denied writing it”) via editorialising (“she tried weaselling out”) by Carla?

This is very true.

That’s a cultural reference to ‘Fawlty Towers’, not a serious suggestion that you eat a rat :slight_smile:

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49

That’s fine.

I still don’t believe her claim that she didn’t write it.

I am aware; but after all this discussion about potentially spitting in people’s food that comment seemed merely passive-aggressive, not funny.

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50

Well, if I was giving the impression that I think that’s exactly what happened, I apologize, because I don’t. TBH, I don’t know enough from 1 2-minute local hack TV presentation to make a judgment. I just think it’s a reasonable possibility.

/shrug

51

What would be weirder: a guy having a fetish for hot beer maidens bodily fluids, or whatever theories are being thrown around?

Spit happens. I have my hep shots so I really don’t lose a second worrying about it.

52

Or “Split in two” is a selectable phrase and somebody changed the mapping in the configuration, maybe as a joke.

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53

Spitting in someone’s food is justified? Do you really believe this, or are you being ironic?

54

You condoned spitting in people’s food? Wow. :frowning:

55

OK, I gotta say my piece here. To all of you who think spitting in people’s food/ throwing their food on the floor, etc, is justified:

Please get some counseling.

I have watched a couple of social phenomena develop over the past few years with growing horror:

  1. Restaurant staff feeling completely justified about doing disgusting things to peoples food in secret, and often over shit that is trivial

  2. the growing popularity of people doing completely asymmetrical violence to people’s cars whose owners committed the supposedly grave sin of not parking neatly between the lines of painted parking spaces.

This stuff is like the Malthusian behavior of overcrowded rats, who attack their littermates, maim them, cannablize them as the cages become more and more overpopulated. It is a social pathology - a canary in the coal mine that we are starting to lose our collective minds.

Contaminating someone’s food over a slight is not justified - it is a symptom of your own sickness. See a counselor. And/or quit your job - it is evidently too stressful for you and others.

Damaging someone’s car, or making it impossible for them to leave the parking lot, because you somehow feel self-righteously incensed that someone had the audacity to use more than one parking space is not justified - it is a symptom of your own damaged psychology. You need to see a counselor.

Two examples of toxic group behavior that are a cautionary tale.

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56

Seriously, if you condone spitting in someone’s food for any reason (MAGA wearing, being an asshole) then you are also condoning spitting in someone’s food for being gay, trans, or ‘looking different’. Because everyone who ever condones food-spitting thinks they did it for the right reasons. And if you have your reasons, they can have their reasons, and pretty soon restaurant food will be about 90% spit by volume.

It’s also possibly the most pathetic of all revenges, since the recipient doesn’t even know how bad you “got them”, unless you tell, and then of course you will get fired and absolutely should.

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57

In my case, I’m talking 30 to 40 years ago. This is about power and its abuse. I worked at that time in high end restaurants as a bartender where service is a game. The staff pretend to be obsequious and servile, and the clientele pretend they are overflowing with noblesse oblige. The problem is that if a staff member doesn’t hold up her part of this fiction, she gets fired. Whereas if a customer steps out of bounds-- he just gets more slavering attention from owners and mgmt.

Given the lack of any kind of organized labor in the USA, the only tools the average worker has to fight back in this situation are these ridiculous little passive aggressive slights. We of the lower orders (I may have graduated financially, but I still feel the solidarity) have to find some to way to recover our dignity when we are attacked asymmetrically. I believe we are entitled. It’s telling that you don’t think that the man in @Gyrofrog’s example needs counseling or is somehow leading the decay of our society.

And no, this isn’t some millennial behaviour that is the harbinger of a collapsing society. I suspect this has been sop of the oppressed since at least the time of the pharaohs.

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58

One “recovers their dignity” by secretly adulterating the food of another person? By damaging their property in the case of a bad parking job? You think people in the service industry are “entitled” to treat other people like shit because they themselves don’t like being treated like shit?

Wow. :frowning:

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59

Assume for a moment she did put that on the receipt.

My question, is who was that directive going too and why are they not getting any of the heat?

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60

I don’t even think that is a recent phenomenon.
Decades ago, I’ve heard from people who worked in the salmon canning industry that workers sometimes put cigarette stubs in the cans etc. Or in certain manufacturing industries it wasn’t uncommon to sabotage the equipment for down time etc.

Also a friend’s mom in the 70’s who worked in Nutty Club, packaging salt peanuts etc and accidentally packed a dead mouse in the bag. They were able to trace it to her and called her into the office holding up the bag " Appetizing isn’t it?" She was mortified and didn’t know how it happened but obviously that was the end of that job.

Back in my Uni days I had a friend who worked as a waiter at a high end hotel in town and his reaction to a slightly picky customer who complained about his cutlery not being clean enough - and asked sarcastically for him to bring over some more dirty dishes and my friend obligingly brought over a stack of dirty plates.
And of course he was ready to quit by then I guess. (Which I thought was a good comeback but again, you need to be prepared to lose your job).

Regarding this incident - we only hear one side of the story, to me it makes more sense
that it was a typo, why say “please” and why incriminate oneself, especially if the customer thought she
was friendly and he never thought he was demanding.

(My dad once wrote a letter of complaint, and I can’t even remember whether it was to a business or some government bureaucrat, but they sent an acknowledgement and the letter back and we all noticed that
he had typed

“Dead Sir” instead of “Dear Sir”

we don’t know if they ever construed it as a death threat.

61

They might if the POS software is run on a tablet where the keyboard does the spellchecking. Moot point as it wouldn’t matter because none of the words here are spelled incorrectly.

And, yes, most modern POS software does allow notes to be sent along with an order when an item’s modifiers don’t get the message across.

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