The worst faux pas a guest in a restaurant can make is offend the staff before dinner is served. Invariably the customer will pay a high price for this egregious sin. Upscale restaurants will keep a database that records the names of those who don’t tip well, make reservations and fail to show up, make sexist comments to the waitress, insult or berate the maitre d’, or try to tell the chef how to prepare a certain dish. While restaurant justice may arrive late, it always enters with a vengeance.

The first sign of divine retribution came in the form of the undercooked steak. The woman, a veritable cretin if there ever was one, had ordered her filet mignon cooked medium well. The waitress brought it to her rare. Rather than sucking it up and accepting her punishment stoically, she complained to the waitress who wisped the plate away, assuring her that the chef had made a mistake. Upon arrival in the kitchen, she informed the chef that the “haughty bitch at table six wanted it cremated!” Every time a customer sends a dish back to the kitchen, it throws off the rhythm of the entire restaurant. Furious, the chef threw the steak to the ground, stepped on it and tossed it into the deep fryer. Then, the waitress informed the barman that the woman at table six didn’t like her mojito and wanted another one on the house. Within minutes, the entire dining room was on alert. The barman fixed her second drink with Bacardi 151, a type of rum for which the alcohol concentration is so high that the neck of the bottle comes equipped with a flame arrestor to prevent the contents from igniting. After two or three sips, she became a dribbling slob, completely unaware of what was unfolding around her.

Like Japanese kamikazes, the waiters closed in for the kill. As they past her table, they laid down a barrage of noxious odor that would peel the paint off the walls. Waiters refer to this practice as “crop dusting.” Anytime the customers get too obnoxious, they fart as they walk through the dining room. Because there is always a delayed dispersion effect, no one really knows where it’s coming from. One minute the customer is savoring a delicate morsel of whitefish in cream sauce and capers, and then next he’s overcome by a fart bomb so vile that his eyes and throat are burning and he’s left gasping for air. What’s worse is that by the time the customers start looking for the culprit, the guilty party is long gone. As the vapor trail wafted in her general direction, she gasped for air, choking and calling for a glass of water.

To be continued…

Cross-posted on My Ongoing Struggle with Misanthropy: http://jimmygabacho.com/?p=656

About the Author

Jimmy Gabacho

Gabacho– according to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy– is derived from an old Provençal word “gavach,” meaning a person from the foothills of the Pyrenees who spoke incorrectly. These days, it means “outsider,” somebody who just doesn’t fit in.

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