Upon discovering that Trudy’s, our first choice for breakfast, was not yet open, my friend Stephen and I wandered over to Spider House and took a seat outside. The place was pretty much deserted—hardly a bearded hipster or retro chick in sight. After a while, our waitress skulked over, and— apparently annoyed with us for being alive on the planet—slammed down menus and asked, hurriedly, if we were ready or wanted time. We asked for one latte, two waters and a few moments.
When she returned with the drinks, I still wasn’t ready but Stephen was, so he ordered and then I—sensing the impatience of the waitress— just said I’d have the same thing: a rosemary salt Rock Star bagel with cream cheese. Easy enough. I mean, it’s pretty hard to fuck up a bagel, right? (Hard but not impossible— one time, at Summer Moon it took them twenty minutes to bring me a “toasted” bagel, which was icy cold and hard as a rock, factors that the “cook,” clearly stoned out of his gourd, attributed to “a very slow toaster.”)
After enough time had passed to perform a bris and four Bar Mitzvahs, the bagels at long last arrived, pre-smeared with a thin layer of cream cheese. The waitress dumped them on the table and huffed off. I bit into mine. It tasted stale. I thought to myself, Self, you are probably imagining this is stale because the waitress has such a shitty attitude. Just eat the damn thing.
I took another couple of bites. My bagel remained disgusting, and had the consistency of something that had been run under water, left out to dry for a few days, then put in the microwave too long, then in the fridge to overcompensate for over-nuking, then colored slightly brown on top with an off-brand crayon to give a false appearance of having been toasted. I asked Stephen if I was overreacting. I do this—I check in with friends when I’m feeling grouchy because I really don’t want to be that asshole that complains at restaurants. In fact, I so don’t want to be that person that I have been known to pick meat out of a “vegetarian” salad or deal with a lukewarm cup of soup rather than ask the kitchen to fix it.
Stephen told me, no, it wasn’t me, his bagel sucked, too.
So I did something I think I’ve done maybe a half-dozen times in my entire life—I called the waitress over to tell her there was a problem. Here’s how it went:
Me: Is it possible these bagels are day old? Because this tastes really stale. Rubbery.
Her: If you ask me, that brand just tastes rubbery. I have no idea if they’re day old.
Me: Uh, would you go and ask.
Before I tell you what happened next, let’s say that, to her credit, the bitchy waitress decided to be honest with me once she stormed back over to the table.
Her: Yeah, they’re day-old. At least day old. They may be older than that actually.
Me: Really? Because if I’d known they were old, I wouldn’t have ordered them.
Her: Yeah, well that’s just how we roll here.
[Ed. note added on January 18th-- I contacted Rock Star Bagels to let them know SH was dissing their product. They informed me they had not delivered bagels there since last Thursday, meaning my bagel was six days old.]
This part—about how they roll at Spider House— I already knew. Because another time at Spider House I had another shitty waitress (or was it the same one?). That night, I asked for chips and hot sauce and she very impatiently said, “You mean salsa?” (No, bitch, I mean hot sauce as in CHIPS AND. I know you need me to clarify because, like, you know, so many people in Austin order fucking Tabasco with their goddamn tortilla chips, so fucking thanks for setting me straight.)
That was the same waitress who, when my friend inquired very politely—after TWENTY MINUTES—when his cocktail might be arriving, said, “Oh, yeah. Well I forgot to put the order in for that.”
This proclamation of forgetfulness was not delivered apologetically nor with even the slightest amount of concern. It was delivered like, Fuck you, if you want a drink why don’t you go someplace else?
Look, I know waiting tables isn’t always fun. How do I know this? Well, little Spider House ladies, check it: Spike herself waited tables. For FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS. And yeah, some days you’re hungover and some days your period is so bad you’re bloated like Shamu and dropping clots the size of Cleveland, and some days you show up a half-hour late because you just found out your boyfriend is having a skanky affair with the neighbor’s goat. And yes, days like these it can be pressing to feign cheerfulness with customers.
But I have a hunch that this Spider House bullshit is not something that could be readily cured with a hair of the dog, a package of Midol, or a midnight goat sacrifice. Methinks there’s something else going on here. Is this bitchiness some kind of a “requirement” to work at the cool places in Austin these days? Or did I just happen to coincidentally encounter two wildly bitchy waitresses at the same place at different times?
Back in 1989, I worked at a really fancy place in St. Louis called Riddles Penultimate (RIP). When I first started there, I complained about all my tables all the time. My friend Sue, an outstanding waitress, asked me if I just hated everyone. I thought about that and came up with a theory. I’d been trained how to wait tables by a really cranky woman at a Ramada Inn in Florida. Maybe I just thought that was part of the territory?
Truth was, I didn’t really hate them all. I just loved complaining about them all, giving them nicknames, resenting their petty requests. It was good fodder for my Northeastern ways. But I swear, no matter how much I complained behind their backs, to their faces I was as nice as I could muster on any given night.
There were exceptions, of course. And Martin Luther King, Jr, forgive me for it is true that once, in Knoxville, I got fired on the spot for telling off a customer who, the last time she’d been in, stiffed me for failing to bring her a straw to protect her lipstick and so, yes, I did walk out singing We Shall Overcome. Granted, that was probably a little over the top. And come to think of it, maybe that’s what was going on today. Long lost bitchy waitress karma coming back to bite me after all these years.
But I swear, I tried really hard to be really nice for as long as I could hack it. And when, by the time I reached the Magnolia Café in 1991, I started feeling like I couldn’t stand any of my customers, even the nice regulars? Well then I threw in the towel. I did. Because if whatever job you’re doing makes you want to go postal, honey you need to find a way to get out of there.
At the end of the Spider House ordeal today, I paid the tab, minus the charge for two stale bagels. I then left a tip even though it felt like I was paying the waitress for the privilege of being abused by her. But as someone who raised a kid on tips, and as someone whose grandmother waited on tables during the Great Depression to support her six kids, I just cannot not tip. (Warren has a joke about how Tip-Entitled our town is, pointing out that even the tip jars have tip jars in Austin.) I left “only” a dollar, which technically was a 25% tip. I wondered, if I left her a ten-dollar bill, if it might confuse her, but then I decided she wasn’t worth confusing anymore than she already was.
Years ago, Warren and I ate at Blue Dahlia and we had a fight over leaving a tip for bad service. That night our waitress was so horrible that when she asked us if we wanted anything else or just the check, we had to point out that she hadn’t yet brought the entrée. She actually looked Warren in the eye when he asked where his food might be and accused him of not having ordered an entrée. You read that right. She played it like he was bullshitting her, and had never ordered dinner, like we were just randomly sitting at the table waiting to mess with her head. Even still, I wanted to leave a little tip—again with the karma—and Warren was livid.
Long, long ago, there used to be a little place on South First called Virginia’s. It was pure heaven. Run by two of the crankiest ass bitches of all time, it featured handwritten signs that said stuff like, “If you can’t share your table then leave now.” And “NO we don’t have a bathroom don’t even ask.” And, “In a hurry? Go somewhere else!!!”
The way Virginia’s worked was you would come in, and the one bitchy lady would hand you a menu, a scrap of paper and a pencil, and a jar of sweet tea in exchange for five dollars. You would then write down five items from the menu on the scrap of paper. Virginia worked a massive stove, right out in the open, piling on the yellow grease and turning from time to time to yell at the businessmen who eagerly crowded the counter, seemingly there for the lectures far more than the food.
There was something so endearing about Virginia’s meanness, like she was some caricature of her own self. I was so sad when that place closed, when the bitchiness went away. Somehow, this new Waitress Bitchiness is just not cutting it for me. Maybe because Virginia was around 200 years old and by virtue of that fact seemed to somehow have earned the right. Whereas these Spider House chicks are maybe twenty-three, so their attitude comes across more like childish petulance, pathetic and unearned. Just like the tips I keep leaving them.
