An Interesting Dine-and-Dash

I've seen it a thousand times before, more than I care to count. It has happened to me more than once. It started with a puzzling look from one of my servers as I saw a woman using our telephone.

"She asked to use it," a server told me sheepishly. No doubt, they knew what I was thinking. When a guest asks to use your phone, very little good comes of it.

I raised my eyebrows with that unmistakable look on my face that says: "What the hell are you talking about; elaborate." The server looked back at me and explained that she had ordered a salad, was halfway through, and realized that she had no form of payment to be seen. She was currently calling her son, asking him to come to my restaurant to pay her tab. The phone was ringing and never picked up. My server didn't know what to do, so I instructed her to wait. Situations like this can disturb other diners, so it needed to be dealt with quietly and gently. Raised voices are never a good thing in restaurants.

Minutes crawled on, and dragged into a half hour and beyond. I watched this woman, eyes fixed to her plate, rotate the last remaining bites of lettuce and duck leg around the white porcelain like a ticking clock. Something needed to be done.

I went to the table and asked her if her meal was satisfactory; she assured me it was delicious. I told her that my staff had informed me that there had been some difficulty in processing payment and that evidently her son was on the way. She nodded and began to babble about traffic on a sleepy weekday evening.

I had two choices at this point. First, I could wait for her son or daughter to show up, pay her tab, and have her leave gracefully, though I knew this was an unlikely scenario. I knew she couldn't pay, and so did she.

"Miss," I said quietly, "I'm going to take care of your salad just this once. But it can't happen again."

Her smile revealed missing teeth and I watched as she grabbed her purse - stuffed to the point of breaking with clothes - as she began to thank me and admonish me with the blessings of Jesus and such.

We went down the stairs together and before she exited, I stopped her.

"This can't happen again; I can't feed you for free. Please do not make this into a habit." I told her. For effect, I repeated, "This can't happen again." She apologized again and assured me it wouldn't ever happen again. I could see tears welling in her eyes. That was the moment I knew she had no money. If she had money I would've been berated with anger and outrage of such an accusation. Shame always bubbles to the surface quietly.

She was about to turn and walk away and I asked her more quietly than before, "There is no son, is there?"

She looked at me for a moment, and said "There is, but we have not spoken in about 15 years."

I took a deep breath, reached into my back wallet. I had a $20 bill that was to be my beer money for later that evening folded in half. I handed it to her and asked her to make sure that she made her way into a shelter; it was going to get cold and windy.

Silently, she smiled, took the bill, and walked out the front door.

Humanity is funny thing, and sometimes it is hard to wake up and put on my tie in my nice apartment and realize that there are some out there with so little when some of us have so much. It's moments like those that are refreshing and important to scale our own personal problems to understand that there is so much out there that we do not understand, and far worse circumstances under which we could be living. Life, as a whole, is a humbling and short experience. If you don't take the time to look outside yourself once in a while, it's hard to rejoice in the happiness that you have. Maybe that is the key to this whole thing we call life.

Besides, I didn't really need to be drinking that night anyways.

Stay Thirsty,
The Bar Fight