Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Eww...what's that smell?

I only wish I was making the following up. My fellow co-workers can verify this story.

My second table of the night last night was a squirrley old couple. She looks too frail to walk, he looks like his mental capacities are waning. After getting them a couple of drinks, I return to the table. Something smells bad. Really bad. I think one of the old people just crapped their pants. I smelled it two tables away. Thankfully nobody is sitting next to them at the moment. Neither of them appears to notice anything though, so I move to the opposite side of the table, up wind with the way our air system works. Thanfully it smells better there. I take their order (no, not odor) and go get salads. When I make it back to the table, the smell seems to have dissapated, so maybe they didn't load their pants. I see I have been sat, so I go over and greet a 2 top, a couple of nice middle aged ladies. As I greet the ladies and run through the menu, the smell returns, and it is now a more powerful version. I think the air changed color. It's like a punch to the nose. Other waiters are now avoiding my section of the restaurant So I'm trying to finish my presentation, with my eyes watering, hoping the ladies at the table aren't blaming me (they left me a 20% tip, so I doubt they thought it was me). We're talking a combination of rotting food, dirty shower drain and manure. And my ladies are down wind. And my old people don't seem to notice or care, and they seem to have no where else to go. I take a deep breath of fresh air, and approach the table. I grab everything that I can that doesn't have food or beverage in it or on it, they're only 1/2 way through their meals. I go grab them boxes and a check, and no, I don't ask if they want desert. The old lady looks a bit miffed, but they package up their food without saying anything. I run their credit card. A child in a nearby table starts talking about the smell. My table is still just sitting there, completly oblivious to the devestation they are causing down wind. The bar tender remarks to me about the smell, and he's on the other side of a wall from my old table. Eventually the old people get up and leave. The smell follows them. I am glad they are gone, but hope they are smart enough to roll a window down in their car so they don't asphixiate. Poor cop who rolls up on that scene. I should get hazard pay for taking that table.


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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's Karma getting you for the "crap" tip post! ;}

Lobster Boy said...

Except for there is no such thing as karma.

Lobster Boy

Anonymous said...

One of them might have had a colostomy bag... that about what it smells like.

Anonymous said...

That's why I don't go to Red Lobster.

Anonymous said...

That's what it smells like when my g-ma "burps" (Think tupperware) her colostomy bag.

Anonymous said...

mystery solved! Now I'm going to go puke.

Anonymous said...

I work in a hospital ER and we get every kind of smell. I basically group them into two categories: smells that leave with the patient and smells that remain after the source has gone. You were lucky, but I'm wondering how bad someone has to stink before they're refused a table at RL.

OldSchoolD15 said...

At our Red Lobster we have regulars that my old manager used to call "The Stinky Family". He was being nice. Apparently they're also regulars at the Denny's in my town as well, as we have a former server of theirs working for us now, and she swears she waited on them once at Denny's and noticed a brown liquid running down the womans leg (she was wearing a skirt). Excuse me while I dry-heave...

Lobster Boy said...

That is indeed foul.

Lobster Boy

Ranter said...

Maybe one of them had one of those 'poo bags' - a tube leading from their intestine/bowel to an external bag strapped outside their body. It collects the intestinal contents in all their stinky glory. I once had some customers, one of whom wheelchair bound, who had one of those. It was like an open, festering nappy (diaper).

Just called my brother, a medical student, it's called a STOMA BAG, for future reference.