Funny & True Stories

Unfiltered Story #404895 Before the mobile phone era, I was sixteen and working a summer job in an ice cream parlour in a touristic place. Nothing excessively fancy, just about twenty tables in a not so famous touristic place, serving ice creams, coffees and the occasional beer or spirit. My work started around 4 PM and went on until customers stopped coming which, in the busiest period, meant somewhere around 2 AM. By the time we were done with cleaning and were able to leave, I would be home around 3:30 AM, then sleep until around 1 PM, get up for some food and get ready to leave for work again. This was my routine for three months, except on Sundays were I would get up earlier in the morning to hit the beach with my friends for a couple of hours before lunch. And that’s always a painful day, due to the lack of rest and sleep. Most of the customers were decent people and a good part of them would be around only for their two weeks of vacation. Then, during the busiest period of the season, this family shows up. Super entitled, demanding for example their cappuccinos to be remade if the chocolate powder wasn’t poured according to their liking, and always occupying the tables for way longer than it took to finish their order. For some reason, the owner would bend over backwards for them and to satisfy their demands. One day they sit in my section and, when I bring them their order, the father hands me a bunch of horse race betting tickets, telling me to place the bets for him. While I am standing there, I am pondering the situation: – I have no clue where to find the nearest place which will take the bet. – I don’t know if I am even allowed to place the bets, given my age. – Assuming I overcome the previous two problems, I know it means I need to get up early and go there. Not something I am really looking forward to, not for a group who has been a sore thumb the entire time. I start expressing the first objection, when he snaps and shouts: Customer: “Okay, you don’t want to help us! You’re useless, you can go.” The owner asked me what had happened that made him snap, and I told him. Then the next day I found out that they had left in the morning. I still don’t know if he was trying to pull something on me, with sending me around placing bets for which he would not have had the receipts. But all we servers were glad they were gone.