amusedIt was mobbed, of course, but we got seats at the bar and ordered from the manager--running drinks like everyone else on this busiest of nights--microbrew beer for him, a kind of tea-and-juice nonalcoholic punch for me, and a plate of corned beef to share.
His beer arrived promptly, the beef somewhat later. I took into consideration that the place was slammed and ate my share of the beef & cabbage while waiting patiently for my beverage.
Their corned beef was salty and made me thirsty(-er). (No waters, of course, we were seated at the bar.) I began to try to catch the eye of a server.
When I did finally do so, it was the manager again. Before I could get a word out, she said "Oh! Did you still want your drink?"
Now, I know this is subjective, but her entire body language, expression, and tone of voice were all intensely annoyed-verging-on-angry. Maybe this was because of the crowd. Don't take it out on me, anyway.
I was surprised, unpleasantly so, that she might presume that I would be magically not thirsty after waiting forty-five minutes or so and eating a salty dinner. I allowed my face to show this, and undoubtedly some of that surprise made its way into my own tone of voice as I said "Yesss..."
She went from annoyed to bitchy as she snapped (the words are burned into my memory) "You better change your tone, missy, if you want service around here," and whirled away without waiting for an answer.
I didn't have one, honestly, I was sitting there with my mouth open.
When I told then-boyfriend what just happened, he laughed and told me "That's the way she is," before perpetrating the customer-suck of the night by getting into a drunken scuffle with another customer and being thrown out. (I was still sitting at the bar with the punch dregs--which eventually arrived via a waitress--while this happened, making origami out of cocktail napkins and thinking unkind thoughts about managers.)
Well. This last weekend my current husband and I went to the same marina (with the same restaurant) because we were looking at a truck for sale in the vicinity. On a whim, we went up to eat lunch there.
The lunch went well, except for the WTF factor: every time the manager (same manager) walked by, she carefully stared out the window to avoid eye contact. (Once is chance, twice is coincidence, six times means either there's a bloody spectacle outside the window or she's dodging my eye.) The waitress never checked on us either, but that's very minor--the food was served promptly, the order was correct, yada yada.
When we were almost finished eating, the jukebox (right next to the hostess station, but not visible from our booth) struck up "The Bitch is Back" and my husband joked that perhaps the manager had punched it up due to my return after three years.
Which would be funny if true.