The Most Batshit Restaurant Behavior. Ever.

Welcome back to Off the Menu, where we bring you the best and strangest food stories from my email inbox. This week, from unexpected animal appearances to concussed toddlers, we've got stories of some of the most batshit behavior that's ever gone down in or around a restaurant. As always, these are real emails from real readers, though names have been changed.

"I was the manager of the Starbucks on W 58th St and 8th Ave, right off of Columbus Circle. One afternoon, one of the local bucket-drummers comes in with a pushy-pully cart that you see a lot in NY. His cart is filled with stuff. I knew this guy -- he never caused any of the problems that other street performers and homeless people often did, never wrecked the bathroom or harassed customers or abused the staff or anything like that. He wheels his cart to the back of the store and tells me that he wants to leave it there while he goes to the bathroom. I'm busy, so I tell him it's fine, then I promptly forget about him as I tend to the never-ending line of people waiting to pour overpriced sugar milk into their faceholes.

"After a while, I realize that the line for our only bathroom (which only had one toilet and locked from the inside) was growing and not moving at all. I looked and saw that bucket-drummer's cart is still where he left it more than 20 minutes ago. People on the line for the bathroom are pissed and complaining about how the guy inside has been in there forever, which to the average Starbucks customer usually means more than 30 seconds, but I know it was a while.

"As an aside, I frequently advised bathroom line-waiters that the Time Warner Center, which is across the street, has pristine multi-stall bathrooms which are open to the public and would almost certainly not be smeared with the fecal matter and/or blood of drug addicts, but everyone usually preferred to wait. Go figure.

"I knock on the door. No answer. I knock again and say that if he doesn't come out, I'm going to call 911. I go and get the phone and call 911 and let them know that there's an individual who has been locked in the bathroom for an extended period of time and that he's not responding. They tell me that they'll send someone shortly.

"A couple of minutes after I hang up the phone, the door miraculously opens and out comes Mr. Bucket-Drummer, only now he's not wearing any clothes. Zero clothes. Not a stitch. Dong a-flappin'. He then starts running around the store. Let me tell you, if you've never seen a tourist from Middle America spit-take his Pumpkin Spice Latte at the sight of a 6ft-tall naked man, then brother, you have not lived.

"At this point, I don't know what to do. I yell at him to get out, but he's still running. He continues circling the store. I grab the phone and call 911 again.

"'911, how can I help you?'

"'This is the Starbucks at 58th and 8th. Can you please send someone now? This guy is running around our store completely naked!' (He then runs out the store into the street.)

"'He just left the store, but he's running outside by Columbus Circle completely naked!'

"'Can you provide a description?'

"'He's naked.'

"'Can you give us any other descriptors?'

"(In my head -- HOW MANY NAKED MEN ARE RUNNING AROUND BY COLUMBUS CIRCLE RIGHT NOW?)

"'Black male, 6ft tall, dreadlocks, no clothes.'

"'We'll send someone right over.'

"Twenty minutes or so later, still no police, but BD and his dong have not come back. Things have started to return to normal.

"Then he runs back in, still naked. He's sweaty and out of breath from his afternoon jog in the park, but he has not found any clothing during his time outside. He begins running around the store again, with me again screaming for him to GTFO. I call 911 again and scream that the naked guy who I am now calling about for the third time in the last hour is back. They promise to send someone right over.

"BD lies down directly in front of the counter where we hand off the drinks. He is lying dong-side up. The customers are evenly split between mouth-agape tourists and soulless New Yorkers who have seen it all before. One of them steps over BD, grabs a cup off the counter, and says to the barista, 'Is this my grande latte?' Business starts to return to normal, or as normal as it can get while a naked man sweats and pants on the floor.

"A young woman suggests that I pull the black tablecloth off of a display table and cover him up. I tell her to be my guest. About 10 or 15 minutes goes by and BD gets up, walks to the bathroom, and locks himself in. I call 911 again.

"'The naked guy is back, and now he's locked himself in our bathroom.'

"'We'll send someone right over.'

"About 20 minutes later, BD emerges from the bathroom, fully clothed. He takes his cart and wheels it out. I never saw him again.

"About an hour after that, a cop car pulls up in front of the store. Two officers get out of the car, come in, and say, 'Someone call us?'

"'Yeah, I called a bunch of times about a naked dude running around. He left more than an hour ago.'

"'Oh. Can we get some coffee?'" -- Lorenzo Amundson

"I got a job my junior year of college waiting tables at a Middle Eastern cafe between Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, MA. We knew we had a rodent problem because most places in Cambridge did at the time (I knew this from server friends in other cafes and restaurants in the area) but the owner was a particularly stingy man who kept trying to resolve the issue without calling professional help.

"One Sunday morning, right as brunch rush started, I started toasting bagels in our industrial-size toaster for some regulars. When one of the bagel slices didn't go in all the way I assumed the toaster was broken once again, and just shoved the slice in halfway through, figuring I could just rotate it as it toasted. I turned to get the cream cheese out of the fridge when I suddenly heard this squeaking noise coming from inside the toaster. Confused, I pulled out the bagel slice that was sticking out and saw a large strip of brown fur stuck in the middle of the toaster.

"There was a giant, live rat stuck inside and I had started toasting it. I guess it crawled in there for the breadcrumbs at night and got stuck until I came around with my damn poppy seed bagels.

"I turned off the toaster and quickly phoned our manager who wasn't in at the time. Then I had to get our kitchen guy to come get the toaster and get the poor animal out, which was a feat in itself because I didn't know how to say 'There's a live rat in the toaster and I need you to come get it without any customers noticing' in his language. He took it in the basement and bagel service was canceled for the day.

"Neither the rat nor the toaster made it, and while I'm not a fan of rodents, I still feel terrible about having done something so cruel to an animal. When the owner heard about the incident later, he apparently got mad at me and kitchen guy for not having saved the toaster.

"I quit shortly after that." -- Nicole Hauser

"When I was 16, I took a job at a well-known fast-food restaurant. During the interview, the manager told me he could hire me as food prep for minimum wage or, if I wanted to earn a dollar more an hour, I could be the janitor. I took the buck.

"After I was there for a few months, they hired this new guy. He was in his late 20s, long greasy hair, and he never smiled or talked much with anyone. He gave everyone the creeps.

"One day I was in the break room, and he walked in and sat down across from me, and he said, completely stone-faced, 'I want the janitor job. If you don't quit, I'm going to kill you.' He got up and walked out of the room. I couldn't quit fast enough.

"About three months later, a friend of mine who worked at a different restaurant called me and told me I'd never believe what happened to him at work. He quit, too." -- David Ramer

"I work at a high-end steakhouse in Madison, Wisconsin. Because it's Madison, we get all kinds of clientele, as the University of Wisconsin brings in a ton of our business.

"It's Valentine's Day, and being a fancy restaurant complete with tableside salad and dessert preparation, we are in the depths of special occasion two-top hell. My section that night includes a party of 12 in one of our private dining rooms. As is the trend when a group is in a private room, they believe no one else exists outside of their room. This group was going to be a challenge anyway, because it was a family with both the very old and the very young, but they had also forgotten that it was Valentine's Day. Who books a family party on Valentine's Day?!

"The table is giving me all sorts of trouble; I take drink orders and it never fails that every time I return with a cocktail, someone else decides they need another. Since it is Valentine's Day, the bar is getting buried, and before running back to the bar, I ask if anyone else needs a drink. Of course, by the time I return, Uncle Al needs another brandy Old Fashioned. They keep me running to the bar for almost 45 minutes. To make matters worse, a 2-year-old has been unleashed and is running around the room. I work hard and only have to explain the menu three or four times to each guest before they feel comfortable placing an order. All the while, my five other tables are being absolutely ignored.

"I rush to take orders from everyone and as I finish explaining to grandma what a la carte means for the third time, I round the head of the table. BOOM. OUCH! I slam my knee into something. Bah-boom! Something bounces off of the heavy mahogany French doors. It was the 2-year-old. I could hear that his body hit first, whipping his head back for the second impact. I’m a big guy -- 5'9", 280lbs -- and I was running. I kneed that kid in the face so hard it actually hurt me a little. The best part was that I was so deep in the weeds, I barely stopped long enough to apologize. My server assistant had to leave the room, she was laughing so hard. The parents apologized, as did I, but I soldiered on. The kid was screaming bloody murder, which added an extra challenge to getting the other half of the order for the table. I finally got their order, which they all complained about taking too long (on Valentine's Day).

"After a little bit I went in to check on everyone, and I'll tell you this much: a concussed 2-year-old is a lot calmer and easier to deal with. We tried to spend as little time as possible in that room afterwards. I usually roll the dice, but that night, I knew it was auto-gratuity time.

"Kicking a baby sure can relieve the blues of being single and working on V-Day." -- Jim Foulke [Editor’s Note: Amazingly, this is not the first story I’ve ever received featuring a small child getting punted.]

"So years ago I worked at a restaurant in Gatlinburg, TN. My first week, I was tasked with hauling out the bags of trash from the server stations. The dumpsters were a bit of a walk from the back loading dock door at one end of a parking lot. It was pretty early in the morning, like 2am, when I set off across the deserted parking lot to dispose of the two bags. For some reason, most of the other servers chose that moment to come out onto the back dock to smoke. I was kind of out of it and not really paying attention. Anyway, I got maybe 5 or 10ft from the dumpster, noticed it was open, and just tossed the first bag in. Sort of heaved it so that it made a terrific bang when it landed, and was about to heave bag number two, when a full-grown black bear erupted from the dumpster.

"I don't remember if I screamed or not. Pretty sure I peed a little. I damn sure ran… all the way back to the door and the other servers who were falling over themselves with laughter. The humiliating part, though, was that I didn't get rid of the second bag of trash. I still had it with me when I got back to the dock. I had to turn around and make the trip again. I threw rocks at the dumpster before approaching it this time." -- Ben Nickerson

"It was a Saturday evening in the heat of August. This restaurant was in a summer tourist mecca and we had a full book for the night. I was working in a strange capacity: I was the maitre'd, the host, and the bartender, thanks to unreliable staff deciding the beach was more enticing than their job. This meant I was solely responsible for seating tables, making every drink, and managing the dining room.

"The bar was crowded that night, too. I was doing my best to crank out involved, high-quality cocktails (white Manhattans, strawberry-rhubarb mojitos, limoncello drops, etc.), seat the growing mob who had reservations, and afford patrons the kind of staid, 'Yes sir, no ma'am' service expected from such an expensive, high-end (off the clock, my words would be "overpriced" and "pretentious") establishment.

"Around 9, our third seating was beginning. The place was jamming. This was high season and everyone wanted a table. But we had a problem. A 15-top had been sitting since 4:30. This was a small restaurant -- only 19 tables -- and we had to devote four of them to the 15. However, despite three and a half hours being an unreasonable amount of time for a table of any size to stay on an August Saturday, I was reluctant to speed them along.

"Their selection went as follows:

"A dozen-plus cocktails to begin the evening (Belvedere, Grey Goose, Macallan 25, and so on); then three bottles of Domaines Ott Provence rosé. This was followed by an enormous platter of shrimp cocktail, escargot, arancini, tuna tataki, and more. Then came another round of cocktails. For entrees the group all ordered our signature steaks, lobsters, veal saltimbocca, etc., etc. ad nauseum. Money was not an object for these people and this was only underscored by the $1,000 worth of red wines they proceeded to order (Gevrey-Chambertin, Margaux, Barolo). Dessert consisted of two entire cakes, and 15 of our signature "flaming pineapple" desserts which requires the server to light a blend of rum and sauce on fire as they're pouring it over a quarter pineapple, singeing it golden, sweet, and delicious. And of course 20-year ports, multiple bottles of vintage Sauternes, Scotches, Cognacs, espressos, Spanish coffees -- holy crap.

"You can see why I was reluctant to rush them. Their bill was in excess of $18,000 -- easily a record for the restaurant.

"As the desserts came out, one man at the head of the table finally asked for the check. He was austere, thin but fit, about 60, with a slight limp and an impressive cane made from something black, metallic, and straight out of B-movie science fiction.

"Now jump back to the bar where I was in the weeds. The 15-top has been taxing. I had to help out the two servers I had taking care of it due to sheer quantity of orders. Sitting in front of me at the mahogany bar were four people -- who had reservations -- but who had still been waiting for almost an hour. They were displeased.

"'What's the point of having a f***ing reservation?' one man asked.

"'If we don't get a table in five minutes I'm doing something about it,’ his wife (mistress?) added. 'Can I speak with a manager?'

"'I am the manager, ma'am,’ I responded. 'It is inexcusable and I apologize profusely.' I proceeded to offer a bottle of Jordan cabernet to them on the house. This only made things worse.

"'I can pay for my own wine,' the man said. He was about 70, struggling with obesity, wearing a sport coat that probably cost more than my head sous makes in a week, and putting his immense weight on a thick, polished wood cane with a silver handle.

"'That's it,' his wife said, mousy, sassy, and about as aristocratic as the Queen of Hearts.

"I was so far in the weeds at that point that the expression is barely apt -- more like in the jungle, or in the Okefenokee Swamp complete with cougars, escaped zoo animals, and alligators. I had a stack of service drink tickets piling up on my printer, I had a dozen people howling for another round, and still, parties were coming in expecting open tables that did not exist, purely because of the 15 high rollers in the back dining room. So you see why I hardly noticed when the mousy aristocrat left the bar.

"A server ran up to me. 'We need you in the dining room, NOW,’ he said. Usually a suave professional, the panic in his voice forced me to abandon the drinks I was making and follow him.

"The mousy wife had apparently walked up to the 15-top (who were just about to pay and, presumably, leave) and demanded they all get up because she had been waiting an hour and 'that was enough.'

"They did.

"The thin man from the party approached me just as the mousy woman's husband did, both wielding canes.

"'Keep your woman on a leash,' the thin man said to him.

"'Excuse me?' the fat man asked. For a split second they glared at each other, with me in the middle, and then the canes came out. They both looked to be trying to behead each other with these blunt objects, the crowd at the bar dispersed like a dance number in Grease, and the only way to describe what happened was as it was: a sword fight, with canes, between two dapper senior citizens.

"I immediately jumped in to break it up and was rewarded with a broken nose, a cut above the eye, and other bruises. Finally, I was able to wrestle the canes away from the two and they began hurling insults at each other. After begging them to not do anything they'd regret even more in the morning, they moved to leave.

"The $18,000 check had not been signed. The thin man spat at me that he would never be back. Upon walking out the door -- in the complete silence of what had been a jamming restaurant -- the police cruiser appeared. I'm still not sure who called them, but the two cane-wielding Zorros were led off in handcuffs and the fat man's wife never did get her steak tartare.

"After service that night, as I locked the door, the owner and chef came out of the kitchen and bought every employee a shot of Patron. We all sat there drinking in silence, stunned but completely amused by the spectacle we all had witnessed. No one will ever forget that night.

"It took us six months and two lawyers to get that $18,000 tab paid, but it happened. Sans tip." -- Steve Dragomir [Editor’s Note: Those poor servers.]

Do you have a restaurant, home-cooking, or any other food-adjacent story you’d like to see appear in Off the Menu (on ANY subject, not just this one)? Please email WilyUbertrout@gmail.com with “Off the Menu” in the subject line (or you can find me on Twitter: @EyePatchGuy). Submissions are always welcome!

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