Hairy Situation

     http://www.yingleyangle.com/2010/04/how-to-use-kurt-vonneguts-advice-to.html

Finding hair in your food is really gross.  I can’t argue with that statement.  Nothing will change the fact that finding a strand of someone else’s hair inside of your food is extremely unfortunate—on many levels.

However, being the soul that then has to deal with the repercussions of a “hair in food incident” is worse. 

Last Tuesday, for instance, I was selected (for someone’s own personal amusement, I’m sure) to wait on a party of fourteen employees from a local bank.  Large parties are always a hassle because of food allergies (hello, Mr. Gluten Free), requests for separate checks (“Can we have all the drinks on one bill?”), and people who are so needy that you’re surprised they’re toilet trained. 

It’s usually not a big deal if you mentally prepare yourself for the onslaught of parties, but nothing prepared me for the woman that raised her hand to my face to show me the grey hair she found in her chicken flatbread sandwich. 

“I don’t know what kind of an establishment this is,” she sneered, “but you need to tell whoever is cooking in there that they need to wear a hairnet.” 

What do you do in this kind of a situation? I’ll tell you what, you act just as appalled and disgusted as they are, take the plate in question, and run away before they can begin to argue. 

It’s almost foolproof.  Except for the fact they when I returned to the table, the whole lot of them looked up at me in annoyance and told me that they were “just fine, despite that one mishap, thank you.”

The worst part was the fact that I could pinpoint without doubt which not so hygiene friendly cook that hair belonged to.  I gag a little bit when I think about it, really.  But I was not going to confront the cranky old alcoholic about the hair.  I don’t have a death wish. 

The new (and free) food didn’t really placate the woman, but what else could I have done?  It wasn’t my hair.  I didn’t pluck someone else’s hair and deliberately hide it in a sandwich.  I didn’t even find some kind of sick joy out of the hair.  It’s not exactly the kind of thing that just goes away with free food.  The bankers had it out for me for the rest of the afternoon. 

Lesson learned:  Never argue with the customer.  Always take the plate, run, and void the meal from their bill incase of emergency.  Also, pray that they don’t call to complain the next day.