From Jeni, October, 2009:

This happened to me a few years ago in a small town, locally owned restaurant.

I was working the night shift with a cook and another waitress. We don't have a supervisor or manager on duty at night because it's such a small place and there are usually no complaints or issues. The restaurant is dead and we are closing up for the night when a woman strolls in and orders a hamburger. Easy, the other waitress working that night serves her and goes back to dish duty.

Halfway through the burger, the customer stops the waitress and complains that she ordered a cheese burger not a regular and there is a hair in her food. (cheese burgers are 50 cents extra) the waitress apologized, sincerely thinking she got the order wrong.

The customer then pulls the bun off and sitting neatly on top of her half burger patty is one long, blonde hair. The waitress is black and has short hair, our cook is bald, and I am a red head.

The customer demands that she get a free cheese burger and demand that she doesn't have to pay for this one either. I quickly call the owner and fill him in on the situation and he agrees to let her have the free meal.

I worked with the same two people the next night, when the same blonde woman comes in and again, orders a hamburger and tries her little scam out on us thinking we've got amnesia.

As soon as she insists that she ordered one with cheese and that there's a hair in it, I quickly rush over and act, knowing that if she gets away with it tonight as well, my coworkers and I will be docked another collective $10 for two burgers we had to give away from our already tiny paychecks.

I walk up to the counter and ask the woman what the issue is and she immediately starts screaming that we're poisoning her by putting our "bodily parts" in her food.

She shows me the long blonde hair and claims she also asked for cheese.

I informed her that no one who is working has hair like that in her burger. She insists and throws a fit, expecting us to give in just as easily as last night.

I call the cook out and she sees that no one working that night has long, blonde hair.

She comes back with,"You must not clean well, this hair is from people on the morning shift and is in my food!"

I lose it, slam my fists on the countertop, get real close to her and whisper, "Listen to me, you cheap bitch, you came in here last night and pulled the same shit. It costs me money to give your ass free food. I'm not stupid."

She gasps and tells me that she knows the owner and won't stand to be cursed at by the likes of me.

Not wanting to call the owner and confirm, I was pretty confident that she didn't in fact know the owner and was playing me for a chump.

I shot back with a hasty, "Oh really, we've met? Because I don't seem to recall you!"

She shut her mouth and searched for something to say while I got closer to her and told her "Get the fuck out of my restaurant. If you ever come back, I'll have you arrested for theft."

She grabbed her purse, dug for her wallet and slammed a fist full of cash on the counter.

As she walked out the door, she turned around and gave me a look.

While I screamed, "OUT!" at the top of my lungs.

The wad of cash contained $56.

We rung up the amount of her bill and split the change, counting it as a well deserved tip.

--Jeni