Published on 12, July, 2020
Introduction:
Hi I posted on here a couple of years ago and it helped so I’m doing it again.
Context:
Im at uni now and doing well. I have made a group of friends and they’re lovely. Today we went for a meal (not much planning went into it, hadn’t been there before and it was a loud place - but that’s okay).
Event:
So it’s the end of the meal and we are all paying for the bill and I am the last to pay. The waitress hands me the card machine and I go “wait are we giving a tip?”. They all go quiet and look at each other. In hindsight I should have realised at this point but I continued to ask. Because surely if we do we need to add one now here otherwise it will be too late (I assume we don’t have cash because they had to get cash out the other day for something else). Anyway I paid and the waiter left. Then they all turn around at me and start shouting (now they weren’t actually shouting shouting but it was louder than their normal voice and it was unexpected and I didn’t have my headphones on. They start telling me I can’t say that it’s rude and that this is her job and it’s wrong and that I shouldn’t have said that and that if they were the waiter they would have spat in my food.
I was so confused. It just came from nowhere. Everything was fine a couple of seconds ago. Im now just hiding in the bathroom because I’m just well I actually don’t know what I am right now.
Can someone tell me their thoughts? Am I being dramatic, are they? They all know I’m autistic but I don’t think they actually know what it means, not really, or what it is like.
So you don't have to keep overthinking it:You don't discuss it when the wait staff are at the table because they might feel like you are assessing their service harshly practically to their face since they are literally standing there.With that said the group leaving it to the last person to pay who they know is autistic and maybe not caught on to the ettiquette to bring it up when it should have been something discussed as a group prior to that point is their fault for being apathetic to it or cheapskates and trying to hope everyone just "conveniently" forgets to do it/ bring it up.And honestly if you the last person are only just bringing it up at the very end, then the server knows the group was trying to cheap out, the group are just mad at you not because you made the server feel bad, as a server I'd be happy you actually even thought about it, but you exposed the rest of them for being the skinflints they are and that upset them.(Context: Was waiting staff myself once, will always be autistic tho.) Oh and if the meal is already over it's too late to spit in someones food lol, and it is not as common as people think it is either, most waiting staff are reasonably dignified professionals even if horribly underpaid, the ones that do that are not the kind of people who deserve a tip anyway as it is petty behaviour, would violate virtually every health code and carries a risk of losing the job and also criminal prosecution.