#separate checks

"Check, please."

After a night of mayhem, those words were a welcome relief.  At least, they were until a party of ten asked for separate checks at the end of their meal.  It was the kind of night where you sang birthday song after birthday song to table after table, all of whom were sitting right next to each other.  Of course.  Therefore, it was  also the kind of night where you clapped and smiled, banging your hands together again and again, until you and your coworkers could no longer be distinguished from the happy little toy monkey who eagerly clashed his cymbals together with a clang.  And you did all of this Pacman-like running, bumping into guests and employees at every turn, while making sure to "WOW" your guests.

Every other moment, there was a new table to greet, a glass of water to pour, an entree to fetch, or a problem to fix.  All night long, we had to do all of these at once, with as few mistakes as possible.  It is no wonder, then, that the care to ring every single item accurately under each individual guest, appetizer by appetizer, meal by discounted meal, and drink by 2-for-1 drink was simply not taken.  For the most part, this was done until accuracy succumbed to speed so that orders may be quickly entered.  Who cares, so long as the right food and drinks get to the right table...right?

Between the cymbal-clanging and guest-WOWing, one of the ladies (a generously applied term) from the Party of Ten decided that it would be fun to follow me. Maybe she wanted to see if she could keep up with me as I ran circles that mirrored the patterns created by alien visitors on wheat crops in New Mexico.  Maybe she just wanted to clang along to yet another birthday song.  Yes, that was it!  She felt jealous, left out, and wanted to join in the fun.

Wait.  All she wanted was A1 steak sauce?  She couldn't wait the measly fifteen seconds it took for me to Pacman my way around the maze of tables between us? Clearly, she should rise from the table at which she was seated and wait for me at the stairs.  Indeed, this would make the sauce arrive much faster.  Maybe the sauce would even transport itself via telekinesis, which required her to get up and stare at it. Hard.  That makes sense.

Naturally, it was after ten o'clock, when all of the aforementioned 2-for-1 drinks became discounted.  This meant that one person - the bartender - now had to do double the amount of work, and everything would take twice as long.  I carried beverages to the Party of Ten three at a time.  One mojito remained at the bar.

As I approached with frozen margaritas in hand, She was standing again, walking around, looking for me.  I don't think I was hard to find - I was the happy little table-hopping monkey wearing figure-eights into the carpeting.

"You forgot my mojito,"  She announced.  "I ordered a mojito, and you didn't bring it."

I then held the following mental monologue in my head:

"Well, of course I didn't bring it.  When I woke up this morning, I wasn't an octopus.  I didn't have eight arms.  Did you?  I was human, with two arms?  Were you?  No?  Well, is this a concept you might be able to grasp?  Hey, I think I might know where your mojito is.  It's at the bar! How revolutionary!  Would you like to go get it yourself, since you seem to enjoy walking around our fine establishment so much?  Just follow the yellow brick road of my footsteps on the rug."

Instead, I stared at her, knowing that I witnessing Crazy At Its Best, and said, "I'll be right back with your mojito."

Once her song-and-dance routine was over, the group proceeded to ask for separate checks.  What a joy it became to tap at the monitor, attempting to decide which food-and-drink combination belonged to which guest.  All of the entrees were the exact same price, so that was of no use when pairing one to the other.  Several attempts and numerous receipts later, I gave up and gave them what I felt like giving them:  the check.

Forty-five minutes later, my manager and I were knee-deep in figuring out the bill, as both the computer and our human calculations concluded that $59.10 was still unaccounted for.  Credit card payments were processed, cancelled, and re-processed, one, two, three times.  Some of the members of the party apologized.  And what did she do?  She came back, at the request of her friends, to remind me that she had given me sixty dollars in cash.

"Yes," I responded quietly.  "I have it right here.  There is still money missing."

The group departed, and with my manager's efforts - calling the HelpDesk, obtaining authorization codes and expiration dates - it all worked out.  But not before I threw all of my money at him in frustration, yelled, and apologized:

"Here!  Just take it, I don't want any of it!" I began, and followed with, "That was rude, I was raised better than to throw things at people.  Next time I throw money at you, you'll be stripping."

To be "on the safe side," I was not permitted to charge any of their cards for the tips they had left me.  After all that crop-circling! Instead, my manager took money out of his own wallet and handed it to me.  My eyes teared up as I stuffed it back into his pocket.  What had become of us?

Dating - It's a lot like clothes shopping.  Trying on all the wrong items until you find that one piece that fits.  Sometimes you go out, and come home with nothing.  Other times, you find that piece, and then trends change and you have to start all over!  The overall goal is find that classic piece that will last with you for years.

Let's get real, most of us haven't found that classic piece yet.  So here we are, dating and running into guys (or girls) who make you cringe so much that when the waiter asks "Together or Separate?", you can't fight the urge to shout out "SEPARATE!"  

So this is why I started Separate Checks!  A place to share my (and your) god awful dating stories that will you make you laugh, cry, or are just flat out "WTF" moments.