Separate Cheques

There is nothing more frustrating for a busy waiter than a large group  of customers haggling over the bill at the end of a meal, especially if people are waiting to occupy the table. The painful discussions of who had the more expensive appetizer or that extra drink ensure that the bill is not paid quickly, and the repeated requests for small change during the process are irritating. Many restaurants discourage offering separate cheques for large groups, individual bills take much longer than writing up just one, but in my experience the squabbling over the cheque while customers try to figure out their share is apt to take even longer.

My wait staff were not fans of separate cheques, it meant having to keep track of individual orders and struggling with the carbon copies in the bill books. This of course was before computers and print-out machines arrived on the scene, and having to write the individual cheques by hand in duplicate was quite tedious. However, it was less time consuming than taking one cheque to the table and THEN being asked to provide individual ones, a task which at that point in the proceedings was pretty much impossible. It didn’t take me long to realize that individual cheques made a lot more sense if guests intended to pay separately, and instructed my staff to ask when taking the first drink order if they required one bill or separate tabs.

My staff’s main problem with separate cheques at a big table was figuring out who had ordered what, and they solved that by attaching an identifying name to the order. These made-up names on the order pads, always jotted down in a hurry, were often so funny that I howled with laughter. One waiter in particular, wanting to make sure his guests got the right food, used names that would easily identify the recipients, and some of them were priceless. The names, written at the top of the orders, made perfect sense to him, and my laughter puzzled him. “Fat mon”, “musstash”, “big nose”, “harry leg”, “tin lips”, “bun face” and “stufy” are just a few names I recall, and I could never resist peeking into the dining room to see for myself. Sure enough, there would be the fat man, one with a big nose and another with a moustache.  And there was the lady with thin lips, one with hairy legs and another with a sunburned face. Ah yes, and that one just HAD to be stuffy, the fellow somehow LOOKED stuffy! The waiter wasn’t the world’s best speller but he for SURE was an excellent waiter, and the funny names he used in order to identify his guests (unseen by the tables except on one memorable occasion!) harmed no-one and provided me with free entertainment.

The names jotted down on those individual orders may have amused me, but whenever I eat out and want a separate cheque I give the wait staff my name – just in case the one they assign to me is blunt enough to make the chef howl with laughter…..