In a series of TikTok videos titled, “Working in the Service Industry,” user Kevin Minihane (@Kevinminihane) catalogs the bad manners of restaurant customers, and his latest video highlights the faux pas of claiming to know the owner.
@kevinminihane AND THEY DONT EVEN KNOW THEIR NAME #fyp #server #serverlife #waiter ♬ original sound – Kevin Minihane
In the video, viewed over 103,000 times, Kevin acts out a scene in which customers trying to get seated faster claim that they know the owner.
The skit starts off with Kevin asking the customer if everything is OK, and the customer irately responding, “Yeah, we’ve been waiting for a table for like five minutes.” When the server explains that the restaurant is busy since it’s a Saturday night and that there will be a wait, the customer fires back with, “I don’t think you understand. I know the owner.”
Kevin replies with an over-the-top response that most servers would only dream of saying in a real-life situation. “Oh my god, no way! I know him too, he gave me the job, so shut the f*ck up.”
The TikToker’s skit about customers claiming to know the owner resonated with a number of restaurant workers in the comments.
“Yeah but does the owner know you?” one user asked a hypothetical customer.
Many servers shared similar experiences of their own.
“I worked for a guy named Gerard. ‘I know the owner Gerald.’ Do you? DO YOU?!” someone joked.
“I had someone say this. In front of my owner. Who talked to him for 10 minutes before saying ‘Glad we already knew each other. I’m the owner,’” another user added.
One viewer added that the restaurant owner in question is usually not thrilled when customers use this tactic either.
“The owner hates this,” they simply wrote.
Restaurant workers witness people’s bad manners on a daily basis. However, since Covid-19, poor customer behavior has been on the rise across the service and hospitality industries. In his previous posts, Kevin points to other instances of customers behaving badly, like when they interrupt their servers or even go as far as to grab items off trays.
One server shared a trick she used to weed out the fakers. “I used to ask them to point him out because he was usually sitting at the next table over.”
Another shared a tactic their restaurant used for such customers: “My job made us work shirts and on the back it said ‘I know the owner too.’”
One server also pointed out that customers who really did know the owner were often the worst table to deal with as a server. “The most entitled b*tches ever. They will literally text my boss if they don’t get their way,” they wrote.
The Daily Dot reached out to Kevin via TikTok comment for further information.
