The Roommate and The Prostitute from Friendly's

"You eat like a soldier," The Lady says as she sits next to me at the counter of a homey diner in Orleans while I'm digging into a stack of pancakes. I keep my head down as I eat, shoveling food thoughtlessly into my gullet, chewing, sipping coffee, intent on my next delicious morsale, not taking the time to enjoy the one that's currently in my mouth.



I bring this up because we tend to go out to eat alot. It somewhat burns me up that I'll drop a hundred bucks on groceries at ... sigh... Shaw's, and then go drop another 50 on dinner with The Lady and The RM.

So this takes us to last night: We three are sitting at the local Friendly's at The RM's behest and being served by a reasonably attractive blonde. The Lady remarks about how attractive she is to the RM, who is turning red with each passing minute.

A long discussion is had about my RM's lack of balls. We, The Lady and I, keep provoking him to ask for her number and he's still acting like himself, not taking intiative - yet complaining about how he's going to go through life lonely and sad....

It makes for a very tiresome evening meal.

So fast foward to the end of the meal and the RM's all nervous... he asks us, me and The Lady, to step out and get a smoke and we do so. He then mans up and gets the digits from the waitress while forging my name on the receipt. He exits the Friendly's smiling ear to ear, and it seems like everything in the world is right for once.

So again, fast forward and I'm in bed right at that point where you're about to fall into a delightful slumber, when in busts my RM, panic-stricken.

"Dude, I texted that girl..." He says. We had given him explicitly strict orders not to make contact with her for at least the night.

"Why?" As I'm laying face down on my bed.

"Well she text me back," he manuavers around the question, "and told me to lose her number, because we didn't tip her!" I can hear the panic in his voice so I look up, half push up style.

"What? Why didn't you tip her?!" I'm somewhat angry... well agitated mostly, by this news and as well as being interupted as I'm close to sleeping. But importantly, I'm somewhat pissed at the fact that we didn't tip this waitress, because I'm very fond of tipping, and tipping well. So the idea of this waitress (she was a shitty waitress though, had a whole lot of attitude...) going without a tip got under my skin.

"I thought The Lady was leaving a cash tip!" What had happened was that we had discussed seperate bills and a cash tip during the meal, but I just said 'fuck it' and opted to pay for everyone on my card because it was easier. The Lady had taken out some cash to leave towards the tip but I told her to put it away. Hence all the confusion.

So at this point, the RM is up in arms and freaking out. I tell him, rather grumpily to forget about it, "if she's so into the money, then why would you be interested in her at all?" I say from my pillow. He closes my door and goes to bed.

...So I think....

Turns out, right after that, the RM takes off to an ATM, gets twenty bucks in cash, and with a note places it in an envelope and shoots back over to the Friendly's as it's closing. He manages to talk his way inside and confronts the waitress giving her the envelope.

"I threw it in her face," he goes on to tell me this morning, "like an OG would."

She text messages him back shortly there after apologizing for her gold-digger-like first impression and they set up a date for a movie.

Now, what hits a couple of key sour notes in this tale is that, 1) where did my roommate's balls suddenly come in, where he would march back into an closed establishment, and pull of this Jack Bauer-like stunt? Especially without witnesses. And then! And then! I check my bank balance this morning online and see that Friendly's took out 58 dollars from my checking account last night. ...I remember distinctly that the bill for the three of us was 49.00 even. So where did this extra 7 dollars come from?

Either the RM actually did leave a tip (a seven dollar tip seems about on point for what he'd leave) and this entire story is a farse, or the little prostitute took it upon herself to help herself to a tip. If that's the case I plan on filing a complaint with the Friendly's.

Allow me to go off on a brief tangent: Being that service industry folks make like 3.50 an hour, they depend on tips. I understand this, and my heart goes out to the hard working waiters and waitresses that literally slave for customers like me. That's why I try to over tip as often as possible, even when the service isn't what I'd consider up to par. That's the situation we had last night. The waitress, the RM's apparent new paramour was lifeless, sarcastic and unpleasant. I thought her waitressing sucked. She dropped plates in front of us, had very little enthusiasm when taking our orders and had zero personality. All that said, since she was taking care of three of us on one bill, I would've left her probably a ten or twelve dollar tip.

If the case is that she tipped herself, thinking we were cheapskates, she had no right. No tip or gratuity is considered a guarentee. You EARN a good tip, and you do so by being polite, friendly, a little outgoing, etc. I'm not asking her to adorn flair and sing happy birthday songs and stand on her fucking head, I'm just asking for decent service, maybe with a little less sarcasm/spit in my food.

Also, if she told the RM to lose her number, would it be conceivible that she would've deleted his as well? How would she have been able to text him as he was leaving?

So, what's it going to be in the end? I need to sit down and grill my RM about all of this and get down to brass tacks. If he tipped her out I need to know if his whole story is make-believe or not. If that's the case then I'll sit down with him and have a man-to-man about making shit up. If it turns out his side of the story is true, than I know of a local Friendly's that'll have a 'help wanted' sign posted in their front window, very soon.