Demanding and Exclusive Clients
This should have been a mic drop moment. I work at a ridiculously upscale steakhouse in Manhattan as a hostess while juggling being a college student. We have some of the most demanding and exclusive clients come in daily and I have a lot of stories. Our guests range from Michael Cohen, Steve Madden, Anderson Cooper to lesser-known Real Housewives stars and just filthy rich businessmen and women.
Last winter while at work, we had three hostesses at the podium. One for seating people, one for checking in, and one for checking coats. I was checking coats (tips are unbelievable) around 7, when our place is incredibly busy and hectic. Well, a lady checks in with her husband and hands me her coat. I hand her the ticket number for her coat and then proceed to hang it up and mark it with all of the other coats in the closet.
In the closet, it was mainly mink coats during the winter, easily upwards of $15,000 from brands like Moncler, Burberry, Gucci etc. Her coat was a Moncler. It’s easy to remember in the moment who had what coat, but after checking in 200 other coats I totally forgot what kind of coat this woman had, and she was not a regular client so I didn’t make a special note.
Fast forward two hours later, they’re leaving. She hands me her ticket and I go to get her coat. I come back to hand it to her and she looks at me puzzled and goes, “That’s not my coat.” I go, “Oh okay, are you positive? What did your coat look like by chance?” She sniffed and said “Seriously isn’t it your job to know that?”
So I asked her to come to the coat closet with me so we could locate her jacket. She wrinkled her nose and told me I was a joke for not being able to do such a simple job! I apologized and walked her to the coat closet. We searched high and low for about an hour for her coat and at that point, she was screaming at me, every nasty name in the book.
I stood there, calm as could be, because the money was worth it. I finally decided to involve the manager because I just did not know what to do. He didn’t know what to do either, he said we would reimburse her for the cost of her coat and we would write a check but she refused. She must have tried on all 200 coats in our closet and claimed that none of them were hers.
I was petrified at this point that I had given her coat away to someone else, as many look the same. She then told me I would be getting a bill personally from her lawyer and I was actually scared because I knew how expensive those coats were. She berated me and degraded me in front of the manager and told him that I need to be fired.
Finally, she had enough and said since you gave my coat to someone else give me the coat you initially gave me because I can’t go outside without a coat. And at that point I didn’t care anymore. So, she takes the coat I initially gave her, puts it on, and says, “Wow it fits perfect.” She reaches in the pockets and asks, “How did this coat happen to have my wallet and keys in it too?”
I looked up and literally had no words. I wasted about two hours being belittled by the woman, when I was right the whole time. The lady was like, “I don’t know what to say” and my manager said, “You owe her [me] an apology.” And the lady handed me her wine glass, a $1 tip, no apology, and left like nothing happened!
I sat down on the closet floor and cried my eyes out. I had been awake since 5 AM for school and was the closing host that night, which meant I wouldn’t be leaving until about 2 AM, getting home around 3 AM, and waking back up at 5 AM for school! She wasted what little energy I had left and made me feel so worthless. My coworkers were awesome though, the bartender made me a drink and they all gave me a hug.
Story credit: Reddit / uptownthrill