When Nate\u2019s grandparents want to celebrate their anniversary with a fancy dinner at a local restaurant, his grandmother goes in to choose which items she\u2019d like from the table. But one thing leads to another when she knocks over a plate \u2014 causing her to be kicked out. But Nate plots his revenge.It was supposed to be a simple visit \u2014 a grandmother checking on the quality of meals at a local restaurant for her upcoming 50th wedding anniversary dinner with her husband and their immediate family.Yet, what unfolded for my grandmother was nothing short of disrespectful and heartbreaking.\n
My grandparents were set to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in a week. My grandmother wanted to have a grand family dinner, and wanting everything to be perfect, she decided to visit the restaurant alone to finalize the menu and taste a few dishes for the dinner, including a special request for meatloaf.\u201dMeatloaf?\u201d my mother asked her. \u201cWhy would you want meatloaf for your fancy dinner?\u201d \u201cBecause it\u2019s sentimental, Penny,\u201d my grandmother said, smiling. \u201cYour father and I had meatloaf on our first date, and it\u2019s been one of the constant things in our marriage.\u201d \u201cMeatloaf Mondays,\u201d my mother chuckled.\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been there throughout my childhood.\u201d\u201dDo you want me to come with you, Gran?\u201d I asked her, because I wasn\u2019t sure about my 72-year-old grandmother tackling the world by herself. As much as my grandmother prided herself on her good health, sometimes she needed help balancing herself. \u201cNo, Nate,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll be fine! And this way, during the dinner you can be surprised, too.\u201dOn the day that my grandmother was ready to go on her sampling tour of the restaurant, I dropped her off and went back home to work.\u201dYou tell the restaurant to call me when you\u2019re ready, okay?\u201d I said, closing the passenger door for her. I went about my day, only to receive a call from my grandmother about two hours later. She was in tears and completely devastated. I drove to the restaurant immediately.\n
It turned out that when she went into the restaurant and ordered the items that she wanted to try \u2014 the table, naturally, became quite full. As Gran was trying to position herself, her elbow hit the table, causing one of the plates to fall off and crash to the ground, shattering. Instead of assisting, the waiter on duty let frustration get the better of him and he lashed out. He berated my grandmother and called her an \u201cold hag\u201d.\u201dWho let an old hag like you into this restaurant?\u201d he asked, while picking up the larger pieces of the shattered plate.\n
\u201cLook at this mess. And the lunch rush will be here soon, too.\u201dWhen my grandmother got to the car, she was shaking, tears running down her face as she tried to tell me what had happened. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt worse,\u201d she mumbled. \u201cIt was just a mistake, Nate. I asked if they needed to charge me for the plate, but the waiter just laughed. And he told me to leave.\u201dAs I drove, I was speechless. I didn\u2019t know what to say, or how to comfort my grandmother. All she had wanted to do was plan a big anniversary dinner for my grandfather and have the rest of the family there, too. She wanted to spoil us, and be spoiled in return with family stories and laughter around the table. My ears grew hot as I tried to process my anger. But I didn\u2019t want to lash out in front of my grandmother. She had already seen more than enough anger for the day.We got home and I made my grandmother a cup of tea, to help settle her nerves. I was furious but composed \u2014 I had a tie to the restaurant, something that I hadn\u2019t revealed to my family yet.\n
But I could use the anonymity for my own benefit. The waiter needed to learn a lesson in humility and respect.A few days before the anniversary dinner, my grandmother came to me while I was sitting at my laptop, and tried to cancel it. \u201cMaybe we should do something at home,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe a home dinner is the way to go because we\u2019ll all be comfortable and more carefree.\u201d \u201cBut you\u2019ve been looking forward to this for such a long time,\u201d I said.\u201dYes, but I don\u2019t want to go back there, Nate,\u201d she said sadly. \u201cThat waiter was a real piece of work. His mother would be so disappointed.\u201d\n
For my plan to work, we needed to be at the restaurant. So, I kept pushing my grandmother to just settle on the dinner as she had planned.\u201dYou\u2019re a chef!\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cNate, you can cook.\u201d\u201dIt\u2019s too late, Gran,\u201d I said somberly. \u201cLet\u2019s do this, I promise that you won\u2019t have to put up with the waiter.\u201d Days later, as our family gathered at the restaurant for the celebration, the same waiter served us \u2014 I saw my grandmother\u2019s face fall when she realized who it was. She tried to make herself smaller, hiding behind the bouquet of flowers that I had bought for her.Recognizable confusion crossed the waiter\u2019s face when he saw my grandparents proudly sitting beside me. He paled and tried to compose himself. I ordered the meals that my grandmother wanted for the table and refused to acknowledge him any further. \u201cGood evening, I hope you\u2019ll enjoy your meal,\u201d he said with a cautious glance at my grandmother after all our meals were placed in front of us.I wanted to wait until late to address the elephant in the room. The truth is \u2014 for the past few weeks, I had been busy securing my ownership of the restaurant.\n
I had spent years in the culinary industry, starting from washing dishes at diners after school, to progressing all the way until I became a head chef.My grandparents helped my mother pay for culinary school, so my announcement \u2014 was that I was, now, the new owner of the restaurant that we were sitting in.When I discovered that the place was for sale, I wanted to buy it immediately and turn it into a place that would uphold our family legacy. With special recipes that had been handed down from my grandmother. After dessert, an array of tiny portions that awoke the senses, I stood up to speak. The service had been exemplary the entire evening because the staff knew exactly who I was. So, when the waiter came over to bring my grandfather\u2019s coffee, I asked him to share his thoughts on customer service.Flustered, he wiped his hands on his apron and stuttered about respect and courtesy. \u201cYou have to care for everyone that walks into the restaurant, Sir,\u201d he said. \u201cYou told us to treat them like they are a guest in our own homes.\u201d I nodded, hoping that my family had missed the fact that the waiter knew me.I then turned the floor over to my grandmother, who eloquently spoke not of her pain, but of the importance of kindness and the memories tied to the meatloaf and other elements found in the dishes she had picked for this dinner.\n
\u201cI wanted to try and find something that my husband and I could relate to our lives. Like the chicken \u2014 we had a similar lemon chicken dish for our wedding reception.\u201dWith the room hanging on her every word, the waiter\u2019s remorse was palpable. He apologized sincerely, his shame evident to all. That\u2019s when I revealed the truth to my family \u2014 telling them I was the new owner of the restaurant and that I planned on making big changes.My grandmother beamed at me, finally seeing that I was where I needed to be \u2014 building my own culinary niche in the world.\n
As for the waiter, I presented him with two choices: \u201cYou can leave with a month\u2019s salary or you can stay and undergo a comprehensive customer service training program.\u201d To his credit, and our collective surprise, he chose to stay and learn.Months later, his transformation became a cornerstone of our restaurant\u2019s reputation. He exemplified the power of second chances, becoming a favorite among our patrons. But more than that \u2014 whenever my grandmother came over to the restaurant to help me work on a recipe, he was the first one to make sure that she was taken care of. He would bring her cups of tea and baskets of breadsticks. Now, when I think about the restaurant and the fact that my grandmother had gone from being disrespected to being idolized, all I want is to know that she will be valued \u2014 and that all the lessons she teaches inside my kitchen are taken to heart.\n
What would you have done?Here\u2019s another story for you | Claire, happily engaged, decides that it\u2019s time to have a friendly dinner with her colleagues. But during their lobster dinner, Claire realizes that there\u2019s something fishy about her fianc\u00e9, too. This work is inspired by real events and people, but it has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. The author and publisher make no claims to the accuracy of events or the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretation. This story is provided \u201cas is,\u201d and any opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My 72-Year-Old Grandma Was Kicked out of Luxury Restaurant \u2013 Her Return Few Days Later Left Waiter Pale When Nate\u2019s grandparents want to celebrate their anniversary with a fancy dinner at a local restaurant, his grandmother goes in to choose which items she\u2019d like from the table. But one thing leads to another when she\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":78889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[855],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-78885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-story"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/8-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lorevista.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}