Darlene Revisited

Several people have asked me about Darlene. "What's that about?" they say. I don't really want to get into it. It's over. But as I was the one who did mention it, I guess I owe an explanation. So here is my side of it. Get yourself a beer, take a smoke break, or whatever. This page is going to be lengthy.

I used to eat at the bar every day for lunch and three or four times a week for dinner, plus another two or three nights just having beer at the bar. Darlene got my evening business. I spent a lot of money at Applebee's. A hundred to a hundred fifty a week or thereabouts, every week. Plus, while I don't leave fifty-dollar tips, I always left more than the standard twenty per cent.

One night at dinner I asked Darlene if she would get me a few extra slices of jalapeno pepper. She did, then tapped it into the little computer they have at the bar so it would go on my check—thirty cents. I was surprised.

"You'd think a regular customer could get a few slices of jalapeno without you having to ring it up."

"I can't do that," Darlene replied. "I could get fired. If you don't like it, take it up with the manager."

I really didn't believe she would be fired for giving away a small amount of condiment to a good customer. Nevertheless, it probably would have ended there with no further bad feelings, except . . .

I knew the manager (from being a regular customer—I didn't know her outside the business), and she happened to be walking by at that moment. So I told her what happened. Her response was, "Why does being a good customer entitle you to free food?"

The man sitting at the bar to my left had watched events unfold and could contain himself no longer. "He didn't ask for free food," he said to the manager, "he just wanted a condiment!"

My reply was simple. I told the manager, "Nothing entitles me to free food, just like nothing entitles you to my business."

I didn't return to Applebee's for six or eight months. If Darlene had thrown a glass of water in my face, I don't think it would have had a greater impact. It was like she said to me, "You're not worth a dime to me. Your business isn't worth thirty cents to me."

What could she have done? She could have said, "Look, I have to ring it up or I'll get fired. But you're a good customer, you spend a lot of money in here, and I think it sucks that you have to pay thirty cents for a little condiment. I'll pay for it." Then she could have reached into her tip jar and taken out thirty cents.

How would that have made me feel? First, there's no way I would have let her pay for it. Second, I would have been her customer for life. I would have considered her wanting to pay for that little condiment to be a really great gesture. It would have made me feel wonderful to know my business was appreciated enough that somebody would take their own tip money to pay for something for me.

Instead, Darlene and the manager made me feel like my business was totally irrelevant, that they were doing me a favor by accepting my money.

I know it sounds like a trivial thing. But it wasn't about the thirty cents. It was about the attitude of the restaurant's management toward a good, regular customer that spent a lot of money in their business, every day, every week, every month. Were my feelings hurt that my business wasn't worth thirty cents? You bet.

So Applebee's got the thirty cents. And for the next six to eight months, other restaurants got the four to five thousand dollars that Applebee's would have gotten. What a deal for Applebee's!

One day I went back into Applebee's and there was a new bartender. She no longer works there, and she doesn't want me to write about her, so I won't. But she treated me really well and made me feel like a regular. I came back to Applebee's largely because of the treatment I got from her. Eventually I separated my feelings for the people at Applebee's, most of whom I liked, from my feelings for the way one or two Applebee's people treated me.

I still resented Darlene, but I was acting small and I knew it. I knew that having a grudge against Darlene, however much my feelings were bruised by what she did, was wrong. I knew that I needed to do the right thing and mend fences with her. By this time I was at the bar often enough to run into her occasionally. I didn't speak to her and she didn't speak to me. One night I decided to put it behind me, and I went to the bar when I knew Darlene was there, at a time when I knew the bar would not be crowded.

"Darlene . . ." I said.

She walked over to where I sat. "I'm willing to say bygones if you are," I said to her.

"Bygones," she said with no hesitation. I shook her hand, and we were talking again.

It's hard for me to believe that such a trivial event hurt my feelings that much and bothered me that much. I would like to think I'm a bigger person than that. I guess everybody likes to feel appreciated. I felt betrayed by people that I thought appreciated me, if only for the money I brought to them.

So I treated Darlene rather shabbily by not speaking to her. She hurt my feelings, but that does not excuse my own behavior. I'm not proud of the way I reacted. The next time my feelings are hurt, I hope I handle it better . . . a lot better.

How do Darlene and I get along now, you may be wondering. I don't know how Darlene feels. She probably has no feelings about it one way or the other. To her, I'm just a bar customer who got pissed off at her just because she put a thirty cent item on my check. To her, I walked back in one day and started talking to her again, so everything must be ok.

When I returned to Darlene as a customer, my feelings were ambivalent. Despite all, I liked Darlene. But the negative feelings I had didn't magically all go away just because I decided I had to mend fences. I still had to work at letting go of those feelings. It was difficult, but it was the right thing. When I'm at the bar, now, Darlene is attentive to me—making sure I don't run out of tea with my meal, and so on, but then, she's probably just as attentive to all her customers. Sometimes I wonder if she feels there is still something between us that needs healing, and maybe she's trying to do her part by being a good bartender with me. Then again, maybe she's just a good bartender.

That's the Darlene story.