It was a fun weekend eh.

Saturday was mini St Valentine's day. So there was that.

The fun thing about Saturday being mini St. Valentine's day was the look on some gentlemen's faces when we presented them, not just with the a la carte menu, but the delightfully expensive five course set menu. Waiter ambush in the house of love. One guy, and I shit you not, tried to give me the menu's back before his wife got to the table having rushed to the bathroom before being seated.

"What's this? A special menu?", squealed the lovely lady who mistakenly assumed her chap had arranged it. What was I to do, take the menu away as instructed when she had already seen it? Was I supposed to drop him in the poo? Was I meant to destroy love? Me? A believer, an enabler of love? Oh I don't think so.

I could feel his raging antipathy to me as I stood beside him with my hand on his shoulder as his wife giggled with excitement.

So much mirth and joy for little old me.

But Saturday wasn't all jolly japes and laughter and men getting caught out.

We got hit with the shittiest trick in waiting.

The one trick that makes me stabbier than almost anything else.

That's right the one where the punter paying the bill pockets the tip.

It works like this, I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but yer getting it again - not as instruction you understand but as a warning of what to look out for when out dining with your chums.

So a group of maybe four or more people are out dining together having a swell and groovy time with all their dreams, gastronomic and otherwise, coming true. Being awfully good chums they split the bill evenly between themselves lashing lots of lovely cash into the middle of the table. In that bundle of magnificent folding stuff is the waiter's benefaction, his recompense, his gravy if you will. To save grey cells the bill is almost always rounded up to include service and then split. Wonderful stuff. The punters had their great night, the boss gets his loot and the waiter get his, deserved, bounty.

Huzzah.

But then a weird thing happens a few moments later. Rather than hand you the dough at the table, thank you and heap praise on you until you go ever so slightly red one of the fellers will lift the money and insist on settling the bill at the bar or almost any other location away from the table. As a waiter your heart sinks as you walk to the bar. Goodbye lovely tip, goodbye - we will never spend a happy moment together walking around Marks & Spencer's choosing lovely nibbly food stuffs. You will never know the joy you could have given me when I handed you across the counter in a gentleman's outfitters as I purchased an age appropriate sweater vest and corduroy combo.

You reach the bar and the inevitable happens, cash goes in pocket and out comes Mr Shitty Credit Card. The account is settle in full and you get nothing but a metaphorical hand job by way of thanks.

It stinks worse than poo finger.

Chummy steals your tip making himself a frigging profit from dinner. Only me and the boss should make profit from your dinner. Your profit is in the joy and satisfaction attained whilst I attend to your every whim.*

This happened on Saturday night. I or rather we were not amused. And like those naughty internet chap Anonymous we waiters do not forgive and we do not forget and we are legion...we just don't wear silly wee masks. We are on to this scamola and we have developed systems to prevent this nasty form of stiffing. I can't tell you what it is as you would counter it with other tactics, suffice to say it involves us double teaming you and not in a good way.

Think-on stiffers, we have your card marked.

* within reason and law