The Crazy Things Customers Do

Cellar Rats (ITB)
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Oh oh, looks like Tony’s just getting warmed up! I thought I’d better start another thread (so we can keep the how-to-train-servers thread intact) and boy I bet we all have stories … [dance2.gif] [dance2.gif]

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Here’s my short list:


  • Customers walking in the house during dinner, or … pretty much any time. You have to walk past the winery and tasting room to get to the house! One time had a young couple make it past the closed sign, past the winery, past our front door, past the TV, past the kid doing his homework and into the kitchen before they caught a clue …
  • Was in the house once on a festival day refreshing the food platters, and a woman stopped at the grill to ask Dan if she could show her friend some architectural details on the house. He thought she meant outside, so he said, sure …
  • Another festival day, our friend-volunteers brought their own circle of friends into the house and everyone wanted to help so one lady helps herself to some salsa from our home fridge, and proceeds to pour it into my grandmother’s china and carry it outdoors to the grill …
  • Taking all the toilet paper. Why???
  • We lost a man once. One of our big buyers was celebrating his birthday here and hadn’t noticed that his charming, elderly father, who has Alzheimer’s, had wandered away … fortunately there were plenty of young bucks around and we deployed all the ATV’s and vineyard trucks in a mad search of the surrounding roads and woodlands.
  • Most of this stuff is just funny, but profanity is a no-no, as is any verbally abusive or insulting language directed to my staff. I don’t need that kind of business, thank you.
  • I was once threatened by a burly guard who works at the boy’s prison because I refused to add the half-case, whole-case, and wine club discounts together for him.
  • I was on the far side of our property enjoying a rare afternoon off in my greenhouse and had an entire family of Japanese folk squeeze in beside me. Fortunately they were all small …
  • We were on vacation in Hawaii and Troy (who was 7) was staying here with Grandpa Eddie and Grandma Donna. Even at that age he was nuts about cars, and he went storming into the tasting room to inform Papa Eddie that there were two people "dancing” on a red Porsche. Papa Eddie followed him outside to look and immediately jerked him back inside, where he explained that he would, uh, talk to those people because they might, uh, scratch their car … (they were not exactly dancing).
  • Once had a woman throw a tantrum in the tasting room on one of our busiest days of the year. She insisted we give her another wine club shipment, because the one we shipped went to her house, as it was supposed to, and her now ex-husband kept it.
  • Had a woman who was very wine-snotty and annoying. She also insisted on putting the water pitcher and pour pot right beside her on the bar, instead of leaving it where everyone could get to it. Then she turned to her male companion and began talking non-stop while absently reaching behind her to dump. She dumped three pours into the water pitcher before her companion stopped her. Both he and I could see what she was doing, and at first he looked shocked but then his eyes sort of twinkled, so I just smiled and shrugged, and let him handle it.
  • One of my favorite stories ever … I was working for a winery and the assistant winemaker and I were pouring at the Monterey Wine Festival. Our table was busy and the staff had provided two clear plastic pitchers, one for water and one for dumping. The dump pitcher was half full of pink liquid and swirling streams of saliva because tradepeople would often spit as well as dump. We were both busy so I didn’t see it happen, but Jon told me right after it happened that a man came up and poured himself a sample of the pink, swirled, sniffed and tasted. Then he caught his young female companion by the arm, brought her over, and poured her some as well and then they walked away. “Jon,” I cried, “why didn’t you stop them?” “By the time I could get away, they were halfway down the aisle,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Run after them yelling ‘Sir, you’re drinking our swill!’?’
  • Oops, one more anecdote, although it didn’t happen to me. My friend Denise was the hospitality manager at Meridian. According to Denise, they only used the security button under the counter once. A nicely dressed gentleman was tasting, asking intelligent questions, and conversing with the staff. But over the course of about 15 minutes his behavior became progressively more bizarre, until he was shouting obsenities and waving his arms around the room. All the other customers left in a hurry, and the girls pushed the panic button. Police stopped by later to inform the staff that he was an escapee from Atascadero State Hospital.
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Mary - awesome!!!

[*]Here’s another when in the caves of the Pinot producer I worked for - no formal tasting room so only appt only. We had some big buyers/supporters and had a big pouring going on when two slightly past middle aged guys come shouting and carrying on into the caves. I run over to see what is going on and the guy introduces me to himself by calling himself The King of Salmon and his buddy, then gives me a big hug like I know the dude. We’re all shocked by his behavior and no one knew what he was doing there - obviously remembered the address of the wine cave! Says he just was out driving around with the top down hitting some wineries and thought he would stop by b/c he loved the wine…we politely tell him it would be a good idea to come back another time and then pour him and his buddy one or two tastes before he invited us out to…drumroll…do some shots of Tequila. They had been doing some shots on the road in between winery visits…

Never saw the King of Salmon after that day.

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Jeez Todd, you can’t behave ANYWHERE huh? [berserker.gif]

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Obviously it wasn’t me. None of my many Porsches are red

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We were tasting at a Paso room some years back, and since it was getting near closing, the room had emptied out to include only one other couple. The fellow had a British accent, and was feeling pretty good as he told everyone that he was flying out in the morning to attend the World Cup. I guess I didn’t register enough excitement, so he reiterated: “the World Cup, the World Cup…soccer, soccer.” “Ahhh,” I said pretending to have a better grasp of his delight. “But, it’s not like soccer is a real sport or anything,” I deadpanned back. After a moment of silence gripped the room, he started laughing. But for just that split second I saw my smart-assed life flash before my eyes.

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