"Im Going to Make His Head Explode..Watch!"

The server approaches me and says that we inadvertently undercooked table 301's wives steak. Not an iscolated occurrence by any stretch, however the last part of the request was that the man was DEMANDING a free glass of wine for his "put off wife", and by the way, shes having the $20 glass of Nickle and Nickle.
Of course I did not trust that any person could be so blindly angry about medium rare instead of medium, so I proceeded to investigate.

"Good evening sir, I understand that we undercooked your wives steak."

"Where the hell is my free wine?" (whatever happened to hello?)

Wow-this guys for real. I am like a deer in the headlights, but then I remember, I have had a really bad month. A month of repression and emotion. A month of should I work, or should I stay home. The bottom line is "bring it on asshole, I have been waiting for you for a month!"

"We are working right now to correct our problem in the kitchen, and I would be happy to bring your wife a nice glass wine while she waits the unthinkable 4 minutes that this will take, however; I will be bringing her a glass of the Souverain (@ $8.00)".

Like a short fuse on a powder keg, the high strung man erupts. "Bla Bla, save a few bucks on me will you, Bla Bla" "Arg Arg, Leave my table, Arg Arg". He is so spitting mad that he is having a hard time creating sentences, and inside I am beaming sunshine at the babbling idiot I have reduced this man to.

I should have just brought the silly glass of requested gold, but I truly felt no different than if this man had a gun to my head and was demanding my wallet.

In the end, I leave and return with his wives $20 glass of Nickle and Nickle, as I intended to do from the start, but watching this man try and eat a steak through clenched teeth and bulging neck veins, while he felt me smiling at him the remainder of the evening, was money in the bank!

After the dust settled, and around the water cooler, we determined that this is probably a person who yells and screams all day to get what he wants at work and has been doing it for so long that he is physically unable to turn it off. Poor bastard is going to snap a such a cog one day that he will probably end up face down and drowning in his free bowl of split pea with brain matter all over the person across from him. I hope he sees my face smiling ear to ear in torment as he does. The world has enough misery, whats the use of a perpetuater.

The bottom line is that restaurants mess up, and when we do, we will gladly make right on the problem. The secret is that you can have anything you want in the building for free, the more understanding, level headed, and calm that you are. We respond much more openly to this than the "Ra Ra cooked wrong, Ugh Ugh free shit now, Bla Bla........I'm a dick" approach.