Abigail M. Schilling

Several times a year, my friends and I make the long journey across all of LA County to Santa Monica, a beach town full of artists and hippies and people who work out A LOT.

Jinky's! is our Santa Monica destination, a breakfast/lunch place with a 49-seat fire limit and booths built for skinny people. Jinky's! has really, really, really good food with an extensive menu and all sorts of fruit mix-ins for their pancakes. And because they're in a healthy neighborhood, they let me sub potatoes for bacon.

Jinky's does not have the best service. In the eight times we've been there they have given our table away five times because we weren't within hearing distance when they called our name TWENTY MINUTES before they said our table would be ready. They have also put six of us at a table for four, forgotten our name altogether, and worst of all, not always had cups near the waiting area coffee caraffe.

All these things we easily blamed on the host, a lithe girl with untamable hair and a knack for failing at everything. They're too cool to wear name tags at Jinky's so I don't know her name, but let's just call her J.

Usually, after we manage to get through J's incompetence barricade and get a table we can all sit at we're greeting by this server who looks and talks exactly like Summer from The OC. We love Summer from The OC and we love this server. Last fall she told us about she just bought rain boots. Last spring she told us she was not in the mood to run. She is sweet and chatty and let's me get pancakes with bananas and chocolate chips.

Summer counters everything negative about J. Summer gives us seats when J refuses. Summer brings coffee when J forgets. Summer is the summer to J's winter. (I'm sorry.)

Last Sunday we made the journey and were rewarded: J had vanished. There was a new, even more willowy host in her place. As it turns out, she is even more incompetent than J. She checked back with us three times to verify who and how many we were. After a thirty-minute-turned-forty-five wait, we were seated in a skinny booth and told... well, nothing, but we assumed, had the new girl had the vocabulary to say it, our server would be with us shortly.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until finally we were approached and abruptly asked our drink orders. Four waters, three coffees, two orange juices. Our order was confirmed.

And then we waited some more.

And some more.

Our drinks appeared and with seconds our server appeared. We were surprised; we figured that first quickly-moving ghost was our server.

But no, there J stood, asking if we were ready to give our orders. We were a bit caught off-guard, but having scoured the entire menu while we waited we delivered.

She disappeared. Forever.

Our food arrived; it was delicious. We passed around the syrup and the cream and about half way through J appeared asking if everything was okay. A little bit I wanted to send back my mostly-eaten banana chocolate chip pancakes so I could get some more. We said all was well, she left, and we finished our food.

Then we talked about life for another twenty minutes. No sign of J. No sign of our check.

She finally arrived, awkwardly left it on the table and took off.

We have this thing we do with checks. We calculate how much each person owes (based on what the ordered and the tax) and use a cell phone calculator to get it exactly correct to the nearest cent. Then we make a list of how much to charge each of our credit cards. It's a bit complicated but makes things really easy for the server and once you get the hang of it it can be kind of fun. Like a word problem. (Heather wrote about this process once.)

So I looked at the check, all ready to find my orange juice, coffee, and pancakes when I realized that the drinks were not on the check. We deliberated whether or not to say anything but decided to be honest rather than live with the guilt, besides we conjectured, they'll probably be so happy we're being honest that they'll give us the drinks for free in hopes of getting a better tip.

It took another several minutes to flag down J again and point out the error. She was confused at first until she glanced at our table and discovered we had drinks! How did they get there? she wondered. And then she took our check away to add the drinks. Bitch.

If that wasn't enough, she didn't return for another million years. But that was getting too predictable. After we reworked our bill, flagged her down again, took a mid-afternoon nap, got hungry for dinner, and finally got our slips back to sign we discovered that SHE HAD CHARGED TWO CARDS THE WRONG AMOUNT.

And not just like she made a typo. She charged my card $10.24 extra and she charged Jeni $1.11 more. And even after we added everything up we could find zero explanation for how she could make a mistake like that. We really tried to find an excuse for her: maybe she was thinking of someone else's bill? Maybe she was trying to give us stuff for free because of the drink thing? But we were unable to defend her.

Carolyn was all, "let's be honest. She's been a host here for what? Three years? And she only just now got promoted to server? Can't be all that bright."

And quickly we left her small tips and hurried out.