Characters III: Elite

Reservations for six at 8:00; good potential. But during a full moon and homecoming weekend: bodes ill.
Four arrive first: a mid-sixties couple of a leisure class, and twin girls who looked like twelve-year-old versions of Michelle Obama, each in severe skirts and double-breasted wool coats buttoned to their ears. The guy had a bulging forehead with an extra 50% of surface area ill concealed by his combover, a pencil mustache he couldn't really trim around the wrinkles, and his right eye was cocked about 30 degrees left. His... wife? consort? had dyed-blue helmet hair around round glasses with quarter-inch plastic frames from some exorbitant designer, an outfit with more sequins than I've seen since Italy, and her purse was bigger than most school backpacks and made of shiny black leather with brass studs.
As I filled water glasses, they made laps around the table and were just sitting as I set down the glasses.
"I need to trouble you for a water without ice," he said in an odd sort of nasaly Vanderbilt accent.
"And I need a chair for my handbag." I thought she was joking and smiled as I ran for the water.
Nope: she was stooping to drag a chair that looked to weigh five times as much and take up six times as much space as it should.
Yeah, there goes the tip, right?
Guest five shows up: a fleshy mid-level someone reliving his college days decked out in sweaty team shirt, brand-new team hat, and team sweatpants. And the last person is the woman's sister, equally bedecked in sparkly everything and conspicuously subtle brand names; somehow, black sequins on a black shirt make the "G" less ostentatious, or something.

Special orders get highlighted so the kitchen crew notes the alteration from standard menu items. I had the novel opportunity to highlight the entire ticket.
No surprise, of course.

I did okay through the service, all the "yessir, nosir, here you are mam, I'll be right back with that," despite the sister and alum groping each other across the table, despite the, "was that the Gucci or Prada trip?" "Remember the driver we had for the Chanel trip?" despite every trip to the table requiring three trips for repeat items--"a glass of the pinot noir, sir," "You know, I'll have one, too," "I want a vouvray"--or getting orders to do my job before I have a chance to fall down at it--as I set down salads, beginning with the little girls, the, uh, professor? leisure suit burnout? combover dude? anyway, that one is saying, "now we need fresh cracked pepper here. But they don't take it, and I only want a little." Yessir, I'll be right back with that, sir."

We have a printed policy of adding 18% gratuity to a single check for parties of 6 or more, and I elected to use it (sometimes, I can nurse things by saying, "I elected NOT to add the compulsory 18% gratuity, so I thank you for your generosity" or somesuch).
What made me really, really want to have a tray of scalding hot tomato sauce to drop was the eyeglass lady saying, "WHAT? An 18% gratuity on the CHECK?" and the little girls taking up the chorus. "Eighteen percent? For gratuity? On the check?"
And the slimy schmuck, who did pay in cash, hands me the presenter, licks his little mustache, and says, without humor in his eyes or anything but generosity in his voice, "I'm due eleven cents in change, but I'll let you keep it for such excellent service."