Nightmare 30 Top Story

Last year, I had the most horrendous 30 top of my life. They were one of the only times I've ever cried at work. Buckle up.

I go in to open at 10. The previous night was carpet night and I closed, so I had to put all of the chairs up. Then, I had to take them all down that morning. I finish opening no problem, and I have a few tables by 11:30. This is awesome, I'm going to make so much money. My GM tells me that a 30 top is coming in at noon, and I need to set up the private room for them. You'd think that's the host's job, but he shows up high off his ass every day and doesn't do much. I panic and set up the 3 tables of 10 while taking care of my tables. The party calls a little past noon saying they'll be late and ask us to hold their spot for another hour. An hour goes by, and an elderly churchy lady shows up to save the spot for the 29 other people. They don't show up for another hour. I'm not getting sat at all during this time because nobody knows when these people are going to show up. It's 2 pm, and the party starts trickling in. For some reason, the host started seating them by two or three at a time. Then, they all started to sit at every single table that wasn't their designated table. Literally a toddler could've walked in the room and thought, "This big table has all of the plates, menus, and napkins set up on it. There's three of them, I should sit there!" But no. They all start filing in, and Server B and I are having a hard time getting drink orders. They keep moving around, and the old women keep chasing me demanding why I don't have their peach raspberry strawberry mango half/half teas yet. Then the pastor shows up. I swear to god he was a supervillain. He walks in and greets everybody, and actually physically turns them away from me while I'm talking to them to get their drink orders. Rude. Server B and I are trying to figure out how on earth we're going to split all of these people, and we finally seem to have a system down. There are two main adult tables and a kids table, and various tables around the room. After everyone FINALLY sits down, we go back around to try and match the drink orders to the people. Server B finishes her side of drink orders, and goes to finish them. As I'm making my way around the adult tables, a woman raises her hand and tells me she and her family have a flight to catch in an hour. Not that she has to leave in an hour.... the plane is going in the sky in an hour. I work at a steakhouse. I tell her no problem, I can take her family's dinner order while I'm finishing up taking everyone else's drink order. Then someone else says that his family is going on the same flight. Like half of them had a flight to catch in an hour, and they were at 3 separate tables. And they order salmon well done. I thought that I made it clear to everyone that I was only taking the orders of the people on the flight so they could be on their way in a timely fashion. I got a unanimous "yes ma'am." I put in their orders and try to figure out how I'm going to do this, and Server B comes back to tell me that "an old lady at your table looked at me like she was going to kill me and waved me over," and yelled at her that I neglected to take everybody's order. Oh my god. Server B finishes my drinks and salads while I go back and take everyone else's order (half of them weren't even ready). After Server B put their orders in, idiot host sits her another big party. The rest of the servers that day were new and couldn't take them, so it had to be one of us. Now I was alone taking these people. Since Server B took their order, I didn't know of any modifications and had to trust her. Guess what? These people played musical chairs again!!! They run me ragged every single time I go in there with refills and meaningless requests. The food for the flight families comes out, and then the rest of the party complains that I forgot their food. Their food comes out eventually. I have to pretend I know what I'm doing and auction the plates off. They eat, and I have 30 seconds to catch my breath and move the checks around. I got the flight families paid out. Cool. They leave. The pastor and his wife talk about splitting checks 30 million different ways, often swapping the exact same item for no reason. I try to follow as best as I can. There are so many tables and checks open that my GM has to merge everything into a mega table. Problem is, I didn't even get a second to close the flight families' tabs. Everything was messed up. I then had to individually match over a hundred items not only to what the pastor wants to pay for, but to match the receipt of the families. The computer was freaking tf out. Every time I printed a receipt, it would print an entirely different one and move everything around. AND while this is all happening, the pastor is trying to get free food from us by saying that X person across the room didn't get X thing. How the hell is he supposed to know when he wasn't even there??? This is where the supervillain stuff comes in. My GM left without saying anything and dumped this onto the mid manager. I try to explain to the pastor that this is genuinely not my fault and it's a computer issue, and my mid manager is trying to get it fixed for me. The pastor tells me verbatim "I would like to believe that you're doing your best, but I sense a deceitful spirit within you, Jezebel. We are kind and generous people, and I do not understand why you are trying to deceive and scam us." Oh my god. I would've rather he called me a bitch or something like that, but he insulted my spirit given to me by God??? As he's trying to deceive ME??? Lucky for me, I happened to be processing my religious trauma at the time. That completely caught me off guard and vulnerable. It's like 5pm now. I go tell my manager, and he tries to get them to leave. He comps a bunch of their food, and the pastor yells at him about how he's such a "kind and venerable person," and how he "has 3 mansions in California." I then go back in with the fixed checks, and I'm so tired. I'm physically and emotionally exhausted, and I just want them to leave. The pastor starts harassing me again, and I think I'm about to cry. The pastor has some kind of sick 6th sense and realizes I even thought about it. He completely changes his tune. He literally goes in his pastor voice "Oh sister, don't cry sister!! Congregation, let us give this sister some grace!! Don't cry sister, join us with the Lord today!!" He then HUGS ME. Then, I'm not kidding, all like 12 other people come up to me and hug me and spew nonsense about "you deserve all of the grace, sister. God loves you, sister." There's literally a child sitting and hugging on my leg, it was like out of Midsommar or something. I'm having a panic attack this whole time and hyperventilating and crying. My manager doesn't know what to do. They finally let go and I sob my eyes out in the walk-in for like 45 minutes. I can't stop crying. My manager gets them paid out, and they've been WAITING for me to come out the whole time. The pastor once again insults me and then they leave. My manager comped roughly $250 of food and gave them all desserts (another $11-15 each). Out of about $1600 in sales, I made 20 dollars. Server B was still busy with her other party, so I had to clear and reset the whole room by myself. I still hadn't stopped crying. I finally left around 7:30, called my boyfriend, ate the Taco Bell he doordashed me, and cried myself to sleep. I wish I was making any of this up. I cannot believe anyone could possibly have the audacity to treat another human this way.

Edit: TLDR, 30 people treat me horribly for hours and I get called a Jezebel by a pastor because he wanted free food