Servers Share the Worst Valentine's Day Disasters They've Ever Witnessed

Robin Zlotnick - Author
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Feb. 13 2020, Updated 2:41 p.m. ET

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What are your plans for Valentine's Day this year? Are you planning to take your girlfriend to a restaurant and propose to her without consulting her first? Might want to rethink that! Are you going to ditch your wife for your girlfriend and expect her not to show up and dump champagne on your head? Maybe don't do that! 

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Someone asked the restaurant servers of Reddit to share the worst, most cringe-worthy Valentine's Day disasters they've ever witnessed, and my oh my, these stories are something else. 

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There were oh so many stories of proposals gone terribly, terribly wrong. Most of them were the dude's fault entirely, but this first one was a total bust for a different reason. ChefHannibal explains, "There was a note in our reservations that it was an engagement, they wanted champagne, a specific seat, bunch of other stuff. 

"The server comes up to the table with something like, 'So I read we're celebrating an engagement. Congratulations!' Confusion from the woman; glaring from the guy. He hadn't proposed yet. She ruined it."

If you're telling a restaurant about an engagement, make sure to let them know it's a proposal and that it's a surprise!!! I can't imagine how that server felt. I think I would feel so terrible I'd have to go home and lie down. And folks, it only gets worse from here.

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Jeanlukepikard was a pastry chef at a big resort on Cape Cod. For Valentine's Day one year, and they got a special order from a guy who was going to pop the question. He wanted, "Will you marry me?" written on the dessert. The man called ahead, came in that morning, and was clearly nervous and excited for that night. 

Just before the dessert is set to go out, they notice the head waiter come in "with a weird look on his face." All he says is, "They don't need it." She broke up with him almost immediately after the meal started. Yikes. Talk about being on two different pages in a relationship! 

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On one Valentine's Day, Odd-Examination had a proposal, a 40th-anniversary dinner, and a breakup happen all in one section of the restaurant at the same time. It's like a movie. Reverse Love Actually. The woman who broke up with her overeager boyfriend left the table, and then he sat there for 40 minutes, "head down and crying." Not a great night!

Here's a tip: If you're going to insist on proposing to your girlfriend at a restaurant on Valentine's Day, make sure you get her name right. Skyre_Rose witnessed a dude get down on one knee and ask, "Hannah, will you marry me?" She said, "Hannah?! Who the **** is Hannah?" Then she threw her drink at him and stormed out. 

This was either two actors practicing a devastating scene or one very sorry guy. 

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Several of these scenes seem super cinematic, and this next one is no exception. A Reddit user with a name too filthy to mention here witnessed something truly spectacular. "Old man proposed to old woman," they wrote. "He tried to get off the chair to kneel, tripped, and fell and I assume broke something since he couldn't get back up and we had to call an ambulance.

"My manager had to driver her teeth to the hospital separately because she had taken them out to eat her soup (lord knows why) and left them on the table in the confusion." Incredible. No word on whether or not they eventually got engaged. 

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Of course, not every Valentine's disaster includes a proposal. Some of them include mistresses! Like this story, from kobra_kyle: "I once saw a couple come in to eat. Halfway through the dinner, the man's wife shows up to surprise the couple. The wife took the wine bottle and poured the remnants on the husband's head, took off her ring, and told the girlfriend she could have him." 

He cheated on his wife. On Valentine's Day. What did he tell her? Was he like, "Sorry, honey, I have a romantic dinner with clients tonight?" What a douche. On the upside, he tipped his server $100 for the trouble.

Sort of similarly, when venustas told the guy she'd started seeing that she couldn't go out on Valentine's Day because she was a waitress, he got so upset that he asked a different girl out, came to the restaurant where she worked, sat in her section, and then "proceeded to spend the entire evening making a fool out of himself and making his date uncomfortable" while he tried to make her jealous.

She never went out with him again, and I can't imagine his date that night did either.

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Valentine's Day seems to be when the truth finds you, no matter what. T97brandt watched a couple who were sitting at the bar one Valentine's Day. When the man got up to go to the bathroom, a random woman approached the girlfriend and "revealed that she recently matched with the woman's boyfriend on Tinder and had hooked up a week earlier."

The girlfriend was drunk and didn't want to believe the story, but the other woman showed her his profile and their conversations. Her boyfriend (of three years!!) cheated on her, and she only found out because a random woman happened to run into her in a bar. Did that woman know they were going to be there? Or was it just a coincidence? I have so many questions about this bonkers drama. 

This last story is very dramatic as well. But it has a happy ending, so for all you lovebirds out there, this one's for you. 

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Icmedia was a manager at a casual wings-and-pizza place. Not the fanciest, most romantic destination for a dinner, but nevertheless... A guy called ahead and asked if they could put a ring in a dessert on Valentine's Day. They say yes, and he brings the ring in the day before. 

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To keep it safe, they put it in the office safe. The day arrives. The couple shows up, they're happy, in love, excited, order champagne, yada yada yada. The manager makes a special off-menu dessert for the big occasion. Then, they wrote, "I went to the safe to get the ring, and... It wasn't there." They start panicking, asking everyone and looking everywhere for it. No one knows where this ring went.

Eventually, they call the owner. "It turns out," they wrote, "that he had seen the ring in the safe, and thought it was something a customer had left behind. Figuring that he had come into an extremely lucky situation, he decided (like the scumbag he was) that he'd take it for himself and save money on a gift for his wife on Valentine's."

So the ring had been located, but the owner wouldn't bring it to the restaurant, so they had to stall while the manager drove to his house to get it. The bar manager did some elaborate cocktail presentation with fire and tricks to kill time while the manager raced to the owner's house to get the ring. 

"I rushed back in after about 15 minutes of being on the brink of a heart attack," they wrote, "placed the ring on the dessert, and had their server take it out." 

She said yes. And the manager searched for a new job starting the very next day. 

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