V. I. P.

Every restaurant has its regulars, and every restaurant has its VIP's. We all know that the V stands for "very" and the P for "person", but the balance hangs in the all important I. It could stand for Important, as it is intended, but then it could just as easily stand for Irritating.

The key to being a guest of the first persuasion and not the second, lies in two M's: Manners, and Money.

My restaurant is attached to a hotel, and the our most notable VIP is a man we shall call Mr. W. Mr. W. will periodically come into town and rent out the presidential suite for a month at a time. I'm not sure what he does for a living, or how he spends most of his day, but I do know that every morning at around 9:30am, he comes down for breakfast. I also know that he likes his coffee black, his bacon on the limp side, and doesn't eat potatoes. Instead of potatoes he gets extra bacon.

Mr. W is very particular, bordering on high maintenance. Despite this, I look forward to his visits. He distinguishes himself from your average customer who expects special treatment, by two very important factors; He's polite, and he tips like a member of the socio-economic class to which he belongs.

I thought about adding a third M to the list: Maintenance. As in, don't be high maintenance, but I realized that was futile. VIPs are high maintenance almost by definition. If they weren't, they'd just be regulars. They want their favorite table, ice tea with no lemon, the music turned down. They order food that's not on the menu, or was on the menu last month. They offer expired coupons. This actually happened to me. A prominent jewelry store owner was a regular at my last restaurant, and one day he came in for lunch, and had a promotional coupon for a free desert. It had expired over three months previously, but when I asked my manager, he literally said "Mr. G can have anything he wants." So I have Mr. G his free key lime pie with the whipped cream on the side.

I didn't much care for Mr. G, but it really wasn't about his getting away with using expired coupons. I didn't like him because he treated the servers as if we didn't matter, and was a pretty average tipper. It all come back to those two M's. If I ever have the opportunity to wait on Derek Jeter again, I do so happily because I know he leaves a girl forty percent in cash. I will also try not to mispronounce his name.

And I'll miss Mr. W. when he leaves the hotel in a few days. I'll miss his cheery "Good morning" his "If you please" when I offer him more coffee, and the ten dollar bill that makes its way into my pocket every time he comes down for breakfast.

Its all about those two M's.