'I feel like a court jester': Humiliated waitress refuses to sing 'Happy Birthday' to customers, gets scolded by management then required to sing in Italian instead

Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor

Mar 28, 2023 2:30 PM EDT

There's nothing more cringey than that sinking feeling in your gut when you hear restaurant waitstaff emerging from the kitchen with a sparkling dessert in hand and a birthday song on their lips. For some, even when it's not even their birthday, this public hooplah sends them into a fight-or-flight response. As a server, singing for your guests is either going to make or break the job. For notorious extroverts (and unnaturally confident folks who are working on an amateur singing career), entertaining the customer is the best part of the job. For regular people and MOST servers, this is their biggest nightmare.

One woman named Katelyn, a waitress at an upscale Italian restaurant, recently almost lost her job because she refused to sing happy birthday (as a solo performer, by the way) in front of a restaurant full of people. Her managers approached their "request" for her to sing in a demeaning way and it was more of an order than it was an option. Yikes. Katelyn had feeble attempts to avoid singing to strangely eager customers by simply wishing them happy days and good celebrations, which is a much classier approach to a birthday celebration.

Finally, after several successful weeks of avoiding public humiliation, a table asked if she could sing the birthday song in Italian instead. Katelyn did not speak Italian, so she declined. Once management found out, they t old her to Google the lyrics in a foreign language and simply memorize it in 2 minutes before singing to their table for dessert.

As if singing in your own native language was embarrassing enough, Katelyn pushed through and did her performance, only to have the Karen complain to management that she wasn't singing loudly or robustly enough. As if the shame wasn't enough, her boss sent a text the next morning saying how disappointed he was with her.

Tough crowd, huh?

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