You Forgot Your Change!

rhysiana:

A Shitty/Lardo meet-cute for a prompt I saw earlier today: You look like you can barely afford to eat out, and you still gave me the
best tip I have ever received from a single person. [Also on AO3]

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In theory, taking a job waiting tables at the posh
restaurant near the yacht club was genius. Where better to make big tips than a
place frequented by people who clearly had too much money?

Turns out, rich people didn’t tip that well. Lardo had no
idea why, but it appeared to be the truth. She still needed the job, though, so
she stuck with it. Art supplies weren’t cheap, and she had a show coming up.

Not that today is going to be much help for her art supply
fund. She maybe shouldn’t have made the mistake of inadvertently insulting
hyperrealism earlier, because now Beth Ann, who was hostess this afternoon, was
assigning all the stingiest people she could find to Lardo’s section. It wasn’t
even like Lardo had said it was bad! She just said it was technically
impressive, but often compositionally uninteresting. It wasn’t like she’d
memorized the portfolios of all her fellow servers.

Looking at the guy Beth Ann had just seated, she thought
maybe she should consider it, just out of self-preservation. Because this guy
didn’t look like he fit in with this restaurant’s usual clientele at all. He
didn’t fit in with this entire side of town
at all. He was wearing an American flag denim vest over a slogan tee, for god’s
sake. He looked vaguely like a refugee from the set of Dazed and Confused; he looked like a dine-and-dash waiting to
happen.

Still, she was a professional. Sort of. Whatever. She had
standards, anyway. So she stepped up to the table in complete customer service
mode and asked what she could get him.

“I dunno, man, you think I could start with a little light
socialism?”

She blinked at him. She was generally prepared to deal with
customers who went off script, but this was pushing it, even for her. “I’ll see
what I can do about that. How about a drink while you wait for the revolution?”

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