Separate bills, please... please??

Today was the last day on the job for a couple of my coworkers. To toast them and bask in the warmth of their camaraderie one final time a gaggle of us went to lunch at Steamworks. Since there was 18 of us, the gentleman organizing the lunch suggested that we pre-order by fax. Do you see it brewing? Can you sense the debacle that was going to become our lunch hour (or lunch hour and a half)? Everyone diligently sends him their lunch order. He prints it out and faxes it to Steamworks (apparently they prefer fax, not email). Like the fucknut that keeps trying to fax my cell phone: stop it, ya fucknut! We all arrive down there at noon. I guess the first inkling of things going awry should’ve been that menus had been placed at all the seats. If we had pre-ordered, why did we need menus? But we all assumed it was an oversight. After our waiter filled up our water glasses, made a limp attempt to upsell some beer and essentially wrung his hands a lot, he wandered away. It eventually became clear that he was unaware that we had pre-ordered our lunch. He went to go and check, and said nothing had come through the fax. We all crack our menus and get ready to place our orders. Again. Then they find the fax! Hooray! But what was the point of pre-ordering, if the food prep hadn’t even begun. Do you get the irony here?
Anyways, enjoyed some good conversation with my coworkers. The food came and I ate everything on my plate (funny how running 38k over three days can make you hungry… and make your ass sore). Then comes the matter of the bill. Another coworker makes mention of having the bill split. This sends our waiter into a tizzy. My coworker presses him a little more firmly. The waiter says dubiously, “well, if that’s really what you want…” and sort of waits for us to pshaw him and say we’ll pay the lump sum. When we don’t do this he looks mildly panicked and then goes to see what he can do about it. Comes back and declares it cannot be done. We have asked too much! Clearly the POS system is far to advanced for him and given that the gratuity has already been factored in he no longer feels the need to be any sort of assistance to us. Bravo! The other thing that kept on happening throughout this ordeal was that our waiter constantly looked like we had insulted him or something. He would get this pained look on his face like his feelings were hurt, or like he had bad gas, and look quite flummoxed. It was really weird.
I think we’ve all been there when four or six or even eight people get together for dinner and somehow not enough money lands in the communal pot so people that shouldn’t have to end up paying more than their fair share. Now we were going to have to do this with 18 people, with gratuity already factored in at 15%? Super. People start pulling out cash and credit cards and amassing the funds to wipe out the tab. The waiter comes back and his mind is absolutely blown when he learns that people wish to pay separately. It was surreal. This guy wasn’t 19 and green. He was in his mid-twenties, working the lunch hour rush at Steamworks: a popular work and tourist destination downtown. As one of us put it, “is he from another planet?”. As the gentleman who has requested separate bills in the first place put it, “What, I’m going to put a $300 fucking tab on my credit card?”. Amen, brothers.
Our waiter collects the various credit cards and people shout random numbers at him and he goes to run them through. I think, after he took them and left, I saw him crying behind some kegs of beer in the back room. Meanwhile, we all placed bets at how badly he would bungle the credit card charges. Miraculously, he managed to run them all through successfully, though his hands were shaking and his breath smelled of alcohol upon his return.
That was my lunch hour that was ninety minutes. It was fun. And now I’m sleepy because I ate too much. I should go get a coffee. And a donut.