Senior moments

Being a fastfood restaurant owner in a mall is never easy — you have to deal with rising food costs, employees who occasionally steal and the uxorious rent charged by malls to their food court tenants.

But the worst of all, according to some restaurant managers? Senior citizens. Yes, seniors with their senior discount cards can be the toughest customers of all.

“We had one older lady, she ordered a porterhouse steak,” recalls the owner of a steak grill in a fast-food court. “The cook started preparing her steak, and she said it had too much fat. So he started cooking another one with more meat on it.” When the lady got her steak, she claimed it didn’t have the same T-bone shape in it as the plastic one displayed in the restaurant’s display window. She wasn’t complaining about the steak, mind you, but about the shape of the bone. “She got very upset, complained to the mayor’s office, wrote letter after letter. The mall showed me the complaint letters. I ended up writing her an apology letter, but she said no, my letter was no good to her; she wanted a personal apology from my supervisor, my cook, and all the people who waited on her.”

Mind you, this is a fast-food stall in a mall, not Prince Albert or Le Soufflé.

While it’s often the case that seniors require special attention, this is no more true than in the world of food courts, where restaurant owners reveal how picky, cantankerous and downright ornery those over the age of 65 can be. And what entitles them to such outbursts? In most cases, they have a license to shrill: a senior citizen discount card, granting them 20 percent off on their food purchase.

While this restaurant owner doesn’t begrudge any senior his or her honest discount, disagreements over who is actually eating the meal can turn into public scenes. “We had a senior who comes and buys three meals, using his discount card,” says another restaurant owner, shaking his head. “We tell him, ‘Sir, the discount only applies to the person bearing the senior card, that’s the law.’ The guy gets indignant, he challenges my staff: ‘How do you know I’m not the one who’s eating all this food?’”

It’s a loophole that often requires restaurants to monitor senior eating habits in the mall, much as ornithologists might stealthily track bird-feeding habits. “If we see them giving their extra meals to their grandchildren or friends without cards at the table, then we have to remind them of the law.”

The worst part is, the seniors often make a scene. “It’s like they don’t care how they act in public. They’ll yell, scream, berate my staff. All to get P20 off their bill.”

Is it senility, or a certain seasoned craftiness that compels seniors to flip out? In any case, making a scene seems a favored modus operandi of senior citizens. After all, if you’ve kicked around the planet long enough, you really don’t mind making other people wait. Sometimes, seniors will order five or six meals — with a long line waiting behind them — then present a single card. When the cashier notes the card is only for one person, one meal, the senior citizen will grandly wave his hand at a table full of people of clearly advanced age nearby — as though trying to convince a row of jurors of the justice of his cause. It’s exasperating, sometimes amusing, and about as time-consuming as a lengthy anecdote being told by Grandpa Simpson.

Even minor purchases legally require a discount. Seniors routinely purchase their meal at one place, then head over to another stall, card in tow, and demand 20 percent off an extra cup of rice. It may seem like a minor nuisance, but restaurants can lose P20,000 or P30,000 a month just by knocking pesos off senior orders.

And it’s not confined to senior citizens, as one fast-food restaurant owner noted: “We had a woman in our line who was mentally disabled. She presented a card saying so, and asked for a 20-percent discount on her iced tea.” At the time, none of the staff knew such a discount card even existed. Seniors, yes; but the mentally ill? “When we didn’t give the discount to her, she had a mental breakdown, right there in line.” Yes, she flipped out over a four-peso discount on her iced tea.

Sure, times are tough, but it’s also tough on restaurateurs, who have to deal with the constant squeeze from mall owners, food suppliers, the labor department, the BIR, and — often — customers themselves. Customer complaints are nothing new to food-court proprietors — but senior citizens are a whole different breed.

And it’s not confined to restaurants. We hear of seniors taking advantage of the generous Makati law that allows free movie attendance for card-carrying seniors who reside in that city. Only trouble is, many seniors simply fake their residence in order to get the card.

Another trouble is that the senior citizen law doesn’t really differentiate income levels. Sure, most seniors probably are on a fixed income and could use a little break on their bill. But others — coming from the US where they’ve lived and saved for decades, or even those who run mega corporations here — have no qualms about whipping out that senior card to get 20 percent sliced off their chicken inasal tab. It’s not like you can ask the customers in a food court to present their SALs. If the card says they’re 65, you have to give them a break.

Or else you get the breakdown.