Red, Red Wine

A clumsy waiter causes some drama at Howard's dinner

May 31, 2005

Howard needed Robin’s opinion on how to handle a situation he went through this weekend. Howard was out shopping with girlfriend Beth Ostrosky when he saw her fawning over an expensive Stella McCartney purse. Against her objections he bought her the purse to be a good guy because she really loved it. Howard said the purse was over $400 and came out to close to $600 with tax. Later that same day he and Beth were out to dinner with Booker’s ex-girlfriend, Lynda Lopez, when a waiter accidentally spilled an entire glass of red wine over Beth’s new, white purse. Howard said the poor guy apologized like crazy and Howard felt bad, but he also felt like he needed to do something. The manager came over and was very apologetic as well and Howard said he was just bummed that the new $400 purse was ruined. The manager offered to pay any for any cleaning expenses and Howard didn’t want to push it any further because he was afraid the waiter would get in trouble. Howard checked the receipt and realized the pocket book was closer to $600 and again told the manager how bummed out he was by it. But then the manager questioned Howard in front of everyone saying that Howard just said the purse was $400. Then the guy joked that this must happen to Howard a lot. Howard thought the manager was pretty out of line with those comments but again didn’t want to make a scene. The worst part of all of it was that the manager still charged him the full bill for dinner, including the spilt glass of wine, and never even brought a new glass of wine out! Beth later was able to clean the purse but by that time the purse looked closer to two years old than two hours old. Howard was wondering if he should call the restaurant and ask them to replace the purse. Both Robin and Gary agreed that, while the restaurant should have comped Howard’s tab, he shouldn’t call back and make a fuss because then he’ll be reported in the papers as being a dick who can’t buy his girlfriend a new purse. Howard agreed with that logic and said fine, he won’t do anything about it.