This is last minute, but I’ll be on Headline News at 5:40 today. I’m talking about automatic gratuities. Some restaurant called the cops on some people who wouldn’t pay! Should be f...
If you’ve come to this website after watching 20/20 or @Anderson Cooper, welcome! Most of my waiter stories can be found in the archives dating from 2004-2009. After that, you’ll find som...
Hello again. Just wanted to let you know I’ll be on Anderson Cooper’s daytime talk show tomorrow afternoon. (May 1) Please check your local listings for showtimes. Guess what? Anderson wa...
Hey everybody. I’ll be on ABC’s 20/20 this Friday night at 10PM. Set your DVRs!
(Another Byrne story I wrote for fun. Comments and free editorial suggestions welcome.) Hoboken used to be a tough town filled with stevedores and working stiffs until a wave of New York real estate ...
(Another Byrne story I wrote a while back. Experimenting with the genre. Enjoy!) It was two o’clock in the afternoon when I heard the shots ring out. If you’ve ever spent time around firearms, the so...
(I wrote this for giggles a while back. Not a very serious work, but I hope you enjoy it.) In my twenty years as both a cop and private investigator I’ve been asked to find a lot of things in New Jer...
I had just been hired to follow a guy. Funny thing was, I had no know idea why I was being hired to follow him. The guy paying me just said, “Keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t get int...
Two weeks ago my dog Buster became unable to jump on the couch. Buster lives on the couch so I found this development mildly worrisome. At nine years old he has some arthritis and is not a limber as ...
My girlfriend loves estate sales. Every weekend for the past couple of months, she’s been hunting for bargains in what I call “dead old lady houses,” usually with me in tow. The irony that I’m engagi...
Hi everybody. I’ll be on CNBC tonight. The program is titled, “Customer Disservice” and it will air at 9pm ET/8pm CT. Tune in!
Hey everybody: Sorry I’ve been away so long. Let’s just say my life is unfolding nicely and I’ve been very busy. I’m enjoying the holidays with my fantastic and lovely girlfri...
I’m a New Jerseyan and proud of it. Here’s why! 1. Because we have the most diners in the world, you can always get something to soak up the booze at 3:00 AM. 2. The Jersey accent makes y...
This morning I read an article in the New York Times that really upset me. Titled, “My Shrink is my Co-Author” the author, Susan Shapiro, describes the ups and downs of writing a book with her longti...
It turns out the story about 25% tips in San Fransisco was made up! But even though the story was bogus, it generated a lot of controversy. Such is the power of tipping!
The subject of tipping sells papers. The mere mention of gratuities – whether it’s about how to, why or who should get them – elicits passionate responses from both Che Guevara t-shirt wearing income...
I have to get to Sirius Radio in Manhattan to do an interview for the Martha Stewart Channel. For me, the best way to travel to Midtown is by bus. It’s not a good idea to go on the air stressed out a...
It’s nine in the morning on September 11, 2001. I’ve gotten up early to take my girlfriend to a job interview on 67th Street in New York. I’m not happy about this. Rush hour in Manhattan’s always a b...
Hey everybody. The paperback edition of Keep the Change is coming out on September 6! I will be doing a couple of book signings in the area. The dates and places are listed below. If you can come, I’...
If you live on the East Coast, you’re probably aware that a hurricane is headed our way. I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little but if we get wacked there’s a possibility that we could lose power ...
My girlfriend Isabel and I are eating at P.F. Chang’s and we’ve run into a problem. The waiter got the order wrong. “This isn’t sweet and sour pork,” Isabel says, pushing her entrée around the plate....
I don’t recommend many books on this site, but I highly recommend you read The Bad Mother by Nancy Rommelmann. From Amazon: “A first novel by the award-winning journalist Nancy Rommelmann, The Bad Mo...
Last night my girlfriend (I haven’t decided on her nom de blog yet.) and I were watching Anderson Cooper when we saw something that cracked us up – Train Lady! If you’re not aware of this story, a yo...
It’s Wednesday evening and I’m at the Meadowlands State Fair next to Giants Stadium. Its “cheap night” and the thirty-dollar unlimited ride pass had been slashed to eighteen bucks. As a result the pl...
This weekend, after six years of fairly uneventful cohabitation, my roommate moved out. So while everybody else was enjoying a splendid Fourth of July weekend, I was hauling dressers, bookshelves, el...
It’s late Thursday night and my girlfriend and I have just returned from a long road trip only to discover that we’re hungry. So we stop into the local TGIF’s to get a bite to eat. TGIF is not my fir...
Willem was the shit and he knew it. Gliding past the waiters and busboys flitting across The Bistro’s polished wooden floors he was in the zone – his sixth waiter sense whispering when his orde...
It’s Saturday night and my girlfriend is pulling her car into her apartment building’s driveway. We’ve just come back from a nice dinner but a brutal, hard rain is falling. Even with the wipers going...
When I was ten years old a movie came out that blew me away. Superman. I loved it so much that every weekend I begged my father for five bucks so my little brother and I could watch Christopher Reeve...
When I was a waiter I saw and heard about restaurant owners and managers pulling all sorts of illegal nonsense. Here are a few of them. 1. Telling a new hire that they wouldn’t be paid during their t...
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