“There was one woman—it was a VIP tasting menu, I remember this: She just threw up on the table, in the middle of an extended tasting menu. They cleaned it up, and she “boot-and-rallied.” She finished the meal.”

That’s what one staffer told Christine Whitley of New York Magazine about the experiences in fancy-pants New York restaurant, Per Se.

“We can accommodate wacky people, and for the most part, 95 percent of the guests are well behaved. Then you have the couple that goes and has sex in the bathroom—that happens quite a lot. You have people who throw up—they throw up a lot. … You see people cheating on their spouses, overhear bits of conversation. …

"Spitting in the food doesn’t happen in New York restaurants. Honestly, people wouldn’t do that to the food. At Per Se, the cooks work 70 or 80 hours a week and make next to nothing, but they work because they want to cook. And to do that to something, to spit in prep work that someone has spent eight hours of work on—blood, sweat, and tears and all—it’s just not done. And if something drops on the floor, it gets thrown away. With the recent Department of Health crackdowns, those letter grades are bought—by that, I mean every restaurant that has an A has either an in-house specialist or a specialist they’ve hired. Before the DOH inspections, every high-end restaurant has four or five in-house inspections, and then everyone has their own set of fire drills—you put on hats and gloves when the inspector comes, you hide things away. …

“The staff is incestuous. I think half the staff is dating the other half of the staff right now. I mean, you spend 60 hours a week with these people, so what do you think is going to happen?”