I have a family member who once had to wait tables at Denny’s overnight, and fights happening after the bars closed was a virtual certainty at least a couple of times per week.
No surprise, there.
I went to school with a huge black girl, who worked that shift, at a diner, down the street from a disco (late 70’s). She had a pretty good method of keeping order. She’d walk up to an unruly table with a glass pot of coffee, and announce that “any mo’ neverminds outta this table, you be gittin a free potta joe - upside da head !” She pulled it off flawlessly. After I moved to CA, in the 80’s, I was reminded of her, in the Spicoli scene with the robber, in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”. Thanks.
One of my first jobs was working in a Waffle House knockoff. The manager told me I would not be working the overnight shift and pointed to a bullet hole in the grill hood as the reason.