Throwaway time!
About 15 years ago I didn't have my shit together so my mom thought it would be a good idea if I went to stay with my half brother and his pregnant wife and work at their little diner as a prep cook so she could stay home. Where they lived was about the most boring place in the world and while it was surrounded by cattle ranches, the other neighbors in the area worked for the U.S. government at nuclear launch silos which were peppered throughout the ranchland. You have to put those things somewhere, right?
Anyway, one afternoon we were finishing up a lunch service when two state troopers burst in, started talking to my brother, then start going over to the four tables we had seated and talked to them. Within a minute, all four tables get up and leave along with the state troopers.
The whole place was completely empty except for my brother and I.
I lean out the window where we pass the food to the bar and my brother gives me half-worried look and waves me off before I can say anything. We were not getting along very well at the time and I didn't want to push it.
Just then, a jumble of a dozen state troopers and Air Force guys, either with a sidearm or a rifle, pile in through the front door and take up posts at the front and back doors, inside.
One of the Air Force guys with a rifle leans into the kitchen through a door by the bar and ask me "You the only one in here?" He was nervous and he had a rifle and that made me really nervous and the "Yep!" I instantly squeaked out probably sounded like a little girl. We were used to the keyturners from the silos coming in for food but they were very young and not scary at all- more like really polite, clean-cut college kids. And they never had guns.
Now, that would normally be the end of the story because the next thing that happened is the same guy walked into the bar and shuttered the windows I could see out of and said "Hold tight, sir!" as he did. After a moment of being pissed off about that, I leaned over and turned on the grease-covered CCTV which had a camera looking out into the dining room. We almost never had it on but it still worked. Boo-yah!
On the CCTV, I could see them pulling a few tables together as some more people came in carrying what looked like carry-on luggage, putting it on the table. One by one they were unzipped and opened and from what I could see on the TV, it looked like telephones and computers. Sure enough, some older guy who was not dressed in a uniform hurries in through the front door, talking on a cellphone, picks up one of the phones from the table and puts his other phone away. Two guys, also older, sit down on either side of the first.
Except for the guys at the front and back doors, everyone else had their back to the table.
For the next half hour, the only three people who did anything were the three guys at the table. The CCTV didn't have sound but a couple of times they got into a shouting match because I could hear it through the shutters on the bar window. Once, all of them stood up at about the same time and just stood, looking down at the computer on the table. About ten minutes in, my brother peeked in through the kitchen door and deadpanned an order for a grilled cheese sandwich- which I handed back to him in about three minutes flat.
After a while, the two men flanking the first stood up and started giving orders to the rest while the non-uniformed man was escorted out. The satphones and computers got zipped up and toted away, the crew at the back door of the diner met the crew at the front and in just a few minutes my brother and I were all alone, again.
I asked him what just happened and he said it wasn't any of my business, or his. I asked him who ordered the grilled chese sandwich. "That was for me." he said. "I could hear a some of what they were arguing about and I didn't want to throw up." He also told me they'd paid for everyone's meal and rented out the whole place to the tune of $1,500 "for as long as they needed it". A few days later, he gave me $500 and a ticket back to mom's.
tl;dnr: The weirdest conversation I never heard from customers who didn't buy a thing to eat and left the best tip, ever.