I would have expected the hostess/manager to apologise profusely and offer you some small compensation for you trouble. However, since this didn't happen, I think you made your point in an appropriate and classy manner.

These stories remind me of an incident that happened while I was waiting tables while in college. It was one of the nicer places in town.

Anyway, one night while I was clearing the salad bar (it was my turn to close), I managed to catch a salad dressing ladle on the sneeze guard. (I should have been carrying the dressing buckets one or two at a time, but in the interest of saving time I had loaded at least 4 of the dressing containers into the large, heavy pewter salad bowl and was trying to carry the entire load in one trip.) In horror, I watched the ladle arc through the air, dripping a trail of French dressing across the carpet as it flew. I raced for rags to clean up the mess, hoping to have things ship-shape before the owner noticed my gaffe. First I wiped the side of the salad bar. Then I followed the progress of the thin pink line of dressing across the floor. I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing furiously. The head waitress, bless her heart, saw my plight and pitched in.

Just as I was thinking I was free and clear, I came to the end of the trail. It stopped on the pockets of a patron's leather jacket. I tried to wipe the glob but he began berating me. I offered to have it cleaned but he told me that I was a complete moron and that I had ruined his expensive jacket. I was almost in tears and didn't think things could get any worse. That's when I noticed the owner sitting across the table. The man was one of his "regulars". I wanted to crawl under the table but the head waitress drug me to the kitchen before I could be publicly beheaded.

PS: I wasn't fired for that episode. However, it was threatened. Honestly I doubt the waiter that dumped water on the OP was fired either... unless he had done that a lot more than the once.