If you’re ever in Dickson City, PA and in the mood for Polish food don’t go to Novack’s Food & Spirits. I went there tonight with my mother, great aunt, & grandfather. For starters while the dining room tables are nonsmoking, the bar stools aren’t. The bar being located in the middle of the dining room :smack: After we were seated the waitress took our orders (a Halushki dumpling & pigs-in-the blanket platter for me, my mother & aunt eacth ordered a pigs-in-the-blanket platter, and my grandfather ordered a cheeseburger). I also order deep-fried pickles as an appetizer. About 15 minutes later my mother, aunt, & got our salads. They were fine. Half an hour later the waitress brought half my dinner our. A plate of dumplings & cabagge. She said the rest our food will be “right out”. I asked about my appetizer. She said “it’s coming”. Ten minutes later & after I finished the noodles she brought out my mother’s and aunt’s platters and my pigs-in-the-blanket. My grandfather’s would be “right out”. I finished my food and she finally brought out my appetizer. She then apologized about the delay and said my appetizer and our drinks (3 glasses of tap water and a cup of coffee :rolleyes: ) would be comped. My grandfather’s food was still not ready. I tried to split my pickles with him, but he didn’t like them. Another 15 minutes later they finally brought his hamburger (after everybody else had finished eating). I told the waitress that this was ridiculous and that his meal should be comped. She seemed surprised when I said this and said she “have to talk to someone”. :mad: He ate half his food. When our check came his was still on. The waitress said they’d need to call the owner to comp an entree. I responded, very politely that they could either comp my grandfather’s burger or comp all our food :mad: She walked behind the bar, then came back with the same bill, his buger crossed off and a new total. She didn’t get a tip. How screwed up does your kitchen need to be to send out three full meals, plus salads and appetizer before a simple burger? And to top it all off the food wasn’t even that good (or hot).
Sounds like the owner/manager was in the kitchen that night 
I don’t understand why you stiffed the waitress for what seems to be the kitchen’s fault. She kept you informed and comped part of your meal for the inconvience without even being asked.
Perhaps you didn’t mention the bad service you got but it seems to me, you penalized the person who had no control over the matter.
Nah. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a waitress, but if I had given crap-tastic service like that I sure wouldn’t expect a tip. It’s the waitresses job to make sure stuff comes out in order, hot, etc. even if it means she needs to hassle the kitchen.
She deserved nothing.
I’ve been a waiter, and i’m generally sympathetic to the argument that you shouldn’t stiff the waiter if the problem you experience is something that he or she had no control over, like slow food.
If i were the OP, i would have asked for the manager or the owner and made clear to him or her that the speed and timing of the meal was completely unacceptable, and that some or all of the meal should be comped as a result. In cases like this, it’s better to get the person in charge to your table than to use the waiter as an intermediary.
At the same time, though, a good waiter should be aware of the quality of the diner’s experience, and should do everything possible to make sure that shit like this doesn’t happen. If the kitchen doesn’t get all the appetizers up at once, tell them they need to move their asses. If the kitchen starts putting up main courses before your table is ready, tell them that they need to wait for your call. A good restaurant should be about communication between the servers and the chefs, and if that doesn’t happen then the server needs to take some responsibility.
And when things don’t go right, as they clearly didn’t for the OP, the server needs to be on top of things rather than pretending that simply comping a coffee and an order of fried pickles will make the whole thing better.
As alice_in_wonderland says, i wouldn’t have expected a tip if i had been the waiter in the OP’s situation.
As a girl who is currently a bartender and who waited tables for years, I am almost always (instinctively, because this industry makes you hyper-sensitive) on the side of the server/bartender.
But if everything went down just as the OP described it…that server was just a moron. Plain and simple. You don’t bring out entrees before appetizers. You don’t bring out incomplete entree orders. The OP doesn’t say anywhere that they dealt with anybody BUT this one server, which means she knew what was going on; it’s not like the kitchen screwed up and some other server ran the wrong food, or ran it out of order.
Of course she isn’t responsible for the kitchen’s problems, but she didn’t help matters by being oblivious and acting ignorant as to why her customers were upset about it. If I order an appetizer I don’t want it after I get my entree. I also feel rude eating in front of somebody whose entree doesn’t show up til ten minutes later.
If the kitchen was that bad, she should’ve sent the manager to the table. If she couldn’t locate the manager she should’ve assumed that her table shouldn’t have to pay for food they never got/got late/out of order. She should’ve apologized, early on, at the very least. Even if she did nothing else right.
Failing that, she shouldn’t expect a tip.
And trust me, I have said that less than a dozen times my whole life.
Well, then, next time I’m in your neck of the woods, I’m treating you to your thirteenth restaurant meal.
I think I can guarantee that no single element here, much less the confluence of all circumstances mentioned, will ever occur in my case.
As a counterpoint, if you are ever in the mood for Chinese food in Salina, Kansas, I recommend that you get out of the mood as quickly as possible. In fact it would be a good idea to fast until well you’re well beyond the city limits.
Uh, I re-read it-never mind. :smack:
Oooh my turn cuz I didn’t pit them back when I should have.
About two months ago we went to Marchese’s Olive Pit in Milwaukee.
We wait about 10 or 15 minutes to sit down.
We order three large pizzas.
We wait and wait and wait and wait. After 75 minutes (yes, over an hour) we ask when our food will be out. She tells us that she thinks it will be a few more minutes. My father asked her to go back to the kitchen and find out exactly how much longer it will be. He reminded her that we’ve been here nearly an hour and a half at this point and that we ordered three pizzas over an hour ago. She came back out and told us that the first pizza would be ready in 15 minutes, the second in a half hour and the third out would come out in 45 minutes. 
We pointed around the room “See them, they walked in 20 minutes ago and they’ve got their pizzas…those people over there, they got here at the same time we did, they had appetizers, a pizza and they’re already leaving.” “Well, you guys had large pizzas.” That was the ONLY explination she could offer. So we got up and left. I stayed back to pay the bar bill. She came out a few minutes later handed me a bill for about $60, I told her we are not going to pay for the pizzas…sure I’ll talk to the owner, bring her out. A few minutes later I got a new bill with only the drinks on it. I paid that, tipped her (it wasn’t her fault I assume) and went on our way.
Oh, and a few days later it dawned on us why, when we walked in, there was a family sitting at a table chanting “food food food food food food.”
Then KFC was out of chicken. :smack:
Crappy night.
Joey P, I have a story very much like that. I ordered some fancy pancake dish, my friend just ordered a bagel. She got hers, I didn’t get mine. We figured that mine was more complicated and so took longer to make. Nope. When my patience was growing really thin, some guy walked in, got seated, ordered the same thing I did, ate, paid and left. And I still hadn’t gotten mine yet.
The place went out of business after another couple of months.
Oh, and Jackmanii, you live in Salina?
But you do have Scheme Pizza.
I have never eaten there myself but my parents and my sisters still rave about it. They planned their drives from eastern MO to CO so they would be able to eat at Scheme Pizza.
Tony’s Pizza is awesome as well. At least it used to be.