Jumping on the restaurant bandwagon (chuckwagon?) here…
Many years ago my wife and I were invited to join her boss and her boss’ husband for dinner at a local restaurant. I didn’t really want to go because, you know, people, but I felt obligated to attend for my wife’s sake.
We got to the restaurant, were seated, given menus, drink orders were taken, and otherwise treated normally. By and by the waitress came around to take our orders. She took the orders from the other three at the table… and then left. I guess I was invisible? By the time my shock had worn off she was out of earshot. I got up to track her down but couldn’t find her. I tried to find another waitress but couldn’t, even though the place wasn’t exactly empty. So I went back to the table and waited. And waited. And waited hoping to flag down a waitress, but there were none. It was as if they had all suddenly abandoned the joint. Finally, 20 minutes later, a different waitress came with the food. Their food, of course. Realizing she had three orders and not four – how perceptive – she asked me what I had ordered so she could go check on it. I told her, through clenched teeth, that previous waitress had neglected to take my order and attempts to find her after the fact were unsuccessful. She apologized profusely and asked me what I wanted. I told her whatever was quickest to make, which in her professional opinion was a Caesar salad. Could be mixed and plated in a matter of seconds, along with a side of warm garlic bread, she happily informed me. Would that suffice? Well, I didn’t want a goddamn Caesar salad, I wanted the surf and turf, but whatever. I was hungry and didn’t want to wait. So I ordered the salad. Wouldn’t you know it, I still ended up waiting like 15 minutes for the damn thing. By the time it arrived everyone else at the table was done with their food. I ate a bit of the salad, professed to be full, and we left.
I got charged for the salad.
Naturally, I stopped at Subway on the way home. Fuckers. They’re long out of business (shocker), the building is now the offices a crappy used car lot, and I still hate them.
**
Another restaurant story: there are only two Italian restaurants in my city. One is a good drive away from us but was worth the drive as 1) the food was good and 2), they didn’t play music in the background, which is something very important to me: as I get older background music becomes much more intrusive to the point of drowning out conversations.
So we get to the restaurant, are seated, drinks and food ordered, and our meals are brought to us. Everything was ship shape and Bristol fashion, and we were maybe ¼ of the way though our entrées when It happened.
When we arrived the restaurant had been completely empty. By the time It happened there were, IIRC, two other couples there. Still very uncrowded. As we were eating and generally enjoying the meal and each other’s company (our kids were quite young then and going out together for dinner was an exceedingly rare treat), we heard an argument begin to form somewhere over by the doorway leading into the kitchen. Well, it wasn’t an argument, exactly, more of a verbal beat-down. Since the person doing the berating wasn’t being quiet, we could hear the whole thing. Cliff notes version: apparently one of the county commissioners (this is a small county so whoever it was was a big fish in a very tiny pond) had made reservations for himself and some of his ~lackeys~ entourage. The owner or manager or whoever it was apparently felt that having us hoi polloi share the same dining space as such a group of distinguished guests would be below his standards, or something. So he spent probably 10 minutes screaming at this poor waiter who had the audacity to seat us rather than turn us away. Apparently the owner/manager/whoever had told his staff that there were reservations for the entire restraurant for the entire night and anyone wanting a table should be denied. Our host 9and the waiter) hadn’t received the message so when the owner/whatever showed up in h is Sunday best to kiss up to the local pols and instead found us encamped in his precious establishment, he lost his shit. What a welcoming experience. A few minutes into his tirade one of the other couples got up together, tossed their napkins on the table, and left.
After the whoeveritwas had calmed down there was a rather long, uncomfortable silence as my wife and I (and the other couple, I suppose) pondered the rest of the evening. That lasted for about 5 minutes until the waiter went to clear the table of the couple of who had left mid-meal and discovered they had not paid. He of course had to report it, which of course triggered another meltdown. That was the final straw: I pulled a $50 from my wallet, tossed it on the table, and we left mid-meal as well.
That was years ago and the restaurant has changed hands at least once in the intervening years and, yep, we haven’t been back to that one, either.
