Sorry but I have to disagree. If I own my own business, I focus most of my investment on getting and keeping happy customers. Grouchy customers, once pissed off, tend to stay that way no matter what you do. Unless you give them free meals for life, most people like will just find something unsatisfactory to complain about.
I get the guy out the door and try to make sure I don’t lose any more customers to the same thing.
So what did you do for dinner after leaving the restaurant? McDonalds, Big Mac hold the onions?
You know, for each over-reaction, there is an equal and opposite action. This reminds me of a time I went to my favorite bar with a date. The place is famous for tenderloin sandwiches. I like mine loaded with onions. She ordered hers with just lettuce and catsup, I ordered mine with onions. The waitress eyed my date, and said "would you like those onions on the side? I was puzzled why she would do this, but I figured I’d take em on the side as she suggested. And then it struck me. When the sandwiches came, I didn’t eat the onions. Thank you Miss Observant Waitress, or it would have been no nookie for onion-breath Chas that night. She got a nice tip.
If you still feel that strongly that what happened was wrong, I would suggest contacting the customer service department of their corporate headquarters. They probably have a web site to get that info from. You can choose one of 2 ways - flat out tell them what happened and that you think you were right and they were wrong, or you could play coy and ask them what their policy is first.
I would use the phone rather than a letter, because you can interact with the CS rep. Oh yeah, in most cases, when you contact the big guys like that, you sometimes end up with coupons for the next visit - because they will ask you to give them a try again. This time you will know not to order the mushrooms.
I always wondered why people go to so much trouble to complain about things like this. It was a one time event, not something like the bathroom always being dirty. I can’t really tell if your core complaint is that the waitress wasn’t paying attention or if the offer they made wasn’t good enough or if you didn’t feel as if anyone was kissing your ass when they tried to resolve the situation. Some people are like that. They just aren’t happy until they feel someone is kissing their ass.
You can’t realistically complain about the waitress because it was an honest mistake. Don’t blame her for not making the connection between your stated desire and the ingredients in all dishes. This is a leap you should expect from someone who is well paid and well trained in Food Service (fine dining), not some college student trying to put herself through school by working for minimum wage. I assume the challenges in her life are much greater than your own.
You threaten to never go back but we all know that you probably had to wait for 2 hours to get in. Needless to say, they are not hurting for customers. So, in the end, the threat to not go back mostly only serves to deprive you of a product that is wildly popular and, hence, probably pretty good (remember why you went there to begin with?).
You went to this restaurant, I assume to share some food with friends/family and not have to do the dishes (for a reasonable price). I’d say you could have met your objective if you weren’t so picky. You should focus on that. Now everyone who went with you had their evening ruined because you got upset that management didn’t kiss your ass enough.
They may send you a coupon because their management consultants will tell them that they need to “delight” their customers. I feel that this is just a management consultant bullshit term that will fade with time like all the others (“think out of the box”, “excellence”, “glidepath”, etc…). In any case, you have a moral responsability to tear it up if you are planning to profit from their mistake and not go back anyway.
If my 8 year old was this upset about onions, as a parent, I would be concerned and try to teach her to toughen up a little. You know, there are kids in Africa and China who don’t even have onions to eat!
I’ve never seen anyone who has used this line in all seriousness before. Wow.
Well, I had a problem with my prime rib at the same restaurant chain.
I had happily eaten a lot of my potato and the veggies but had a hard time with the prime rib. It was under cooked. I explained my situation with the waitress and that prime rib is not exactly something that requires canine teeth to rip apart the meat.
She didn’t even hesitate. She said she would handle it.
A few minutes later, the manager (yes the manager with the waitress at his side) brought me a brand new plate of medium-rare prime rib, another potato and another side of vegies.
It could have been an off night for the restaurant you were in, everyone makes mistakes and I kind of think that you should have given the wait staff chick the benefit of the doubt. She did what she felt was right, which you didn’t – she will chalk it up to experience (I would hope.) The manager probably didn’t handle the situation as good as he should have but maybe learned a lesson.
BTW, I ate about 1/4 of the original prime rib and ended up with practically a full meal to take home with me for the next night’s dinner.
I was impressed because this one person (including the waitress) handled my situation very well. I have had bad experiences at other places where I was disgruntled but figured that hell, I make mistakes too and usually give a place (be it a restaurant, some other service place or a store) a second chance.
IMO, one slightly bad experience shouldn’t sour you forever. If it does, then I think you are expecting too much from the human race.
Oh, and I would take that experience and remember it for the next time you enter a restaurant. Ask the waitperson if the dish you want to order has onions. If he or she says, “I don’t know” ask them to go ask the cook.
We all make mistakes and because you can’t eat after having seen and smelled onions is not the restaurant’s fault. They offered you a new meal with (apparently) the proper non-onion side but you refused.
This is a nitpick that’s been bothering me since the first time I checked this thread. Yes, the waitress apparently didn’t bear in mind your vehement distaste for onions, and so didn’t ask the kitchen to specially prepare mushrooms without them. However, aren’t you one who poured them over your food without tasting them first?
This reminds me of something that happened at the restaurant that I work at a couple months ago.
A woman and her daughter came into the restaurant and sat down. They were very friendly, and the little girl was really polite. That woman informed me that it was the first time this little girl had been out to a restuarant. I brought her a rootbeer which the little girl promptly knocked over(on accident, not on purpose). Her mother felt terrible that I had to clean it up and was apologizing profusly the entire time. I assured her that it happened all the time and brought out their food. They were happily chomping down there food when the woman called me over to their table. She pointed to her napkin and said, “Is that a catapiller?” It was, and it had been sauteed with the rest of her food (what a horrible way to die). I was mortified. I felt horrible, and offered to replace the food. Of course they wouldn’t be charged for any of this meal. The very nice lady said,“No,no, it’s okay, we’ll still eat it, I was just wondering if it was,in fact, a catapiller.” She still wanted to pay fo it! She said that she felt really bad about the spilled drink. Of course I didn’t charge her for the meal, but she left me a fifteen dollar tip becuase she felt so bad about the whole thing. Anyways, I just wanted to say… Why can’t all people be like that!? Okay, I know it’s not going to happen, but it sure would be nice.
Back when I was married, my then-wife and I went out to that certain australian-themed restaurant for some nice dead cow. We went in and were told it would be about 10 minutes…the place was slightly busy, but not too bad.
25 minutes later, I approached the front and asked why we had not been seated. She kind of hemmed-and-hawed and said she would find something for us soon. I said “OK” and went back to the washroom and overheard one of the waitresses talk about my ex-wife (who was rather overweight) and saying something to the effect of “not seating them out front in view of the other guests - we don’t want to ruin their appetites! har har!”.
I turned, walked back, got my then-wife, and walked out. I mentioned to the hostess “we won’t be back”…she made kind of a strange smile and shrugged. We then went to Black Angus and had a great dinner.
So, Fuck You, Australian themed restaurant. I didn’t know only the beautiful people could dine there. Hope you choke on a piece of gristle.
Phouchg
Lovable Rogue
I work as a baker in a cafeteria in our town library. We do our best to make sure the food is handled in a sanitary manner. The place is less than a year old, the equipment is all new, and we want to be a good place. But accidents happen, and customers can be mean. Thankfully VERY few are. But recently a customer complained that she found a hair in her cinnamon roll. Well it was there, and judging by the look it may have been mine(I WEAR A HAIRNET!) So the manager apologized profusely, offered either a new roll or her money back. She took the roll. Two days later an inspector from the Health Department shows up. The bitch had reported us for the hair. AFTER she took the new product and said she was satisfied with the arrangement. I can’t figure people out.
Tasting them? Tasting them? How about smelling them?
I try to avoid said establishment.
Not because of any service flaw, I’ve been there several times (its my little sister’s favorite place) and each time the service was great. I’m just picky. I don’t like onions. I don’t like mushrooms. I don’t like heavy spices. I’m iffy on large amounts of beef (which they coat in crusty spices that I don’t like.) About the only thing that remotely interests me that they serve is the baked potato, which I find they do wonderfully.
But I know I’m a picky eater and annoy all of my servers. I try to tip them well and carefully order things that can be picked apart and re-formed into Kathryn edible meals. My pickyness is not their problem. I appreciate that part of their job is to help make sure that I can eat what they bring me, but it has to be within the confines of what is available.
I work as a statistician and one of the main areas I deal with on a daily basis is customer satisfaction. It is primarily business to business which is different than the OP but maybe some of the same ideas apply.
What we have discovered is that irrate customers can do much damage, but that some customers are not worth having and can do more damage. Some customers are less profitable or even unprofitable to service, tie up resources that could be used to service ‘good’ customers and put much wear and tear on employees causing low moral and turnover. There is a trend starting where a company will not automatically let you be a customer but put you through a screening process first. The idea is that good customers (one where the are relatively easy to work with and you make a profit) can be given the resources of the company and not have them sucked up by customers that are less profitable and hard to please or be charged more (like a difficult client tax).
Now, the OP is not business to business and so much of the above isn’t as strongly applicable, but the OP is a picky customer and probably has a ‘hate’ list of companies she won’t be a customer. They lost money on the deal, both in the meal served and the space the OP was taking where someone else more profitable could have been sitting (resources). The OP made the waitress look bad (and she deserved looking bad) but this made the waitress feel less about her job and she made less in tips both from the lack of tip from the OP and from the lack of a customer that could have been sitting instead of the OP in her section. If the business has too many difficult customers, she may leave (turnover).
The OP is not a ‘good’ customer to have and the restaurant is better off without her. Too bad they couldn’t pre-screen ;). Now the OP will broadcast her dissatisfaction and, if the stats hold, will stop the business from getting about 4 customers (if she is very dissatisfied).
Blink
dwtno, you’re eating mushrooms, and you have the nerve to complain about onions? Some people. 
I understand. You feel like they didn’t care enough about your business to remedy the situation to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is unusual. Charging you for the items you ate a la carte is just reasonable enough that some people would accept that without complaint. Ergo, it makes it a gray area as far as the decision goes. Canby pointed out there are people who actively try to get their food free, so it is unfortunate that restaurants have to consider that. Kinda like the rules here. We have to accept a certain number of trolls, and try to live around them. Occassionally someone gets banned undeservedly, and it takes extra effort to clear it up.
Nostradamus, what a flippin idiot. He actually told you to go away?
puk said:
In general, you chock up the error as the type of thing that occassionally happens. It is unpleasant, but it isn’t intentional and it is a one time occurrence that my not happen next time. So you may wish to return to the restaurant in the future and try again. Next time you’ll know better than to get the mushrooms, or whatever. For instance, last night I ate at a family steakhouse that specializes in a buffet bar. I go there regularly, because it’s easy and has a variety of food to choose from. Last night, none of the servers noticed me sit down and did the standard offer of fresh rolls, tell their name, get fresh plates, etc. I finished plate one and had to refill my own tea from a pitcher sitting conveniently nearby. I was ready for a second plate that I did not have, when a guy noticed and said something to the waitress for my area. It took her a couple more minutes to make it over with the fresh plate. Turns out it was her first week working there and wasn’t quite familiar with her assigned area. Did I get upset? No, not really. I was starting to look around for the staff when the guy noticed, and they did fix the problem. Was the service the greatest? No - I still had to refill my tea again, but I drink lots when eating and so that’s not entirely uncommon to be waiting on drink refills. She did manage to provide more plates, and apologized several times. Was I happy? Not entirely. Am I going to stop going there because this has happened? No. This is the second time in 6 years of eating there that the waitstaff missed a cue. Usually the service is acceptable to really good. So I’ll take it in stride and return, even though this particular experience was sub-par. It’s the same thing. A person goes to a restaurant, and for whatever reason there’s a problem with the order or whatnot. If the staff handles it satisfactorily, the person may feel that their response to solving the problem showed enough concern for customer satisfaction that it is worth returning to try again. Next time perhaps there won’t be an error. And if in the future there’s another error, you know they’ll take care of you.
Now if the service is just downright cruddy to begin with, and then there’s an error, then no, I’m probably not likely to return.
miticodan said:
It was a mistake on the staff’s fault and it affected the ability to enjoy the meal. What’s so hard to understand? We all know that errors happen, but how they handle them shows how they feel about their customers.
I imagine it started as the waitress messed up the order even though an inordinate amount of effort went into specifying no onions on anything, then grew as the resolution to the problem seemed half-hearted and uncaring. A little of both, I think (from my third party observation).
I guess everyone has their own take on things, but it didn’t seem that way to me.
That’s funny, considering I’ve been to chain restaurants that have college waitstaff priding themselves on their ability to remember and get every order correct without writing anything down, and this on a party of 12. But hey, it wasn’t that restaurant. Seems to me you’re a waiter/waitress and someone makes a strong point that they don’t want something, you take the time to check it out. If your place writes tickets (like most places do), then you write it down, and probably underline it a couple times. “NOTE: NO ONIONS!!!” That’s what I would do, but then I’ve never been a waiter. Just seems sensible to me. (Of course she did turn around and offer dwtno sauteed onions right after, so maybe that should have been a clue not to expect wonders from said waitress.)
So your point is the loss of his business is not a big impact to the restaurant? Okay, I think we all know this. But those little incidents add up. One person here, another there. If the level of service is unsatisfactory to many people, then that tide of business will be affected. As for being deprived of something “popular and, hence, probably pretty good”, popularity does not equate to greatness. Sometimes crappy things are popular - I only have to mention rap music, South Park, and Madonna. There’s no accounting for taste.
I just love this part. Someone comes to the Pit to vent about something that aggravated them, and someone else has to make it the poster’s fault.
Ballybay said:
The onions weren’t obvious - they were buried. If I’m getting something I think is prepared a certain way and I expect to enjoy, I don’t usually pretaste it before applying it to my food. Kinda like salad dressing. I’ve ordered salads with ranch dressing at places and then discovered that for whatever reason I didn’t like their particular dressing, despite the fact that I usually do like ranch dressing and pretty much order it exclusively. But I don’t go around pretasting ranch dressing to see if it’s any good.
BlinkingDuck said:
I’m genuinely curious about this. How would this type of screening be implemented in a restaurant?
hostess: “Good evening, how many in your party?”
guest: “There are 5 of us. Last name Smith. How long is the wait?”
hostess: “About 10 minutes. Now while you’re waiting, I would like for everyone in your party to please fill out the following questionaire. It’s not long, just a few simple questions about how you react, and then we’ll decide if we can seat you or not.”
guest: “Pardon? What do you mean, ‘decide if you can seat us’?”
hostess: “It’s this new thing, we’re screening potential patrons to see if they’re good customers or not. All you have to do is answer the multiple choice questionaire and then it will only take a minute to review and decide if your party will be worth having here.”
Okay, I might could go on, but you see the point. Or was that what you meant by “Now, the OP is not business to business and so much of the above isn’t as strongly applicable…”
Except sauteed mushrooms from a restaurant you’re unfamiliar with.
Except sauteed mushrooms from a restaurant you’re unfamiliar with.
Irishman – yes I see the point that is why I said that. The screening process is impossible in a restaurant but it is a trend I am seeing in business to business. I do so little business to individual customer and it seems like its own area with its own nuances that I am not experienced in. The screening process is becoming more popular and am curious as to whether it is a fad or a genuine trend. I can say that the businesses that screen and are our clients seem to be doing well so there may be something to it.
The other points I bring up I still think are applicable but not 100% direct. For example, losing an individual customer for a restuarant seems like much less a loss than a business losing a business customer. Employee turnover may not be as much an issue because maybe you can just grap another waitress off the street and throw them in (easily replaced). I don’t know but I would still think turnover would be bad. I also think that ‘bad’ customers taking up a seat (resources) wouldn’t be as big a loss in a restaurant as in business to business nor would the diverting of resourses from good customers to bad customers.
It is different, but there is still some application.
Blink
Years ago, I went to an Applebee’s (similar to TGI Friday’s) for lunch. Sat down in a mostly empty section and ordered tea. The waitress brought the tea, and said she’d be right back to take my order. Twenty minutes later, I got up, put just enough money on the table to pay for the tea, and left, without ever having seen the waitress again. (I had a book with me, so I didn’t realize so much time had gone by.)
I suppose I would have been justified in not paying for the tea, since the service was so crappy. However, even though the service was terrible, I felt that the restaurant was due its money for the tea I drank.
The OP’er ate the side items, or at least some of them. In my opinion, he or she should have paid for the sides.
One point – if you hate onions, to the point of being physically unable to eat at the sight of them, why on earth do you go to a restaurant that makes an onion-based appetizer a primary focus of its advertising?
Sauron said:
Because one appetizer does not define the whole menu. Or do you also think that everthing served at Chili’s is required to be coated in red peppers?
Wow! Really? You mean the whole menu at Outback doesn’t consist of a Bloomin’ Onion? Who’da thunk it?
My point was, if a restaurant is proud enough of an onion dish to feature it in its advertising, it’s likely that they use onions in their cooking fairly liberally.
Not to freak out the OP’er, but many restaurants use seasoning salt on their meat. Many versions of seasoning salt contains onion powder.
I can understand the frustration, though. I hate tomatoes. With a passion. For some reason, restaurants HATE to remove tomatoes from salads before they serve them.
Dwtno, I agree with you that the manager dealt with you disingenuously. However, I do feel that you bear a little responsibility in the situation. Having formerly worked both in the kitchen and on the floor of a major chain restaurant for 4 years, let me offer some viewpoints:
- Firstly, your aversion to onions is too strong and too unusual to be fielded cleanly by any but the very best of servers/cooks anywhere you may care to dine. The reason for that is onions are such an integral ingredient in so many dishes. The reason those onions can’t be separated out without a great deal of difficulty is that most side dishes are prepared --no, assembled – ahead of time, then cooked to order.
The kitchen has hundreds of baggies filled with all the ingredients needed to make your sauteed mushrooms. These bags are assembled in the morning and early afternoon by “prep cooks” specifically to save the evening sautee cook from having to do the tedious assembly. Once the prep cooks’ shifts are done (say 3-4 PM), raw ingredients like mushrooms and onions are stored who-knows-where in the walk-in cooler, and the little baggies of side dishes and seasoning packs are stored within easy proximity to the kitchen.
Now then. Your order comes in. The sautee cook sees NO ONIONS written on your order, but is too swamped to run back through the walk-in and hunt through dozens of similar metal canisters to search for raw mushrooms – not to mention to chop and season them. Opening a baggie and picking out the onions by hand is just as time-consuming (plus the onion smell & juice is all over the 'shrooms anyhow). The sautee cook may ask any hand on deck (a dishwasher, a busser, a manager) to find the raw mushrooms for them – and that hand-on-deck may take too long to find the mushrooms in the walk-in. Or maybe the sautee cook asks no one, hoping that the picky customer can happily pick the onions out once they receive their meal.
Another possibility is that the server neglects to pass on the NO ONIONS instructions to the kitchen. The server may not have understood what you meant – did you mean no raw sliced onions as on a burger? No visible onions? Were you specifically rejecting a specific side - viz. the Sauteed Onions - when you said NO ONIONS, meaning that you were adamantly selecting the Sauteed Mushrooms? Whether you realize it or not, there is A LOT of room for error when you are instructing a human being to do something. Saying the same thing several ways IS NOT an unreasonable accomodation to a server when you pose such an unusual request (and it IS unusual, and it DOES matter. Sorry.).
With all that background in mind, what can you do? Can you effectively get what you want? Of course – and you ARE entitled to it. But you really have to make clear that ANY and ALL ONIONS are simply not an option. Simply stating “NO ONIONS” is not a powerful enough request. It doesn’t matter if it SHOULD be powerful enough – simply isn’t, so adjust your strategy. A good backstory, like feigning a severe allergy to onions, will help you a lot. Ask if the items you want contains onions in the seasoning or sauces (I’m betting you eat numerous onion-derived foods daily without knowing it). If necessary, ask a manager to come out and answer your detailed questions about the presence of onions in their meals.
Your extreme aversion to onions is a curveball that few eating establishments can even lay wood on. Chain restaurants rely on being able to do things a certain way, time and time again. When you throw them a curve, it WILL more often than not, cause a train wreck behind the scenes. So be ruthlessly proactive in avoiding onions in your meals. Be fanatical about it. You’re asking for a lot more than you may realize.
BTW, dwtno, you hinted that you were fairly young. Have you just begun going out for meals on your own? The reason I ask is that your aversion to onions will cause massive havoc for you in Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Cajun, and Indian restaurants (unless you go to places that are never really packed to the gills and can take their time on you), as you may have already experienced. How do you deal with it – or have you had to yet?
- Secondly, the manager at OS was WAY out of line to charge you for anything, IMHO. You were dissatisfied with your meal - that’s all that really counts. Comping your meal is really no skin off of OS’s nose, so I don’t know what their problem was. Even if you decided never to return, staying in your good graces was worth it to their word-of-mouth PR. You may have just told friends “I don’t like the food so much at OS – but the service was sharp and the manager took care of my concerns.” Now you’re likely to badmouth the place to friends and perhaps influence their opinions negatively.
Although …
My wife and I have a friend who is VERY picky. A lot of times, when he complains about the food in a place we haven’t tried yet, we take that as a POSITIVE recommendation! Our friend is picky to the point of ridiculousness, so we figure that the food he pans will appeal to the “normal” palate - and nine times out of ten, we’re right!