Oh, I love this! I don’t know why I’ve never thought of doing it, especially since I routinely fire my child, my husband and my pets.
An incredibly bad service story:
Our family decided to take a train ride/dinner combination that was being advertised in the paper in celebration of my mother’s birthday. The train ride was very nice but when we walked to the restaurant, a local very prestigious historic hotel/restaurant (for those near Cincinnati, it is in Lebanon, OH) we were treated so rudely that I’ll never go back.
Instead of being seated in the restaurant or at a table of our own, all the “train people” were taken upstairs to a separate room. So we sat with strangers. Oh well. Ice tea was at each table and the waitresses started serving us immediately. Never did they ask us what we wanted and the advertisement never said we didn’t get a choice. But, we bit our tongues because it was mom’s birthday.
We are Pepsi drinkers and my dad is a beer drinker. Our first mistake was to ask for coke instead of tea. “Sorry.” Said the waitress. “The train people automatically get iced tea.” My sister pulled the lady aside and said, “Listen. This is for my mom’s birthday. She doesn’t LIKE iced tea. You need to get her a coke.”
“But I’d have to go downstairs for that.” she retorted.
She said, “Then go downstairs.”
“Well, it will cost extra.”
My dad, embarrassed by the whole ordeal, handed her a ten dollar bill and told her to bring him a coke and a beer. She said, “I can’t bring a beer up. But if you want to go downstairs to the bar, you can get it yourself.”
Ooooo-kay.
When we got to the salad, they served italian dressing. My brother doesn’t like italian dressing. “Ma’am can I have ranch dressing?”
“There’s not a choice.”
Ooooo-kay. This despite the fact that this hotel is known for its poppyseed dressing. Guess it was out of all other dressings that day.
They served us mashed potatoes with no gravy. When my husband asked for gravy, she said, "We don’t serve gravy with our potatoes. "
Now this restaurant is KNOWN for its American cuisine. My husband looked at her incredulously. “You don’t have gravy?” he asked.
“I didn’t say we don’t have gravy, sir. I said YOUR potatoes don’t come with gravy.”
My husband, who could stare down Freddie Krueger, said icily, “And I am saying that NOW mine do.”
I could go on and on. Two waitresses were mad at each other and one tried to slam the door in the other’s face as she came into the room.
That same night my sister wrote a 3 page scathing letter to the manager. He called her, only to argue with her haughtily. “Have you ever had a bad day, ma’am?”
“Yes. But I’ve never slammed a door in my co-worker’s face.”
“Well, if you want to dine at a discount, you should expect some shortcuts.”
Of course, what he didn’t know was that she had done her homework. Had we taken the train ride on our own, and made separate lunch reservations, we would have paid LESS for everything than we paid for the combination because the restaurant had lunch specials. PLUS we could have had our choice of drink, salad dressing, AND gravy without a fuss.
The sad part of the story is that the train owners refunded our money, even though they did nothing wrong. They later went out of business while the restaurant still thrives.
In my college days, a local pub/restaurant had a Wednesday happy hour that was pretty popular with students: dollar margaritas (big ones, too) and a free taco bar. Naturally the summer work crew I was on went down there every week en masse for a free (if awful) meal at the taco bar.
One week, a girl from our table and I ordered our raspberry margaritas, took one taste, and found that our drinks were very weak – not much booze, and almost no raspberry. This was unusual – the drinks were usually pretty good. We went down to the bar together and told the bartender. He said, “Well, we only put so much tequila in there.” We said, no, there was no flavor – we weren’t complaining about the alcohol so much as that the drinks tasted like water. He took a sip of my friend’s drink (so far, so good – we figure it’s a dead drink now), then took both drinks, poured them into the blender together with more raspberry and booze, whipped them up, and poured them back out for us. Mmmm, two raspberry-and-backwash-from-three-people margaritas! After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we went to the other bartender and he made us new drinks.
Yuck – it just occurred to me, I bet that blender didn’t get cleaned either.
Ah, Pundit, having lived up that way for a while, I know the restaurant of which you speak. Many a horrible Easter was spent there. How were the fireworks, btw?
I’m rough on bad service. Having done the job for a bit, I know it’s hard, and when I get good or adequate service, I take care of the server. But when it’s bad…my ex- calls them quick getaway nights. But the worst happened to my dad, while he was down here. We were eating at a place down on 2nd, named something like Enormous Lake. The server really didn’t want to be bothered with my family’s table, worrying more about the other party sitting next to us. At the end of the night, my dad decided to tip, but only around 10%, to at least express some displeasure. The server followed us out onto the street, to confront him about this. We were just stunned.
All of about twenty years ago my wife and I were having lunch in NYC.
My wife, who is a vegetarian, ordered a salad. It came covered with bacon bits. She called the waitress, explained that she was a vegetarian, that the menu had not mentioned anything about dead pigs, and she wanted a salad without them.
The waitress promptly returned with a new salad. Except it wasn’t. We could find little bits of bacon they hadn’t found and removed…
By the way, New Yorker magazine a few weeks ago had a horrifying story by a writer who accompanied two health inspectors for a day. Naturally they allw ent out to lunch. She asked them how they picked a restaurant? Simple: it had to be one that neither one had ever inspected. They both knew too much about the other ones.
One said she NEVER ate in Chinatown. The other said he NEVER ate at a food cart.
Shudder…
Fifteen Iguana
My favorite bad service story actually involves my grandma and grandpa on a road trip with 5 of their 7 kids (two wern’t born yet). They were touring aroung the US, checking out all the must see stuff - Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore - the usual. On a mountain highway, the whole crew stoped for lunch at a small diner - it was the only one they had seen for hours.
Well, I don’t know if the diner had never seen 7 people all at the same time or what, but my grandma wound up having to go into the kitchen and COOK THE LUNCH HERSELF!.
I always thought that was really funny - I guess the kitchen staff were quite impressed with her prowess. 
I had friends in from out of town and I took them to one of Seattle’s best known and most expensive nouveau seafood restaurants (roughly $90 a person). The evening resulted in a letter to the manager too.
Too many egregious affronts–I spent to whole meal apologizing to my guests–but just to give you an idea (and to relate to the OP’s salad stupidity): one of the party ordered one of the restaurant’s famous salads–theyr’re exotic and huge–as an entree; she’s a vegetarian and none of the entrees were without flesh of some kind–and asked the waiter if she could have it with our entrees, and not before, as a “salad course.” He said “of course.”
Well, apparently he forgot, because he brought it out with everyone else’s salad/soup course. My friend started to hand it back to him and said–not indicating that she was repeating herself, just saying very pleasantly–“I’m sorry, I ordered the salad as my entree and I don’t want it until everyone else’s entree is served.”
He glanced at the salad, glanced at her, and said, as he was turning to go, “Then don’t eat it yet; it’s not like it’s gonna get cold or anything.”
I once left the rudest waitress in New York a $1.35 tip on a $183.65 bill. She followed us out, saying “Wait, you have change coming.” I said, “That’s for you, dear.” She told us not to bother coming back. So we spoke to the manager, told her everything that had happened during the meal, and that the waitress had “banned” us from the restaurant, and the manager turned around and fired the waitress on the spot.
Sweet.
Personally, I’d be too afraid to complain too loudly about the quality of serivce in a restaurant until I had received all the food. I’m way paranoid that the server would retaliate by spitting in the food or doing something else gross, if I was anything less than polite to them. Maybe I’m just paranoid and cynical.
We went to a local cafe to have dinner and were served by a waitress who has to be one of stupidest people I ever met.
My husband asked to substitute Pork Chops for Ham Steak. The waitress stared at him for about 2 minutes, and then said "I’m sorry but we can’t substitute pork for Beef.
I being one of those people, who think that dressing should enhance the taste of salad, not overwhelm it and beat it to death, asked for my dressing on the side. She stared at me and then said, “What’s that?” I said put it in a small dish on the side. I guess I should have been more specific; she put the salad in the small bowl and the dressing in the big one.
Not nearly as bad as the rest of these stories, but I feel like sharing.
The boy and I recently went out for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We got our food, everything was fine. Then we were simply forgotten. No one came to check on us for at least 45 minutes. Finally annoyed enough, I went up to the counter and asked if we could pay the bill.
Fortunately, the counter people were very apologetic and cut the bill in half. Very odd experience.
My best story of bad service involves an airline steward. I know, I know, they’re not waiters, but still they deliver the food and are supposed to be nice to the customers.
This was on one of those low-rent airlines (PSA, the ones with the smiley on the nose, IIRC) and they were serving ice cream sandwiches out of big cardboard boxes. Traffic had stopped in the aisle and the steward was stopped at our row with the box directly above my friend on the aisle. The box had soaked through with condensation, and was dripping fairly copiously directly onto my friend’s shoulder (she was wearing an angora sweater, if memory serves).
She was too polite to do anything, but I got the steward’s attention and said “Excuse me. You’re dripping on my friend.”
He looked down at her, looked at the box, looked back at us and snapped “It’s only water.”
LifeOnWry-I hope you left the waitress a penny-that’s considered a deadly insult, just to show how much their service sucks.
What an unbelievably rude bitch!
I left a waiter a penny once.
My wife and I were eating at a local restaurant which serves many different kinds of food, but has the word “pizza” in its name, so we ordered pizza. After all, who knows what kind of steak you’re going to get from a place called “Pizza Inn?”
It took a good while for the waiter to bring the pizza out, but once we were eating it, we didn’t care anymore.
After we had finished, the waiter came and asked if we needed anything else.
“Yes, a box to put the rest of our pizza in to take home with us.”
So we waited. And we waited. We waited some more. We see him walking back and forth, serving and taking orders of other customers. A full FORTY-FIVE minutes passes, at which point we were beginning to think he had forgotten about us. Just when we were about to say something, he walked out, casually tossed a box onto our table without a word and walked away. No apology, no nothing.
I mean, WHAT THE FUCK?! He couldn’t have brought the box out on the way to another customer’s table? We saw him shuffle back and forth between the kitchen more times than we could count in that 45 minutes.
After putting our remaining pizza in the box, we arranged our used dishes neatly on the table, so there would be no chance that he would miss seeing that shiny Lincoln’s-head sitting right there in the middle of a mostly-cleared table. We didn’t want him to think we had “stiffed” him because we were cheap. We wanted him to know it was his fault.
Managers of restaurants should take note: many people, especially shy ones like my wife and I, won’t complain. We’ll just never come back to your lousy restaurant. Ever.
diku, the fireworks were fun. Went for the first time in 20 years this weekend. Rented a hotel room with a river view and we just had to step outside at dusk to enjoy the fireworks. That’s the only way to go. 
My sister and I once went to Steak and Shake (the original one in Normal, IL) and had a weird experience. Dinner was fine, but when we were ready for the check, the waitress was nowhere to be found. We finally hunted down the only other person working the floor, only to be told the waitress was on her dinner break and wouldn’t be back for an hour, and no, no one else could write up the bill or take our money – we needed to wait for the original waitress to return. We wound up guessing at the total and leaving some cash on the table.
The local Giordano’s Pizzeria
We call in to pre-order a veggie deep dish pizza, telling the order taker we’ll be there in an hour.
We arrive, tell the waitress we pre-ordered the pizza. We order salads and drinks. The waitress says the pizza will be there shortly. Thirty minutes later, no pizza. We flag down the waitress and are told the pizza was sent out on a delivery run.
Okey-doke. These things happen. Another 1/2 hour passes and our new pizza arrives. We start to eat and realize things have gotten worse. Undercooked crust, no mushrooms, one piece of broccoli on the entire pizza. (Yes, I looked.)
We asked for the manager. He proceeded to blame everyone and everything for the blunders. “It’s the waitress’ fault. She’s new.” Sorry, no, we called in the order. “You shouldn’t have ordered so many ingredients. The pizza is too thick.” It is the standard veggie pizza, right off of YOUR menu.
He then said he would make it up to us. Did he comp the appetizer or drinks? Possibly discount the cost of the pizza? Nooooo. He handed us 2 coupons. Each good for $5.00 off a $20.00 order. “Coupon cannot be combined with any other discount. One coupon per order.” Oh, yeah, and the cashier was told he could not accept a coupon for that night’s pizza.
You’ll like this [sub](there’s a typo on the page - for ‘trops’ read ‘chops’)[/sub]
LISSENER, I wonder what the name of the Seattle restaurant you’re speaking of is? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
Because this last Thursday night, I took a client to dinner at a supposedly very nice Seattle restaurant and had poor service, which really pisses me off when close to $100 a person – even if it’s not my money. The hostess seats us and I immediately send back my bread plate because it’s obviously dirty. She says “I don’t clear; I’m the hostess.” I said, with a smile, “Well, I’m the customer, and I don’t sit here with a dirty plate in front of me, so just drop it in the kitchen on your way by, will you?” She sniffs and picks it up and goes.
The waitress then comes over and, seeing a table of two probably-not-related women, immediately says “We don’t do separate checks.” I’m thinking, at these prices if I want a separate check, you’ll bring me a separate flippin’ check, but I just said, “We won’t need them.” But really: Why trot that out before anyone has even asked?
Then we couldn’t get anyone to refill our water glasses all during the meal and the meal was frankly not all that good. These may not seems like big complaints, but they underscore a couple of points IMO: First, if the food costs that much and the place is supposedly upscale, the service should be impeccable. I may not mind having to trip the busboy to get a refill on water at a cafe, but I shouldn’t have to do it at a restaurant where it cost me eight bucks (plus tip) just to have them park the car. Second, I cannot stand a snobby attitude. It’s like certain fancy restaurants (and some upscale shops as well) act like they’re doing you a favor to serve you, like they’ve really had to compromise their standards to take your money. I don’t equate good service with being patronized or treated coolly, and I frankly don’t know anyone who thinks “Wow! All the workers are assholes! This MUST be a great place! I’m so lucky they’re even talking to me!”
The service wasn’t so bad I was embarrassed by it, but I’ll never go there again. There are too many truly fine restaurants in Seattle to screw around with one that combines the worst in service and prices, and isn’t all that, much less a bag of chips, anyway.
LISSENER, I wonder what the name of the Seattle restaurant you’re speaking of is? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
Because this last Thursday night, I took a client to dinner at a supposedly very nice Seattle restaurant and had poor service, which really pisses me off when close to $100 a person – even if it’s not my money. The hostess seats us and I immediately send back my bread plate because it’s obviously dirty. She says “I don’t clear; I’m the hostess.” I said, with a smile, “Well, I’m the customer, and I don’t sit here with a dirty plate in front of me, so just drop it in the kitchen on your way by, will you?” She sniffs and picks it up and goes.
The waitress then comes over and, seeing a table of two probably-not-related women, immediately says “We don’t do separate checks.” I’m thinking, at these prices if I want a separate check, you’ll bring me a separate flippin’ check, but I just said, “We won’t need them.” But really: Why trot that out before anyone has even asked?
Then we couldn’t get anyone to refill our water glasses all during the meal and the meal was frankly not all that good. These may not seems like big complaints, but they underscore a couple of points IMO: First, if the food costs that much and the place is supposedly upscale, the service should be impeccable. I may not mind having to trip the busboy to get a refill on water at a cafe, but I shouldn’t have to do it at a restaurant where it cost me eight bucks (plus tip) just to have them park the car. Second, I cannot stand a snobby attitude. It’s like certain fancy restaurants (and some upscale shops as well) act like they’re doing you a favor to serve you, like they’ve really had to compromise their standards to take your money. I don’t equate good service with being patronized or treated coolly, and I frankly don’t know anyone who thinks “Wow! All the workers are assholes! This MUST be a great place! I’m so lucky they’re even talking to me!”
The service wasn’t so bad I was embarrassed by it, but I’ll never go there again. There are too many truly fine restaurants in Seattle to screw around with one that combines the worst in service and prices, and isn’t all that, much less a bag of chips, anyway.