We recently celebrated my daughters college graduation at a restaurant of her choice. She chose a popular institution close to campus that had an interesting ambience and a little swank. The setting was much nicer than the food (they need to fire the chef) although it was passable. The service was A+ however, very doting and comprehensive, so the bland quality of the food was remembered as sort of a “shame” rather than the disaster it could have been if the staff (besides the folks in the kitchen) had of had their heads up their butts.
I’ve seen that commercial too and it reminds me of a bad restaurant experience that I related in this thread.
Hey, Jodi and Lissener, would you mind revealing the names of the crappy Seattle restaurants? I happen to live in Seattle and like to go to a nice restaurant on occasion, and don’t want to waste my money on either of the two establishments mentioned in your posts. Email me if you must (it’s in my profile, I think).
Actually, the ultimate is a penny under an upside-down, full glass of water. The server cannot remove the glass (and retrieve the tip) from the table without emptying the contents everywhere.
It’s a little tricky to do: 1. place penny in a full water glass. 2. Place a stiff piece of cardboard (a bar coaster will do) over glass. 3. Invert glass; water will stay inside. Really. 4. Place all on table. 5. Carefully slide out cardboard.
You will now have a full, inverted glass of water with a penny inside sitting on your table. In your nicer places, you do this on a bread plate. Garnish with entree parsley and flowers/candles from your table centerpiece for effect.
No, I’ve never done this IRL as a tip. I have left a lone penny on about 2 occasions for grossly bad service.
Same here - though it’s not likely I’ll ever stumble into the restaurants, it’ll be nice to know where to avoid should I happen to win the lottery.
I think I would’ve said, “You have five minutes to find someone to take our money, or we’re walking out of here. And I’ll need your name, so that when we write to the manager and tell them why we walked out of here without paying, I can give them your name.”
I haven’t had any truly bad restaurant experiences, not of this caliber, but I did have one that was at least different. We went to a Bennigan’s one evening, and the host sat us at a table that had been cleaned off, but the waitress hadn’t removed the ticket and the money (a $20 bill). For those that don’t know, at Bennigan’s, you pay your server. There’s no register in a central location where everyone pays. The way these types of places work, the server is responsible for their total bill at the end of the night, and anything left over is tip.
The host sat us and grabbed the ticket and money off the table. We didn’t really think anything about it. That sort of stuff happens. A little while later, the waitress comes by with the host and asks us if there was any money on the table. We said, “Yes, and he’d picked it up.” He shook his head and said there was no money.
A little time passes after they left and she comes back with our food. We pull her aside and tell her that the boy most definitely picked up that bill. She asked if we’d explain to the manager, and we agreed. We told our story to him, he offered to comp half our meal, which we said wasn’t necessary but he did it anyway.
As we’re leaving, we see the boy standing outside waiting for his ride to pick him up (he was only about 16). I don’t know if he was asked to go home or if it happened to be his time to get off anyway. I like to think he was fired and the waitress didn’t have to pay for that meal.
Mangetout, thanks for the link. I’ll try that next time. 
One day at lunch my sister and I headed down to Red Lobster. We placed our order, then proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait. The service was exceedingly slow, and as we only have 1 hour for lunch, we were starting to get frustrated. Then we saw a huge cockroach meandering across the floor. We caught the attention of a busboy, who obligingly stomped on the roach for us, then walked off. And left it.
When our waitress came to explain why our meals were taking so long, we pointed out the bug to her. She shuddered, and left. And left it.
Then someone else brought our food out. By that point we were too sicked out to feel like eating, and asked for the manager. She came over, we explained, she apologized and comped our meals. We didn’t eat them, and we didn’t take them with us. Before we left, we saw two other waiters/busboys walk over, look at the roach, giggle, and walk off.
You know, I realize that in Texas in the summer, cockroaches are a way of life. And I think that had the person who squashed the bug picked it up and disposed of it, we’d have been okay with it. But that huge squashed bug on the floor for ten minutes was just a little too much to handle.
My dear friend. Little John (GRH), had a highly effective method of
getting proper attention from the waitstaff if he thought that we were being ignored. He would tie the end of his napkin to his knife and waved it above his head while proclaiming loudly. " I surrender, I surrender-Now can I get service?"
Worked like a charm.
Well, I should clarify the restaurant was not actually crappy. It was just snooty and not as good as it should have been for the price. I don’t think I should name it, though.
But it rhymes with “The Schmoceanaire.”
Two sort of weird stories.
When we were in Denver, we went to the Applebee’s that was in walking distance of our hotel. The hostess who seated us was a little aggressive, and my toddler son was somewhat cowed. She stuck her face into his and said something and he buried his little face in my mom’s lap. I smiled and said “he’s just a little shy.” And she replied “Oh, he’s probably never seen an Asian person before!”
What the hell? Yes, she was asian, but where does she get that? And it brought up this reservoir of white guilt where I wanted to hop around and tell her no, he goes to daycare with a Korean boy and yes we live in a town with a sizable asian-american population and so on and so forth, and then I realized how stupid that was on my part to feel weird. But it was a bizarre thing to say.
A few weeks ago I called up a restaurant in our neighborhood to order takeout. I thought it was odd that the person I spoke to didn’t take my name but whatever, she told us when to come to pick up the order. My husband goes to pick it up 20 minutes later and brings it home. I open it and realize it’s totally the wrong food. So I drive back. The woman at the front proceeds to tell me that the reason she gave my husband the wrong food was that we never called in our order. So when he showed up for takeout, she gave us the only takeout order they had (which was someone else’s). I assured her that we did order and that I had talked to her personally. She said she doesn’t have a ticket, so I couldn’t have called, maybe I just forgot. Right, this is something I do all the time: drive to restaraunts to pick up food orders I forgot to call in. That’s real likely.
On the way out she offered me a menu. I told her we already had one–it’s what I used to CALL IN OUR ORDER. We’re not ordering from there again.
When I was visiting a friend in Eugene, Oregon we went to get something to eat at a hippie-ish place (light on meat, a lot of tempeh/tofu dishes) for breakfast. The food and service were both acceptable until halfway through our meal when a foot-long rat crawls out from between the fence slats and proceeds to lie down a few feet from our table. We assumed the rat was sick and/or dying based on its behavior. We point out the rat to the waitress when she comes out a few minutes later. She takes an empty five gallon bucket, puts it over the rat, and walks away. After coming by to refill my iced tea for the 2nd time since she “trapped” the rat, I say “you know, you really should do something about the rat under the bucket”. She replies “Yeah, I think you may be right. Lemme find one of the cooks to deal with it.” One of the cooks came out as we were leaving- he took a look at the bucket and started scratching his head. I don’t know how he resolved the situation.
Total elapsed time from sighting of rat to cook appearing to “deal” with it- 20 minutes.
She got the “cook” to deal with it?
Do you really want to know how he “dealt” with it?
:eek:
This happened to me once in a town on the Tar River. I was more generous, though. I left a nickle because I didn’t have a penny. Not only was the waitress Mistress Slack, there were also two (2) child birthday parties going on. Nary a parent in sight, but small long list of derogatory epithets referring to the young of our species were running all over the place. Manager? Nuh-uh!
I make it a point to tell people to avoid that place. I’d mention it here, but that wouldn’t be fair to the Pizza Inn on South Highway 11 just outside of Greenville, North Carolina.
My family went to The Olive Garden, for a birthday.
The food was good, the service was Wierd. Our server was Too
Attentive. She came back to the table, every two minutes to check on things. Plus, she kept trying to take our plates. I finally told her," No, I’m Not done with that." She seemed like she wanted us gone. Big mistake, of the twelve of us, seven of us were currently , or had been in the food service industry.
Her biggest mistake, the one which almost got her decked by my Mom, was being Touchy-Feely. The first time she put her hand on Mom, she was O.K. with it, you could tell her it bothered her. After the fourth time Mom let everyone know that when she waitressed, she wouldn’t think of touching a customer. She also commented that touchy-feely girl better not touch her again, if she wanted to go home with all of her teeth.
All in all the whole thing just creeped us out.
One time my boyfriend and I ordered takeout from a Chinese place. He called in the order around 7:15PM (knowing that they closed at eight) and the person told him it would be ready in ten or fifteen minutes. Around 7:30 he decided to head over there by foot, since it was only a block or two away.
He arrived at fifteen to eight to find a “CLOSED” sign on the door.
Why would they bother to take orders if they wanted to go home early?!
We have not eaten there since.
UPDATE: Less than three days after I sent my three page complaint letter, I received a response from the owner of the restaurant.
"Dear Mrs._________,
How do we respond? First, we (Chef H*** and I) want to express our appreciation for taking the time to write us the long letter. We are feeling very disappointed in ourselves. Your points are every bit deserving of attention. We know that we could not be open much longer if this is the way we continue to operate.
<snipping personal stuff>
We will call you and talk over the next couple days. Until then, please accept the enclosed gift certificates to use or give away as you please. We are calling a meeting this weekend and will focus on better than good rapport with all who enter front door or back.
Sincerely,
B*****, owner"
This letter came with $80 in gift certificates (which I’m giving to my mother-in-law, since she paid the bill at the restaurant.) I have to say that while I am not yet convinced that the management will handle this appropriately with its employees, it seems to me that they’ve at least taken my complaint seriously enough to rush a response. That’s a start.
I used to work at Denny’s, so I have seen plenty of bad service. We did also have people who made an effort, though. One particular waitress was known for doing a good job, if being a little “no-nonsense”. At one point, some high school aged boys thought it would be humorous to leave the penny under the inverted glass of water (out of high school boy sense of humour, not as a reflection of service). Unfortunately, she got to back to the table before they had gotten up. When she saw the glass in the middle of the (mostly cleared table) she smiled and said something along the lines of “oh, I know this trick”, and tilted the glass so that the water all rushed across the table and into the lap of the one who was giggling. Then she smiled, told them to have a nice day, and walked away.
JC
Mine rhymes with “Lying Fish” but, to be fair, everything was great the second time. Though that time I was with ‘hipper’ people–one is a model–and I think the first time we were snubbed because my guests included a pair of Midwest grandparents: I think snobbery played a part.