At least I got father than you did at Little Italy. At least I got fed before I walked out without paying. Not just the tip, but the entire check.
Trying to avoid the normally shitty waitress “service” I had come to expect there, I opted to sit at the bar. I ordered the caesar salad (obscenely overpriced at $7.99). It took a good 45 minutes to actually get the thing. (Apparently, the stale croutons are baked to order.) When I finished eating, I flagged the bartender down so that I could pay the check. She ignored me. I called for her. She ignored me. I waved a $20 – literally – in her face. She ignored me. I danced naked on the bar, throwing coins to the unwashed masses, singing “I’m rich, I’m rich, take all my money and here are all my credit cards for the taking!” at the top of my lungs. She ignored me. For 20 minutes, she could not be bothered to even acknowledge my existance. Between chatting with friends and watching TV, she was too busy to grab money from me.
Normally, under such circumstances, I would have paid the check and a nominal tip in exact change. But all I had was a 20, and damned if I was going to leave that lump of bodily waste a $12 tip on an $8 meal. So I walked out. Slowly. Then I stood in front of the restaurant for 30 minutes waiting for a bus. No one chased me down. No one made even the slightest attempt to collect.
One can only hope that the $7.99 came out of that idiot’s paycheck. If so, maybe she remembered me then.
My places would be Hooters for the same reasons as Jodi, TGIFriday’s because if I’m going to spend that kind of money on potato skins it had better include airfare to Idaho, Starbuck’s because if I’m going to spend that kind of money on coffee it had better include airfare to Columbia, the Jewel on Plum Grove Road near my house, because if I’m going to waste that kind of time - aw hell with it - I can’t make this one work. I won’t go to that Jewel cause they SUCK ASS! For a myriad of reasons, none of which I’ll go into because most of them are politically incorrect, but which still piss me the hell off.
I always said I would never set foot in a Starbucks until one day was heading to an interview and became very concerned about my breath. So I bought the famed Starbucks mints, and I have regretted it to this day. I did get the job, though.
Wal-Mart, Subway, Niketown…those places I avoid like the plague on my own, but if it’s my only option (as Wal-Mart was when I lived in Quincy, MA), I have to suck it up.
There is only one place I absolutely will not go again – and that is O’Donovan’s in Chicago. My SO’s softball team used to go there after their games for food & beer, and it was always a good experience – pretty good bar food, friendly enough service. But as O’Donovan’s got more popular, the service declined substantially. After a game this past summer, the whole group (about fifteen people, as usual) went there for the normal beers & burgers, the hostess said we couldn’t be seated because the group was too large. We offered to sit at adjacent, but separate tables. No, can’t do that, because the tables are in different waitstaff’s areas. We said they’d have separate tabs. Nope, sorry. We asked we had requested separate tables to begin with, would they have seated us --and they said they would have. What the motherfuck? We even offered to wait for another section, and were promptly told that our group did not offer enough profit to the restaurant for them to bother. This after we had been collectively spending $300 a week there. That was it – so, we’re never ever going there again, even though it was kind of our default hangout for two years. Screw 'em – the Wild Goose, though farther away, has better burgers anyway.
I’ve never asked this before, but…cite? I’m not asking to be snarky, I really want to know. I like their food, but I ain’t giving 'em my money if they’re homophobic motherfuckers. And I’m sure my Pelvic Affiliate will give her money to crack whores before spending another dime there, too.
So I need the straight dope.
Shit. Thanks for ruining one of the few fast-food places I actually enjoy. I knew the closed-on-Sunday thing was because of the founder’s religious sensibilities, but figured that just meant he was devout, not insane.
To be strictly fair, do you know for a fact that Hobby Lobby doesn’t give Jewish employees Saturday off upon request? If they do, I don’t see why their closing on Sunday is cause for complaint.
Starbucks - I hate coffee anyway, and I hate people that think it is cool to pay 6 bucks for a cup of coffee.
Amazon.com- Many years ago, I was wronged by amazon.com. At least I thought I was wronged, but I can’t seem to recall anymore why I refuse to use amazon. Perhaps it is time to end this one.
Friendly’s - I received the worst service ever at Friendly’s. Waitress came over once, to take our order and never returned. Someone else delivered the food, about 1 hour after it was ordered and both my wife’s and my dish were ice cold. No “Is everything OK?”, No “Would you like another Pepsi?”, not even a “Here is your check.” I wanted to just leave, but the wife didn’t think that was ethical, so I had to find the manager and explained that I needed our check since our waitress never came back to the table. He was dumbfounded. He didn’t give us a discount though. I paid with exact change and left. My wife said it served us right for eating at Friendly’s.
Netfilx.com - Several years ago, emailed with a couple questions and complaints and got form emails back that indicated that the person who responded didn’t even read the email that I sent. This happened for two or three emails before I gave up and quit.
Banana Republic - No real personal experience, but the stuff just seems too expensive to me. Why does every shirt cost $78?
Half the cool places in Toronto that everyone else loves:
Future Bakery and Cafe Diplomatico for consistently appalling service.
The two coffee shops near my house, one for rudeness and bad coffee and the other for refusing to serve a homeless guy (who had the money for his coffeel). Now I sigh have to go to the pub instead when I want to sit and sip a brew. Poor me.
Starbucks, for the obvious reasons, and also for having “Canadian Blend” or some such thing, for no apparent reason, and when I asked the guy what was Canadian about it he looked at me as if I was an idiot and said “Well, it doesn’t come from Canada …”
O’Neils Pub (hope the name is right) in England for not making me fries with cheese AND onion gravy, even though they had fries with cheese, and fries with onion gravy, on the menu. (I guess the concept of poutine was too offensive for the marmite and jellied-eel eating English. Boo.)
No doubt there are more. In fact I stay away from almost every place in my city by virtue of my lack of disposable income.
Anyone read the thread title and think Yogi Berra’s famous “Nobody goes there anymore;
it’s too crowded.”?
I was in a nearby barbecue restaurant, Magnolia-something-or-other, for lunch and it took them about half an hour to serve me! Normally they were pretty good at serving the lunchhour crowd but not that time. Until my sandwich was finally brought out, the waiter pretty much avoided my table except for taking my order and bringing my Coke. I should’ve just paid for the Coke and walked out. When I got back to work, I made sure to let everyone know not to go there anymore. The restuarant was shut down a couple of months later and replaced by a King Street Blues.
It’ll be a long time before we go back to the Cowboy Cafe on Columbia Pike. They were out of some ingredients for a simple House Salad and the snarky waither didn’t bother to tell us or give a chance to change the order. The waiter got another guy, presumably a manager, after we started complaining about the skimpy salad and he was snarky too!
I won’t go into the local Sherwin Williams paint store. It’s just around the corner, so I used to go in there all the time. We had just bought a “fixer-upper” house. The owner of the store generally gave me very little attention and was impatient with me and my questions. And I had a lot of questions, especially about preparing walls for painting, etc. I’m sensitive to certain odors, and so I was interested in low odor/VOC paints. The owner preferred to spend his time waiting on the contractors that the place seemed popular with.
I did buy a gallon of paint, and was very unsatisfied with it. It was really goopy and unpleasant to work with. I tried to return it, as per their posted guarantee. He refused to take it back, stating that their guarantee didn’t apply to opened paint. (Well, how could I know that I didn’t like it if I hadn’t opened it?) Then he went on to berate me, telling me that I obviously didn’t know from paint. That I was used to cheap crappy Home Depot paint, and so I thought that their good “thick” paint was goopy, and on and on. Well, that was an interesting conclusion to jump to! I don’t use Home Depot paint (I’ve used it twice and found it unacceptable), and I spent a summer as a professional painter! I’m hardly an expert, but I’m not completely ignorant either. I suggested that there might have been something wrong with that particular can of paint. He refused to entertain that possibility, stating again that I just didn’t know good paint, and implying that I was too cheap to pay for good paint anyway.
So I took the goopy paint, disposed of it properly, and found myself a new paint store. I am now a loyal customer of Siperstein’s, which is a small local chain. They are always extremely helpful and knowledgable, and have an outstanding selection of painting-related tools and accessories. Those guys know their paint. They pointed me towards Kyanize, which makes a great low-odor paint that is a pleasure to work with.
And as a bonus, Siperstein’s doesn’t have those endless “sales” that Sherwin Williams has. I’d feel like a jerk buying anything full-price at Sherwin Williams, because I know full well it was 30% off 3 days ago and will be again next week. (And no, the Sherwin Williams guy wouldn’t honor sale prices.) I get a fair price at Siperstein’s whenever I shop.
There is one branch of Victoria Wines in Dundee that I am boycotting.
One time I went in, took my time choosing which brand of beer and what bottles of wine I wanted. The stuff was all bagged up and I handed over my card to pay for it. The lady swashed the card a couple of times but it didn’t take. This happens to everybody from time to time and I knew I had plenty cash in the bank to pay for it so I suggested she just type in the numbers on my card. So she typed in the numbers and told me " it’s not working" she then tried again but when she could not get the thing to work she said there must be something wrong with my card.
If I had no money in the bank and she was working the machine properly then the machine would tell her that the bank had declined to pay for my booze and that would be that. So she must have been typing in the wrong numbers or something.
Then she helpfully suggests that there is a bank machine round the corner. Ok good idea. There is an ATM about 20 metres away from the door of the off-license so I nip out, pull £30 and go back in, I had been gone for about 20 seconds.
My stuff is un-bagged and on the shelves! I ask where my drinks are and she tells me that they thought the card was stolen and I wouldn’t be coming back. I mean WTF? Do I really look that shifty because I might not have shaved for a few days? The woman makes a move to go get my stuff but I tell her not to bother and leave.
Recently I go back in the store and pick up a bottle of wine priced at £4.50, the woman (a different one) rings it up at £5.95 so I say something like " Cool, looks like I have just saved a pound fifty." She tells me that she can’t sell it to me at the shelve price. I tell her she can and the law also says she can. A woman behind her tells me a different type of the same brand of wine sitting next to it on the shelf is only £3.99 if I don’t have the cash for the more expensive one. WTF? I got the cash, and it’s not about the money anyway, it’s about observing the law. The 1st woman says she will not sell it because people have been know to switch price tags just to get a more expensive bottle. Right, that means you are accusing me then, because if someone else had switched tags then they would have tried to make good on it which means you would have gotten off your arse and fixed the tags to make sure the next poor sod that came in didn’t have to listen to you two idiots acuse them of being a thief without two farthings to rub together.
I stand my ground but my girlfriend just wants to go, so I leave to spare her blushes.
But I just fucking wish I had taken up the 2nd idiots offer and went for the other bottle of wine because when we took our custom to Tescos we saw that
a) The till was right, the 1st bottle I went for was more expensive than the marked price, so it was their lazy-assed mistake.
and b)The 2nd “£3.99” bottle was actually £6 in Tescos so they had fucking marked that one wrong as well.
Throughout the whole thing they never once left their seats to actually go and look at the prices on the area of shelving I got the wine from, lazy law-breaking-not-giving-the-customer-the-benefit-of-the-doubt assholes.
Service was great, but I found it too cramped for my style and although it often looked sparkling clean from the outside I’ve had some nasty experiences once inside.
Old Navy. My God, the only good thing about them is that they’re not terribly overpriced. Unfortunately, that is the only good thing, as their clothes are waaaaaay too “in” for me (I live in jeans and t-shirts, I am boring) and the blaring music in every store gives me a headache.
If nothing else, their commercials drive me batshit. Seriously.
And I’m waiting for a cite on the Chick Fil-A as well, because they make the best damn chicken strips…sob
