Okey doke, it's been a week and this is STILL pissing me off...

The BBQ Pit
1

Went to see American Pie II with some people last week (good movie, BTW, if you’re into plotless movies that are funny as hell) and made the mistake of following along with them to Perkins after.

My hatred for Perkins is legend among those who know me well. Unfortunately, those I went out with knew me not-so-well.

Bummer.

Anywho, Michelle ordered a …Philly Club? Steak and Swiss with 'shrooms, green peppers, and onions. She received steak and Swiss and celery that kinda tasted like green peppers. So we called the waitress over (she rocked, BTW - friendly, polite, the whole bit) and, when told the problem, got this look on her face along the lines of “Fuck. They did it AGAIN!!!”

So she gets the manager over, who apologizes…and procedes to ask Michelle if he could comp her for her milk. Michelle sputters a second and asks what the cost of the milk is compared to the sandwich. The manager doesn’t reply, so I jump in with “So, Michelle…how was your milk?” Manager immediately comes back with “Fine. I’ll take the sandwich off your bill. I don’t want to deal with this crap tonight.”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

A little while later I ask for a box for the half of the club sandwich I couldn’t finish…

You ever order soup from a take-out place? You know how they put it in styrofoam with that plastic lid? And you know how sometimes, if you grab it right, the lid tears apart into a kind of pie-shaped piece?

Well, I picked up one of the quarters of my sandwich, and underneath, hidden, was one of those pie-shaped pieces of plastic, with gawd knows WHAT kind of crap baked on to the edges.

Dropped the quarter back down and brought my plate to the manager with said piece of plastic. Manager asked me if he could comp my coffee.

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Needless to say, we’re going to a local diner from now on.

2

Well, Perkins is a Family Restaurant, so you should expect the kind of service you’d get from your family, if, in fact, your family were a bunch of slobs…

3

I used to enjoy going to Perkins and sitting down for a restful, 3-hour breakfast/work/talk every month or so. I have stopped doing so due to:

  • Filthy seats.
  • Filthy tables.
  • Filthy plates.
  • Filthy silverware. This is truly terrible, and once I sent back silverware 4 freaking times before they got it right. The manager came out herself to speak to me, and instead of the expected apology I got “So what is your problem?” When I showed her 4 barnacle-encrusted forks in a row, she sighed dramatically, snatched them away, and came back and slammed a new set down on the table, with a scowl.
  • Filthy coffee cups.
  • Filthy napkins, so you can’t even clean the above items yourself.
  • Food that is of such variable quality you think there must be a giant roulette wheel in the kitchen, with markings along the rim like “Awful”, “Crappy”, “OK”, “Yummy”, and so forth.
  • Children screaming and screeching like howler monkeys.
  • The same children running wild in the restaurant, slamming into your chair or booth, throwing food, or even (one time) walking up to your table and grabbing your food and running off with it. To the cooing of “how cute” from the Cro-Magnon parents. :rolleyes:
  • Waiters/waitresses that take your order reluctantly, then vanish. No refills for you! Next! They do this because they are hideously understaffed. Twice now I’ve seen with my own eyes waitresses break out in honest-to-Goddess tears over how hard they were having to work. :frowning:

Every now and again, I do go back, and I regret it each time. There are 4 Perkin’s within easy driving distance of me, and they all 4 suffer from the same malaise.

I wouldn’t even recommend calling or writing. My experience is that Perkins doesn’t care if you live or die, and responses to complaints border on insulting.

4

I worked at a Perkins once, very briefly. One of the veteran waitresses called me “stupid” because I let my leg swing out when I was reaching wayyyy up to the pass-through window, which was built to NBA standards. They also wanted me to do sidework in the kitchen any time I didn’t have a table, but couldn’t be bothered to tell me when someone had been seated in my section. And they didn’t give me anywhere near enough time to learn the 2000-entry code system. Fuck them.

5

Oh, and they also had a pot pie “with fruit” on the menu, and I was supposed to back them up when the fruit turned out to be an orange slice and one grape.

6

we went to a perkins on a family vacation … dennys has class and style next to this place

The spaghetti tasted like something youd get from a cafeteria in school

The salad was wilted and the dressing tasted like it went sour

The waitress acted like she was suffering over the fact that we were there we were the only ones there at that time

Needless to say My grandparents voiced their opinion by writing down a complaint on the check and we left with out paying

7

All I have to say is…

Perkins Restaurant & Bakery
6075 Poplar Avenue, Suite 800 · Memphis, TN 38119-4709
(800) 877-7375 · Fax (901) 766-6482

or you can use this…

http://www.perkinsrestaurants.com/contact1.htm

8

Which Perkins was this? When my ex and I were married, the one by Crossroads was pretty good (I think we always got excellent service because he was a deputy who ate there on duty also).

Perkins in the Pines in Sauk Rapids seems pretty good too. But I hardly ever eat out, so I probably don’t have good statistics about this.

But you are right, there are lots of much better places to eat in the area.

9

Perkins, I hate that place. They never have clean silverwear, plates or cups. I found pieces of spaghetti in the cracks on the seats. Always messed up the order. One of the waitresses dropped a plate of food, and the whole time we were in there no one bothered to clean it up. The bathrooms were filthy. The manager offered us free refills on our drinks when we complained about the moldy bread. There was a gang fighting on the restaurant. I walked
out wearing eggs in my hair.

Did I mention that this happened all in one trip there?

10

Yeah, a lot of the Perkins I’ve been in have been run piss-poorly. I don’t give up on them entirely mainly because I had some good times in one during college.

I could have sworn that within the past few years most Perkins were supposed to convert to being Denny’s (which isn’t exactly an improvement). But if that happened, I never saw any evidence of it.

11

I must’ve forgotten to hit the email reply-thingy…thought this thread had dropped off w/o a response…

Spider Woman [sub]I promised to stop being a hermit and keep in touch with you and I’ve failed miserably…sorry :-([/sub] - was the downtown Perkins, which I KNOW is the worst one, but it was a Tuesday night, for pete’s sake. You’d think they’d realize people OTHER than drunks might show up, you know?

Reeder - Merci BEAUCOUP!!! My email is off…thanks SO much :slight_smile:

I started hating Perkins a couple of years ago. They had these nice laminated signs at the tables advertising strawberry pie. My b-i-l LOVES strawberry pie, but they were always out of it. One night Doug corrals the manager and asks him why there’s no strawberry pie. Manager comes back with “Due to the high cost of strawberries this season, there’s been a company-wide decision to do away with strawberry pie.”

“So why are you selling it?”

“Uhhh…I dunno.”

Fast forward a couple of weeks and Doug and my sis head out to Sturgis and stop at a Perkins in SD someplace, and lo and behold!! Strawberry pie on the menu.

12

I never had a problem with the food at Perkins; it was always the service. The service is so very slow you can see the cobwebs form as you wait for your meal. Forget about a refill on your iced tea (the stuff is that icky soda fountain stuff anyway). Forget about having anything to drink with your meal either because a runner will bring out your meal, but he/she won’t refill your beverages.

Forget about any other server helping you out with a refill either. You are not their table. They are busy ignoring their customers, and chatting it up in the kitchen prep area (a safe zone where the customers can’t find them).

And just TRY to get the server’s attention to give you the bill. Better to go up to the cash register and tell the cashier that the server didn’t give you a check and have her go in back to get the check (leaving you and a whole line of customers to wait).

Of course the patrons don’t leave a tip, the servers get pissed off, and the circle continues.

One time I saw a manager comp so many meals for poor service; I thought they were giving the place away. Surely they should be bankrupt by now.

I actually miss the food, especially the bread bowl salads (when the bread was fresh). I can’t do carryout cause Perkins is not convenient to where people actually live. They seem to be placed at exit points to cities.

13

When I lived in Minnesota, the Woodbury Perkins was actually pretty decent. The waitstaff knew me and my husband, were always friendly and helpful, and with few exceptions (mostly from teenage service staff who seemed a bit lazy in the first place), were professional.

Last year, they undertook a major renovation, gutted the place and re-worked it so it’s gorgeous.

One thing about Perkins and places like that is that if you stick to the basics, you won’t get a bad meal.

Robin

14

I emailed Perkins with the link Reeder provided (thanks!!). I provided a link to this thread and also mentioned yet another horror story about this place, this one involving a lunch date with my mother. Lo and behold, I received TWO responses - one from corporate and one from the guy who owns/manages the St. Cloud stores. The owner/manger lives south of the Cites (gee, a real hands-on type) and invited my mother and I to lunch, his bill.

Talked to my mother about it and we both took great pleasure in pointing out the bit about how we will NEVER step foot into another Perkins :smiley:

15

Substitute the word “Embers” for “Perkins” and all of the same things apply. In fact, Perkins makes Embers look like Tavern on the Green.

I do remember, though, one visit to the Perkins on Riverside avenue. Some guy had been violently, explosively ill in the bathroom, and the lovely aroma wafted out into the dining room.

Can’t blame 'em for that, but the memory still lingers.

16

My ex-girlfriend used to work at Perkins (long before I knew her). She still shudders every time we drive past one.

17

In my carefree youth, students from my college would go to Perkins to study, because it was the only 24-hour restaurant in town.

Not only was the service awful (I once waited 45 minutes before a waitress arrived with a menu), and not only was it impossible to get a refill, but the four servers would sit at a booth blatantly playing euchre instead of serving.

18

My college stories are from Denny’s not Perkins, but they sound similar: we’d go there only because it was the only 24-hour restaurant in Olympia.

Our normal waitress was named Austin, and an ornerier woman you couldn’t hope to meet. She’d cuss at us when we gave our orders. I’d say, “Excuse me – this half and half you gave me is spoiled and clotted. Could I get some other half and half?”

“No,” she’d say, and glare at me. Then she’d say, “Jesus. I was joking!” and stalk off to get me more half and half.

Once she’d abandoned our table for a good 20 minutes, and we wanted ketchup. When she was at a table next to us, chatting to the folks there, we signaled her and said, quietly, “Could you bring us some ketchup?”

She came over and chewed us out. “Don’t you EVER interrupt me when I’m at another table!” she growled.

Honestly, she was pretty funny in her Tyrant-of-the-Denny’s patheticness. We were almost sad when she got fired.

Daniel

19

Well I just want to let you all know that Perkins is now hiring secret shoppers…maybe they’ve finally realized there’s a problem!!! I’ve never eaten there myself, so I didn’t know how bad it was!

20

Not to rain on anyone’s rant - which I’m sure is completely justified - but the Perkins in Edina is usually pretty good. My main gripes are that if you order only water they bring it in something akin to a juice glass (without an accompanying pitcher), and that the waiters can sometimes be rather slow about coming around with the check or to see if you want dessert (even if you mention in their presence that you’re thinking about having dessert). Due to Edina’s curfew laws, they also card me from time to time (which is actually kind of fun, I suppose).

But I love the food - especially the turkey dinner plate and the chicken caesar salad bread bowl! And it’s nice to go there late at night and talk for a couple of hours. My cousin and I do this somewhat frequently.