I’m usually nice:). I am bitchy if the employee is rude to me, but they’ve got to be utterly bitchy for me to bite back.
I used to be a server, too - for four years in college. So I know how she felt:). I think I apologized just as much when I spilled meatloaf and gravy all over a customer’s table. Then I went in the back and cried. I’m really glad I’m not a server anymore:).
I may drop a note to the GM just to compliment the Sunday team on their service and their apologies.
Ava
Eerie. I also got a bizarre over-apology at Applebees on Sunday. I asked for a citrus grilled chicken salad by saying, “I would like the citrus chicken salad, please,” and also pointing and grunting at the colorful picture on the menu, but lo, when the person (not our actual server) arrived with our order, I was delivered of a grilled chicken Caesar salad.
I would have just eaten it, 'cause I’m easy-going in the extreme, but I hate their Caesar salad. So I said, “I’m sorry, I ordered the citrus grilled chicken salad.” The server who brought the meal apologized, and told me she’d get me a citrus salad, right away. Which would have been sufficient.
Then our actual server appeared and apologized profusely, assuring me that a citrus grilled chicken salad was on its way, STAT.
A few minutes later, the manager appeared and apologized, also profusely, and told us that there was another manager in the kitchen right now shepherding my salad to its completion.
The salad was eventually produced, and delivered by another manager, who apologized again, and told me that the salad would be taken off the bill.
Our server apologized each time he refilled our beverages and when dropping off our check. We were finally able to escape without being subjected to further apologies.
I was haunted the whole time by the notion that somebody somewhere was catching hell for making a mistake. Despite my lingering feelings of guilt, the citrus grilled chicken salad was light, refereshing, and delicious. I assuaged my guilt by overtipping.
Mr. TeaElle and the kiddies and I ate dinner tonight at a family-type restaurant that has a salad bar. We were seated right next to the salad bar, and on the other side, there was a party of three slack bints who were there with more preschool aged children than they could handle. They sat and chit-chatted merrily while the two oldest children, two boys I pegged to be 3 or 4 years old, ran around the restaurant, getting in the way of people attempting to get salads, courting disaster at the hot soup bar on more than one occasion and being a general pain in the butt. The slack bint gestational devices ostensibly responsible for the boys ineffectually chided “Oh, Marcus, come back here.” “Jamie, you need to stay near our table.” :rolleyes:
I was growing increasingly annoyed, as these children kept dancing by our table, making noise and making faces at my children, but the last straw was when they began to touch and play with the plates at the salad bar. One of them had his tongue hanging out of his mouth, I don’t know for certain if he licked the stack of plates, but it seemed as though he did.
I summoned our waitress and mentioned to her that the plates were no longer suitable for use, and explained why. The next thing I knew, there were five employees pressed into action, removing all of the plates (not just the ones where the boys were), sanitizing the area and chastizing the slovenly mothers and asking them to leave. I was impressed and pleased; it went a step further when our waitress apologized to us for “having to see something like that.” We assured her that she needn’t apologize, it wasn’t her fault.
Within a minute, a manager approached us, and again apologized. He offered us dessert on the house or a discount on our check. Again, we pointed out that there was nothing that the staff could’ve done to foresee or prevent what happened, they are between a rock and a hard spot when it comes to patrons who are failing to adequately parent their children. Moreover, since this is a small, local establishment, we weren’t interested in taking money out of their coffers because of the slack bints’ children – we really like the place and go there frequently, and we’re recognized there, so perhaps they were really attempting to ensure that we would continue to return regularly, but it seemed rather a bit overkill to me.
Not so much overkill, really. If someone from the Health Department had been around and they hadn’t removed all the plates and sanitized the salad bar, they would have had their asses handed to them on one of their own freshly-licked plates. Asking them to leave just makes financial sense–a little place like that does not need the business of a customer who costs them that much time and money. Again, the offers of freebies and discounts are good financial policy. You clearly found the incident disgusting (hell, I’m disgusted just reading about it), and a disgusted customer is an unhappy customer. Cheapest way for a restarant to make an unhappy customer happier? Give 'em a free dessert or a small discount.
As for the OP, you weren’t a bad customer at all. You were left sitting nearly 10 times as long as most restaurants’ guidelines for greeting a new table, and they should have felt bad. There was a miscommunication somewhere in the ranks (my guess is that Jenn had been cut, so she had no reason to be watching her section, but the hostess didn’t realize and seated you in her section anyway) and you got bad service because of it. Actually, your comment probably saved them all sorts of fussing and backbiting trying to figure out who screwed up and how this happened. As for the overapologizing, well, it’s a tactic to smooth down customers who aren’t complaining but are quietly fuming and vowing never to return. A manager once showed me a study that showed that something like 80% of customers who had a problem but didn’t complain either stopped coming back altogether or greatly reduced the frequency of their business.
And mission accomplished for the server. You’ll also go back there which is mission accomplished for the manager.
My office had to attend customer service training a couple of years ago. We were told that if a customer has a bad experience with a company, it takes ten years for the customer to stop associating the company with that one bad experience.
Not to turn this into another “bad customer service thread.”
I would have tipped highly and returned to the restaurant as long the mistake was corrected quickly and courteously, even if there was one apology and I had to pay for the salad.
I just figured that it sucked for the waiter that he was only going to get 15% on two meals when he served three people.