No my complaint is not that they ask when I have the food in my mouth, it’s that they can’t wait for me to swallow it before they start edging to the next table. I also wouldn’t have a problem with a wait staff that stood for the brief period it takes to empty my mouth, before talking to me. It’s very disgusting to have people talk with food in there mouth, and rude.
I don’t think it’s a small peeve, at all. If they routinely cannot track who ordered which steak, then how do they know who has the order with no nuts, or no cheese, or no tomatoes? While preventing cross-contamination?
I’m astonished that you think it’s OK for somebody to continue to serve your children with soft drinks, unless specifically instructed to stop. I’d hope that the common sense of the server, at least, would come into play and would ask the parents.
Oh dear. That is pervasive over here (America) and you have just destroyed my commentary that “they would never do that in England”.
:dubious: I always kinda pictured the Pit to be about injustice. To me there doesn’t seem to be a rational reason to complain about restaurants. If you like you go, if not you don’t. If it was really bad you don’t pay for it…but you also don’t eat it. A customer has no right to dictate what service should be provided 'cause it ain’t your place.
Irony, thy name is Sitnam.
Ivylass’s very point in her previous post was that she wishes the server would ask first. It is not okay with her that the servers tend to automatically refill the drinks.
-FrL-
I’m saying that the onus is on the parents to tell the server not to bring their kids more than one soda, that it’s not the server’s responsibility to know that kids don’t get more than one soda without asking the parents first. I don’t think “common sense” comes into it. Not to mention what you get in this world if you’re going to rely on other people’s “common sense” for anything.
Certainly not - you’re right that it should be a matter of parental responsibility to make a decision whether or not to give the kid another gallon of sugar. It is not the server’s responsibility, so they shouldn’t do it.
That’s exactly my point. I accept the responsibility to tell the server to stop filling my children’s drinks with soda. But I’ve had servers see an empty glass and refill it automatically without asking. Now granted, my kids are teenagers, so maybe the server doesn’t feel the need to check with dear ol’ Mom and Dad. But I know as a server I never presumed the parents wanted the kid loaded up with soda. I always asked.
That doesn’t make any sense to me. If an adult allows their children to order sodas in the first place, they should make it clear to the server promptly that the children should not get any refills. If they fail to do this, I see absolutely nothing wrong with the server assuming that a refill is ok.
I don’t recall ever having a server refill my drink (unless it’s water) without asking me first. Are there some restaurants where the servers actually do this?
I always feel bad for the server at restaurants when my husband orders. He has an abysmal number of food allergies.
‘‘Um, I would like your house salad please, with no tomatoes, no cheese, no dressing, and no croutons.’’
‘‘Um, so you just want… lettuce and cucumbers?’’
‘‘Right. With lemon wedges on the side. Thank you.’’
server shuffles off, confused about what has just taken place
The saddest day was when he ordered his salad thusly, and found in his bowl a heap of lettuce and a single olive.
Yes. At most restaurants I go to that have free drink refills, the server will frequently come by and just refill the glass without asking first. Happens with coffee, too.
However, even at such restaurants, I’ve never had a server refill my kids’ drinks without asking me first. I wouldn’t be offended or annoyed if such a thing happened, but for whatever reason, it generally doesn’t.
Wait a second, we’re talking about teenagers getting too much sugar? I thought we were talking about little kids who might not say to a server that they’re only allowed one soda.
I’m fairly easy to please so I don’t have serious gripes. Buuuttt… here are the minor ones I do have.
- I like steak, but I like it cooked medium to medium-well. It always arrives undercooked. I don’t want to ask for well-done, because that is too done for me. I order medium-well, and almost always get medium to medium-rare. I sent it back once when it was bleeding all over my plate. That is the only time I have ever sent back food.
If it’s medium I’ll eat it and enjoy it anyway, but man, why can’t they just cook what I order? The funny thing is that my boyfriend’s is always perfect. It’s kind of a joke with us. “What did you get this time?”
Once, when I ordered a medium-well and got a medium, the server walked by to see if we needed anything. He noticed my steak and commented on it, in the manner of, “Wait, didn’t you order medium-well? That doesn’t look like it’s medium-well to me. It looks more like a medium. Did you want me to take it back and get you another one?” I said no, that it was okay, since I like medium steak. He offered to get the manager for me, and I declined, saying it was really okay. Then the manager came over anyway to apologise, saying that they are normally very strict about that kind of thing and that they would take it back if I wanted. Again, I declined. I was impressed though, since the server actually knew what I ordered, noticed a discrepancy, and offered to fix it without my asking.
- There’s a restaurant nearby which I like, but they like to ask you for your drink order the second you sit down, before you have a chance to review the menu. Once I said I wasn’t ready, and asked them to come back in a couple of minutes. In under 2 minutes I’d picked out my drink, but where was the server? I don’t know! They didn’t come back for 10 more minutes! We were sitting there, menus closed, trying to catch everyone’s eye and nothing.
Then I forgot about that the next time I went back and it happened again. :smack: They must have a set “couple more minutes” time which is way longer than mine.
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Upselling. The other day, at the same restaurant as above, a server kept trying to offer us things. We’d been served by him many times before, as we go there often, but he’d never done that to us before. I didn’t like it. It made me feel like a giant moneybag. He even opened the menu to the dessert page and pointed at it, and then he walked by our table with two desserts meant for other people and waved them under our faces (not literally, but he brought them down to our level and waved them around) before delivering them to their intended destinations. Maybe this is a new requirement or something, and I don’t blame him so much, but it made me feel really uncomfortable and I just wanted to get out at that point. My boyfriend liked it though because he thought it was funny. He was like “that guy’s got style!”
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I meant to click preview but I clicked submit. Oops. 4 is short. ONIONS. Dear restaurants, onions don’t need to be in everything. They don’t need to be steamed as a side vegetable either. Blech! Try using something else for a change.
My wife did this once at Corky’s Barbecue. I ordered her an iced tea and something must have gotten crossed in the order because the waitress kind of looked at me with a dumbfounded experssion and said, “Well, my lunch break is pretty soon so I guess I can join you”. I have no idea where she got that from but it was rather amusing to me to pick up a chicken while my wife was in the bathroom. My wife didn’t find it so funny.
Marc
I’ve heard rumours that the biggest mark-up in the restaurant are the sodas and the desserts (I rarely have either - take that, restaurant business!)
I know people that feel the same way, but I actually like this. In my experience it is the good servers that do this because they find it easier and faster to eliminate the redundant (and potentially error-prone) written order. It is great to get one of these servers, since it means that everything will flow right. Now once in a while the order gets too complicated, the server stops a person mid-order, and starts to write the entire order down. This is a bit of a pain, but I figure they have to practice at some point. The exception is when memorized orders are store-policy and not the server’s choice (e.g. Arbys circa 1985).
My complaint is one that was mentioned earlier. When your fellow guests need to critique the service during the meal. Yeah, I get that we are paying, we want to have an enjoyable dinner, and expect to be pampered, but discussing it at the meal is a drag on the conversation. If I’m out to eat, I want to discuss interesting stuff. I don’t want to hear about the bad service any more than I want to hear about any of the other petty, smalltalk of your day. ‘Oh, the service is horrible! Just like the guy that cut me off on my way to work! Oh, let me tell you about the miserable phone call I had today with Verizon’s customer service.’ No thanks.
Eh? I worked at an Arby’s in 1985 (my very first restaurant job!), and orders were placed just like any other fast food restaurant: the customer walked up to the counter and told the minimum-wageslave what he or she wanted and the wageslave punched the appropriate buttons on the register and hollered the order back to the kitchen via a microphone. It went like this:
CUSTOMER: “I’d like a Beef & Cheddar …”
CASHIER: <pokes register key labeled “Beef & Cheddar”> (into microphone) “Beef & Cheddar!”
CUSTOMER: “… and a large order of fries …”
CASHIER: <pokes register key labeled “LG fries”> (into microphone) “Large fries!”
No memorization involved.
It must have been a store-policy then where I lived. I remember it was always frustrating to order there because there were six hungry people in my family. By the 3rd or 4th person, you could see the fear in the cashier’s eyes as he realized that he couldn’t remember the whole order and all of the new items were making him forget the old items. And after the first few times, we tried to warn the cashiers, ‘You may want to write this one down.’. ‘No sorry, we’re not allowed to.’
Still, it wasn’t as bad as the time at Portillos when the manager came out and handed my Dad the to-go bag and with a sneer informed us, ‘Here, I made this especially for you…’