We have experienced one screw up in the past nine months, eating out at least twice a week.
Do you include them not giving a damn about your substitutions or special instructions to be a “screw up?” Because, in my humble opinion, if what you want is not what is on the menu then you picked the wrong restaurant. It is not the waitstaff’s or the kitchen’s fault if you ask for something they don’t make.
I have noticed that the screw-ups tend to happen when something is ordered in any way that is not exactly as it is on the menu. My husband asks for dry toast, I don’t and either both orders are dry or both are buttered. He orders a salad with no cheese and dressing on the side, I don’t and they both come the same way - usually with no cheese and dressing on the side. ( do you see a theme here:))? But I don’t mean the screw ups are only on special orders - it also happens when I order something with an optional topping or sauce. For example, a baked potato is offered as a side and the menu lists an additional charge to have it “loaded” - I might get the loaded potato I ordered or I might get the plain one.
Sonic and Arbys are always manned by folk with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Asking for something slightly different is taken as a challenge to make sure to screw it up.
Speaking of underpaid…
I was a lousy waitress. I’m really not much of a multi-tasker. I wasn’t trained well. I knew I wasn’t that good, but I could go entire days without tips.
I was 17 working at a summer job. I had never touched a bank card in my life and had no idea that tips could be put on the card. My manager figured that out and arranged it so I worked every large group that ever came in. I never got a tip from any of the large parties.
I didn’t figure out what was happening until years later, after I got my first bank card and started putting tips on it.
Amazingly enough, I had little motivation to work extra hard for people without decent compensation.
Are you saying the management was stealing the tips you didn’t know the customers were putting on the charge card, or are you saying that customers weren’t leaving tips?
I read it as her manager was stealing her tips.
This is my pet peeve. It almost ensures bad service and mistakes. When everybody is responsible then nobody is responsible and the result suffers.
I can’t think of any restaurant that has ever taken this attitude and lasted long. Special orders are standard pretty much everywhere and can be reasonably assumed as a default expectation of customer service. I’m assuming by ‘‘special orders’’ you mean ‘‘no catsup’’ and not ‘‘lightly braised in the blood of yak, in an ambient music environment’’ because yes some people are ridiculous.
My husband is allergic to basically everything, and while I wouldn’t call his particular case a default expectation due to its highly restrictive nature, we have a special place in our hearts for those who go out of their way to accommodate his allergies. To me, that is the mark of a good restaurant. Some restaurants are so sensitive to allergies they will cook your food on a different grill. For someone (like him) who doesn’t get to eat out much due to food restrictions, that makes a really good impression. Of course they screw it up sometimes, but honestly, we don’t worry too much about that as long as it’s made right eventually.
I used to be a server and the orders get screwed up a lot at least in part because the job requires excellent working memory, and not everybody in that role fits the bill. It is a difficult job I sincerely hope I will never have to do again.
I used to wait tables. I made mistakes sometimes, probably because I’m not very bright/competant. Other people made mistakes but they had better personalities. My personality wasn’t very good so people would just be pissed off. I’m no longer in food service.
My daughter says waitressing was the reason for her excellent grades in college. No fucking way did she want to waitress ever again.
I served tables for nine years, so I have some insight.
The quality of service often correlates with where you are eating.
If you are eating in a hectic zoo with tons of low-pay servers and dummies in the kitchen there will be more mistakes. If you are eating in a quiet, high-end place with career servers and kitchen staff there won’t be as many mistakes. It scales in-between, accordingly.
I eat breakfast at Denny’s all the time and they make mistakes constantly. No silverware when the food arrives, I’ll run out of sugar for my coffee, the table was wet when I sat down, it goes on and on. But hey, it’s a big breakfast for cheap, so who cares? It’s not personal, they’re just not that good. If they were better, they wouldn’t work there.
Basically, if you want less mistakes, you have to pay more money and eat in better places.
But why so many mistakes? Serving can be really difficult. It’s go go go where you have to manage so many disparate elements at once in a sustained fashion while half the people watching you don’t have the slightest clue regarding the true nature of your work and yet do not hesitate to lay down harsh judgement. It can be a very tough job.
If the correct execution of your job consists of performing 50 tasks in the next two minutes and you got #29 wrong, often it’s something the customer notices. 49 out of 50 is pretty good when you’ve got your head in a vice, but nobody cares.
The next time you are in a busy, noisy restaurant just pick a server with lots of tables and watch them work for two minutes. It’s quite the ballet.
And, in response to this:
Do not underestimate how idiotic managers can be. I’ve heard some doozies from these people that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
This was an attempt to justify the new use of a microwave to heat desserts:
“This isn’t a microwave. It’s actually a ‘cobbler’. You see, a ‘microwave’ heats from the inside out, whereas a ‘cobbler’ heats from the outside in. You get it? Entirely different.”
They’ll think and say anything if they can crowbar it in to fit the paradigm that’s shoved down their throats.
And as far as “What customer would be offended…”: Customers will take offense at anything. Anything.
Took too long to get to the table? “Where were you?”
Didn’t wait long enough to go to the table? “We just sat down!”
Return change as bills? “Oh, you just gave me this so I’d tip big.”
Too many coins? “What do I look like, a piggy bank?”
It is literally endless. In case you haven’t noticed, human beings are, in general, idiots.
Knowing what I know about the customers and the manager, he was stealing my tips.
I’ve experienced poor service very rarely, especially over the past few years. Only once was it really bad; the time my husband and I went to a restaurant and the server saw another worker and said, “Sorry, I’ve got to talk to him.” He was in the middle of taking our order, and it was almost ten minutes later before he returned–no apology, either.
I think it’s confirmation bias. Screw-ups are annoying so you remember those.
Also CrafterMan never came back to answer what restaurants these are. You are going to get one level of service at Frankie’s Corner Pizza, another level at Olive Garden, and another at Chez François. (Some of the best service I’ve ever had, though, was at independent diners.)
I rarely have a this problem at restaurants.
I think for the most part, and this is no reflection on the OP, people that continually have the issue fall into one of the following categories.
They’re impossible to please
They have far too many special requests
They expect the same service at Denny’s that they get from a high end fine dining restaurant
And in any even if the server allows the customer to place a special order (no matter how complicated, even) instead of saying no then the restaurant should either be obliged to honor it, or once the kitchen catches it send someone back to the table to tell the customer they can’t do it. Saying nothing until the food arrives, not as ordered, is just passive aggressive & lazy. I don’t make special orders often; the last special order I made was asking for a cobb salad without the egg (& that was at Panera where I ordered off a terminal).
I’ve gotten excellent service at all three types of restaurants. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
Same here, to my recollection. Granted, I and the people I dine with tend not to customize their order much, but some type of screw up, in my estimation, happen maybe 5% of the time? Or perhaps it’s selective memory not remembering when they do happen, since it’s relatively rare.
Yes, the more picky your order, the more you should expect screw ups. Especially at fast food. Especially at the drive thru.
At del Taco, not once has my order of 4 del tacos been screwed up. My friend, however, almost never gets the correct order of burrito without meat but added avacado and the green sauce instead of the red blah blah blah. It’s so complicated, I would never get it right either.
My experience is that fast food is actually very accurate. More accurate than even relatively upscale restaurants, which are pretty good but still occasionally make a mistake. Probably because they’re keying the order right into the register when they take it and repeat it back to you from the screen.
I can go to In N Out and order a double double whole and grilled onions no tomato extra pickles fries well done with a packet of sauce all in one breath and they’ll repeat it back and it’ll come out right.
I don’t know that I’ve ever had something wrong at a really high-end restaurant, but my sample size is pretty small there.
I recently went to visit my grandmother who lives in an assisted living place, and had a few meals in the dining room with her. The food was not good, but I was amused that the accuracy of the orders was abysmal. Somewhere around 40% of the orders were delivered incorrectly, including more than one order directly off the menu with no substitutions. And our waitress was writing things down when she took our orders!