This is an email I sent after it happened several years ago. I won’t say it’s my worst restaurant experience (those would involve food poisoning or really bad public scenes) but it’s up there as far as stupidity and restaurants are concerned.
IHOP is consistent only in that if you get good service you’ll have trouble with your order, or if the order’s fine you’ll have bad service, which is a pity because it’s the only place in town that’s open late that serves anything other than burgers or waffles. I’ve been there before when I was seated and then nobody took my order for forty-five minutes until I grabbed some passing staff and then the food never came. I’ve been there before when 23 people came up in succession to ask me what I wanted to drink, but then I got the “surprise me” meal and no refills.
The worst was when I went there with my aunt and my mother. My mother ordered the pot roast with mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes, a dinner that’s supposed to come with a salad.
The waitress… okay… do you remember the episode of COSBY where Rudy receives massive irreparable brain damage in a snow-plow accident? That was the waitress, a very sweet but lobotomized Keeshia Knight Pulliam clone. She brought the salad… no problem there… then she brought my mother a plate containing pot-roast.
No potatoes, no vegetables, no bread. Just pot roast.
My mother asked her for the salad, potatoes, and mixed vegetables and she said
“I’m not sure they come with it…”
My mother pointed out that the menu clearly says the meal comes with salad and two vegetables. She had indeed been served a salad but there were two to go.
“Well which two you want?” asked the lobotomized Huxtable.
“I’d like the mashed potatoes, which is why I ordered them, and the mixed vegetables, which is why I also ordered them.” (This in that "82 ways of sayin’ “sugar” old Southern woman sweetness).
The waitress returned with the mashed potatoes- a mountain of them- on a separate plate. No gravy, though. And no mixed vegetables.
“They don’t have no more mixed vegables” says Lobotomized Rudy.
“Well what do they have?” asks my mother.
Lobotomized Rudy [LR]: Uhhh… carrots I think. Might be something else. And salad.
My Mother [MM]: Well… I’ve already had a salad.
LR: You wanted two salads?"
MM: I… wanted… never mind dear.
Well, this is when my good lady aunt (GLA) becomes obsessed with what the other vegetables are.
GLA: Miss, it says there’s a vegetable of the day. What is that please?
LR: It changes. It changes everyday.
[silence]
Me: That must be interesting to watch.
GLA: Well what might it have changed into today?
LR: I don’t know.
crickets chirping; jungle birds cawing…but no motion.
GLA: Well, maybe the people who cook it would know.
LR: Yeah, I’m sure they would know.
[In the distance a dog barks]
GLA: [looking cursorily at the new liver spot that has formed since this conversation started] Why don’t you ask them?
Lobotomized Rudy arrives back early the next springtime and I SWEAR ON MY HOLIEST OATH SHE SAID THIS- not at all embellished-
LR: They told me what the vegetable was but I can’t pronounce it.
VERY LOUD SILENCE-
My aunt, my mother and I marvel at a new masterpiece of stupidity in service. This is the Sistine Chapel of imbecility, the Mona Lisa of Mongoloids…
My mother: What does it sound… like?
Waitress: Chicken.
(I AIN’T MAKING IT UP I SWEAR)
Our synapses try to process this and send neurological memos to our ears, eyes and all parts of our bodies that encounter the outside world to make sure we’ve understood correctly. It checks. It’s illogical, but it’s what she has said. After this is processed, one of us speaks:
“The vegetable you can’t pronounce sounds like chicken?”
“Uh-huh.”
My mother lights a cigarette, pulls a drag, releases, and then says: “Do you mean that it rhymes with chicken or that it clucks?”
Waitress: “Huh?”
Aunt: Say it as best you can?
Waitress: Chicken prela- primo- pretee— prala… I wrote it down but I lost the piece of paper…
My mother: "That’s okay, potatoes are fine… "
[Sub-text: “I pardon you.”]
The waitress wanders back into the kitchen. When she meanders aimlessly back through a moment later my aunt drops her fork and says “I’m sorry, I’ve got to know what vegetable sounds like a chicken.”
[Sub-text: Pow!!! Goeth just blew the Polish kid’s head off]
Aunt: Miss… could you bring some of that stuff that rhythmes with chicken so we can look at it?
Me: And that we might prepare a feast to it’s glory in the wilderness… it’s part of our religion.
Aunt: He’s weird. Used to play with sticks. Don’t be afraid. But we have to know what is this vegetable?"
She brought a sample of it… about two of them on a saucer.
It was chick-peas.
I’m glad we didn’t order green peas or she’d have probably torpedoed a whaling vessel.
My mother also asked for bread at some point.
Lobotomized Rudy brought her two pieces of light bread… IN HER HAND!!!
Anyway, that’s the most notable IHOP story but literally of the more than a dozen times I’ve been there I had good service ONCE!!!
So the point is don’t do drugs. But if you do and you blow your mind, IHOP will hire you.
} the host is expected to make sure that each waitress ‘has their share of the pain’. Also in the pain sharing category are families with multiple young kids. When a person in these categories comes in and doesn’t want to sit in the selected waitresses area and demands to sit in anothers…this creates a very irritated waitress.