Tags
bad service, chicken, home fries, manager, restaurant, ribs, waiter, waitress
I am an entrepreneur. So I think business. To explain my contradiction, art and business, I will qualify myself. On the Meyers – Briggs test I am an INTJ, just to be clear! So I observe, tend to solve problems that are not mine, much better than my own I might add! I people watch and today, waitress, manager watch.
It was my brother Dan’s birthday celebration complete with in-laws out-laws and everyone in between and one daughter’s young friend for good measure. We go to the restaurant the birthday person selects and we knew it would be this one place, actually several of us were dreading, when it was my brother’s turn. It was not especially bad food, just blah food. Lot’s of average french fries, average ribs, nasty broasted chicken (the thing my brother wanted) fried fried fried! Not even the diet breaker craving kind of fried either!
So I order fried shrimp and home fries (blech) with my meal. My mother ordered by pointing at her entree on the menu. We all ordered. Two waitresses took our order. There is ONE thing we all like unanimously there, fried mushrooms! We have gone there just for these and they were out! No explanation, just took our order and came back and said, we are out, what else would you like? Well NOTHING! That is what we came for! We stayed but should have walked out because truly, that is what we came for. For a restaurant known for mushrooms would you not go out of your way to make sure you have some? So, said restaurant on unofficial probation.
Enter tonite. Oh my goodness! So OK. Mushrooms were great. Funny that. Dear son #1 quips earlier in the evening, I wonder if they have mushrooms? Well if they don’t maybe we can get something free! Right away my little alarm in my body goes off, oh my, that would mean something goes wrong! I stuff it aside in the little dusty corners of my mind.
Salads were fine. So comes the entree’s. A new person brings them out (never saw that here before) He obviously does not know who has what, something I find irritating. He asks and runs around a 12 person table giving food away until… he comes to mine or nobody’s, it depends on how you look at it! “Who has shrimp and broasted potatoes?” He asks. And waits. No answer (we are animatedly talking and patiently waiting for our entree to be called out. He asks again. I say, taking the lead, how many people here ordered shrimp? Me and my son. Son has his, oh, must be mine. I say I ordered shrimp but I ordered home fries (not that I really wanted them at all but I absolutely DID NOT want broasted potatoes there). He offers the plate to me, I say I ordered home fries NOT broasted potatoes, I would like home fries. Did I need to repeat that? Seriously. So back goes my order.
He goes back in the kitchen and brings out another platter of orders. Gives them out. And says everybody all set or something like that. My in-laws and my sis in-law and mother have no meals, we point that out. Why did that need pointing out with starkly blank areas before them? Very good, he goes back and checks.
We discuss the pasta dish my mother is getting with grilled chicken with some sort of al fredo or the like. Out come more meals. Sis in-laws meal and my mom’s….. SALAD? My mom, 81, asks where is my grilled chicken searching through a newly placed salad before her looking in great confusion at the mysterious oily substance that we suspect is some kind of dressing on the side. The waitress says, “The grilled chicken is coming, it is in the back, it goes on top.” My mother very confused wonders if she made a mistake and ordered the wrong thing. We wonder about it for a brief moment and I remember our pasta conversation and recall her pointing at the menu and then I tell her to ask for a menu. She does and discovers she is not senile yet and tells the waitress she got the wrong thing. And further explains that why would she order a grilled chicken salad and have a salad for an appetizer? I am still confused that if it was indeed a grilled chicken salad, why does my mother have salad and no grilled chicken and further consternated knowing that it SHOULD be pasta!
I bite into my shrimp, overcooked, nasty. I discern it is not going to do any good to complain. I ask my fellow shrimp eaters. Same deal, nasty. Mom’s meal comes. Mother in law asks to have some. They have not gotten their meal yet! They have pointed this out several time during this extended time of serving and getting things straight always met with the same answer, “It’s coming.”
Suddenly out comes another shrimp dinner. Ok what is this? The waitress looks confused. Oh just keep it, it’s on the house. No one ordered a shrimp dinner, they DID order a slab of ribs for two, lost somewhere in the depths of the kitchen. Jokes are made all around about having to go out back and slaughter the cow. I look around. People who arrived after us are happily noshing on RIBS!
All this time the waitress is calm, explaining the kitchen is having problems. No fooling! So we are folding our napkins, asking for carry out containers (I don’t want to take my home fries home, they tasted like shortening discs, no flavor, not even potato flavor) We all realize my in-laws never ate! Never got their meal! We decide forget it and start to get ready to walk out and out comes a boxed up meal. Father in-law is outspoken and unpleasant as usual lol! Waitress says it’s on the house and proceeds to fix the bill. We discuss how they have made a bad situation better by fixing the problems and trying to make us happy by giving us a free meal. We get the bill, the ribs are on there! We ask about it and the waitress says they changed their mind, we got the ribs, we pay for the ribs. Well my father in-law explained where they could put the ribs in an unpleasant manner. My previous discussion on how they handled bad service and a bad situation was reneged vigorously and my patience was worn clear through! They definitely could keep the ribs. Then we noticed they “recharged” my mom for her wrong dinner. Now we were upset. We are grumbling now. The waitress fixes that when she sees we are upset and volunteers some free cake to go. How come we got free cake and free shrimp but we could never get what we ordered? RIBS?
Did I mention they don’t keep their bathrooms clean? My mother always says that if they bathrooms are dirty, the kitchen is dirty, they do not care about cleanliness. I won’t go back, brother’s request or not…
The waitress did not add the mandatory 15% gratuity although we left her something. We never once saw the manager, only heard about her decisions. It was the same woman who did not look happy that a party of 12 walked in to their practically empty restaurant. They will not have that problem again.
I took note.
As a manager of a restaurant I would have personally gone over to the table and made it right, no matter what I had to do. This blog would have never been written. 12 people would not tell of their bad experience and I would have kept my restaurants reputation intact. I don’t expect it to make it in this recession with that attitude.
