I just wanted some pizza.

[marty]

Last night...well, last night sucked horribly. Yesterday was day six of a seven day work week, which wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the fact that I have to do everyone else's freakin job for them and we just had a visit from our DM. Needless to say, stressed out. Beyond reason. And all I wanted last night was some pizza and breadsticks (cravings, ya know?)

So a friend and I went to mellow mushroom, because we love their cheese sticks and normally their pizza is pretty good. We seat ourselves as instructed, and wait. And friggin' wait. After ten minutes, some guy walks by and says he'll be with us in a second. We never saw him again. Ten minutes after that (counter at 20, we were about to leave) a different waiter comes up, gives us menus, and says he'll take our drink orders as soon as he drops a salad off.

We saw him again, in another twenty minutes, bullshitting with a couple tables down (he even sat down with them. They appeared to be his friends.) So forty minutes, nothing. We left.

Really, WTF? I know the guy saw us because he glanced up when my friend waved her hand. And I get the feeling it was the case of the guy avoiding us because he has the notion that college kids don't tip. I thought about talking to a manager, but at that point the level of pent up frustration that was rolling around inside me would have pushed me to create a scene, scream and yell, and that's something I know I shouldn't do. I sent a complaint online instead when my head cooled.

We went to a different place and got our food in 15 minutes. Sigh.

[Becks]

Let us know how they respond to the online complaint.


Oh, and if you're sufficiently calmed down, go back and talk to the manager today. Mention what happened and that you did the whole online thing. Then say that you just wanted him/her to know how disappointed you were.

[blas]

Wow. You have the patience of a saint.

A couple of Saturday nights ago, my boyfriend and I and his buddies were at the local rock bar to see some bands. The local music scene has gone down the shitter real bad, so it was pretty much desserted.

This one girl probably around my age and I were both at the bar waiting for drinks, money in hand facing the counter. The dumbass bartender was flirting with some nasty guy who had an uncanny resemblance to Andy Dick. She looked back at us and kept flirting the guy up.

After about 5 minutes of that crap, we walked away to the other side of the bar and got served within seconds by a different bartender.

And refusing to wait on people because "college kids don't tip"? That's no excuse. He might as well have also refused to wait on elderly customers and men with mullets wearing wife beater tank tops.

[simpleyme]

we once went to a restaurant called apple peddler( kinda like Denny's) they did not have a non smoking table big enough for us in the front so they put us in some dark back room then never came back!

we finally found our way out and left after a half hour ,we did not bother to say anything because we just did not want to give them our money or be there any longer

, we thought it was funny as hell when 6 months later they shut their door, geee how could that happen the wait staff is so attentive?

[PepperElf]

The dumbass bartender was flirting with some nasty guy who had an uncanny resemblance to Andy Dick.

OT: Hopefully his looks are the only thing that's similar to Andy. Otherwise she's not going to get too far with him

(andy's funny actually... he was awesome on shatner's roast)

back on topic:
don't forget you'd have to refuse service to foreigners too then since many other countries don't tip.

[RedRoseSpiral]

Sounds like what happened to me and a friend when we went to Steak'n'Shake after a movie. We were seated and then forgotten for almost 40 minutes. There were only two other groups in the place. One was a group of teenage guys who had already been served their food and then a twosome a couple of booths down from me and my friend. The twosome came in about five minutes before we were remembered. We didn't really care about the wait enough to go anywhere else because 1. we were having a good time catching up and 2. there wasn't any other place open that late at night. It's safe to say that the waitress didn't get a tip. We went back the next time we went out and had a great waitress left her a 33% tip (I love the tip calulator on my cellphone )

It sucks that you had to go somewhere else because of zero service. I know how hard it is to find really good bread sticks.

[CoffeeMonkey]

I had a similar experience with a friend at a Cracker Barrel.

We enter and are seated right away, are given menus and are told that someone will be right with us for our drink orders. There were two or three other tables occupied in the whole section (half of the dining room). We saw two servers working the other tables. We were forgotten. We tried to signal politely (eye contact and a slightly raised hand) and they either ignored us or didn't see us.

So after nothing for twenty minutes, we decided that neither of us were really in the mood for cracker barrel anymore, and left. We got a great dinner at IHOP.

So I wrote to the company. I got a form response the next day that my issue had been noted. The store manager called to get my story, apologize, and assure me that some retraining would be implemented amongst the servers. I said that I understood that it was likely a miscommunication with the staff, and I wasn't angry.

I also got a certificate for a free meal for two in the mail shortly later.

In the end, I think the system worked exactly as it should have. I was dissatisfied, I expressed my unhappiness with the service politely and through the proper channel without freaking out, and the freebie that they sent me served its intended purpose: it gave me incentive to give the company another try, which I did, and got good service the second time around.

[One-Fang]

Y'know, I sometimes think we can forget that things actually can happen that way (and probably do most of the time). Being here at CS gives you SC-colored goggles.

It's kinda like when Joey and Chandler got the free porn and were afraid to turn it off. They were stunned the pizza delivery girl just ... delivered the pizza, took the money, and ... left! No flashing anything, no coy 2-meaning phrases, just ... left.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

I had a very similar situation happened to me at Red Lobster. Quite a few years ago, while my wife and I were still in college, we decided to go out for dinner before a showing of a movie on campus(required for a class). After waiting 20 minutes to be seated, we were finally seated by the hostess, who also brought us our sodas and a basket of the cheesey biscuits. 15-20 minutes go by, and there's no sign of a waitress, even though people seated after us have already gotten their salads.

After trying to flag down a waitress unsucessfully and having a few breeze past us carrying food and not stopping, I was starting to get a little annoyed. The restaurant was quite full at the time with a large backup in the lobby, so I didn't exactly feel like fighting my way to the hostess' station. I pulled out my cell phone and called the restaurant. The manager answered the phone and was a little shocked, thought I was trying to place a food order at first, "we don't do carry-out". When I told him we were in the restaurant, on a timeline, and had been seated for about a half hour, he was apologetic and came out to our table.

It turned out that a waitress had been sent home ill and in the confusion our table hadn't been split to a new waitress. Once a waitress was assigned to us we had great service, and I did leave a decent tip. The manager did offer us free dessert as way of apology, which was kind of nice in my book. It made me happy because we finally got to try out 2 of their desserts we'd always looked at but thought too expensive.(it's darn good cake, but $7 a slice? sheesh)

[IT Grunt]

A friend and I had a similar experience at a TGI Fridays once. We went in, were greeted, led to a table, and told a server would be with us shortly. 'Shortly' turned into 10 minutes... 15... 20.... at 30 minutes, my friend got up and tracked down a manager. The manager served us our drinks and took our orders before a server took over. I have no idea what the deal was. Several servers walked right by our table, noticed we had menus but no drinks, but just kept going. It soured my impression of TGI Fridays, but they have since rebuilt that trust and I've had good service at any other store I've been in.

[Imogene]

My brother and his wife invited me out to dinner at a BJ's one night, they ordered very particular pizzas (sister in law is extremely bossy as the family joke goes), I ordered their spasagna (spaghetti baked to look like lasagna, mmmm...)
A little while later, server comes over and tells us the spasagna was ready, but one of the pizzas came out wrong. No worries, we're happily gabbing away.
A little more while later, server comes back again. Pizzas came out wrong again, and they'll have to recook the spasagna. Still no worries.
A lot more while later, a manager comes over to our table, and begs forgiveness for messing up our order for a third time, even though nothing ever reached our table, and we'd gone through... three baskets of bread... so, we were hungry but not ravenously so. Manager offers us free desserts, and a gift card for $50... and food follows him shortly. We eat, get dessert (mmm, pizzookie), bro and SiL pay the bill with the gift card, easily, and still have enough left over to cover half another meal.

[jedimaster91]

The local Denny's has horrible service. I would occasionally go there after dance performances I was in since it was close, and even though it was late at night and the restaraunt was mostly empty, it would take upwards of an hour or more to get our food. Even ice cream that all they had to do was scoop out of the carton.

[One-Fang]

And this sort of thing is why every server should stop at any table that looks a little ... 'bored' and ask "is everything okay for you folks?" Doesn't matter if it's not their table. No service yet? I'll get your waiter.

And also precisely why customers need to flag down any passing server when they're sitting there wondering when their personal server is coming back.