T what point does the service become so bad you walk out?

[beowulfthehunter]

Ok my freind and I came back from seeing Superman Returns (great movie I recomend it!) and we decided to go to Denny\'s for dinner. Holy crap was the service bad... It took like 20-25 min for the Waitress to show up and take out drink order. We obviously had our food decided on. So we sat and BSed for a while. 20 min go by and she says our food will be up in 10 min. Then after 20 min she brings us new drinks and says our food is almost done. Another 20 goes by and no food. My freind and I walk out. So did we overreact? Oh and we never bothered to pay for our drinks after an hour and 20 min I figured they owed us for the wait.

The ironic part is this is the 2nd time I have had bad service in that area (I had horrible food and service from the IOP two days earlier.

So share your horror stories

 

[Ebonbuddha]

What is an IOP?

 

[beowulfthehunter]

I meant IHOP...International House of Pancakes. 24 hour place in the States

 

[Sand Rat]

Hmm - never walked a check, but have left a penny as a tip for bad service.

 

[Ogrebane]

I am of the fast food ethos. I wont wait more than 15 minutes for food.

I have walked on countless resteraunts but the service never improves. Not sure if its the class of people (minimum wage I guess doest buy customer service) or type of training the businesses give em.

I dont think you over reacted and I would have billed them for my time. Done that before but never recieved payment.

 

[Onis Lair]

IHOP... i refuse to eat there ever again. First time i went in i ordered pancakes, that\'s it... you know International house of PANCAKES and it toom me an hour to get them. My fiance has ordered a ruben and when she got the thing after an hour\'s wait it was ice cold. no really, the corned beef still had ice crystals on it from the fridge.

The second time and IHOP was the last. I ordered fish, i got a hamburger. They took it back and 30 minutes later i got, nope not fish, another hamburger. ten minutes later i get fish but no mashed potatos. I tell the gal, she scuttles off and 10 minutes later she come sback sayign they are out of mashed potatos. Five minutes after this she brings the table next to me, yep, mashed potatos. I complaned and wanted to talk with the manager and guess what, the waitress that couldn\'t get my order right was the manager. I haven\'t been to an IHOP in any state since.

 

[james sequeira]

Three years ago when we went on a family holiday to Florida around the theme parks.We stayed in the Best Western hotel and there was a all you can eat every morning at a place next door and the food was great i was having ice cream for breakfast lol

 

[airhead]

I was going to say... Beowulf, were you near the theme park area here in Orlando? They really don\'t care. You will be back where you came from next week. Get away from the tourist area and they get a bit more caring.

 

[Duende]

Beowulf- Why walk when you could have just complained to the manager and gotten to eat for free?

At a local Denny\'s near me, for some reason, the evening/night crew service is horrible (never had a problem when I was there in the daytime), but twice I\'ve had to wait waaaay too long for service, as in your story. After politely requesting to see the manager, and telling them the time I arrived, how long it took for drinks... etc... I usually didn\'t have to pay for the food. That\'s happened twice to me in one restaurant.

Ogrebane- Minimum wage might get you good customer service, but most waitresses I know of are paid less than minimum because the tips are supposed to make up the difference (I worked a Denny\'s back in the mid-90\'s and my rate was $2.85/hr, and min wage at the time was around $5/hr). So remember to tip your waitress, especially if she did a good job!

 

[Infidel Castro]

Originally posted by Ogrebane
I am of the fast food ethos. I wont wait more than 15 minutes for food.

I have walked on countless resteraunts but the service never improves.

Terrible attitude. You\'ve probably eaten some really poor food if you wait no more than 15 minutes. Do you ever cook? I assume likely not very often if you do, or else you\'d appreciate reataurants who try to surprise and innovate.

Shame on you



But seriously, that\'s a bad attitude. I spend one hour a day cooking if I can at least!

 

[Rodnik]

Restaurants are the one place that I don\'t openly complain until my food is on the table. If it\'s not to my satisfaction, I escalate to management, ask for my money back if necessary, and I leave.

The reason: If the food is not in your line of sight, it is out of your control----and if you think a chef/waitress won\'t be vindictive to a complaint----think-a-damn-gain.

As far as how long I wait----it depends. If the restaurant is an expensive specialty restaurant, I am a lot less patient when it comes to delays and bad timing.
--you know..appetizer hitting the table after the entree, empty drink glasses, etc.

If the restaurant is a mom and pop little country cookin\' thing---I tend to rely on one guage----my drink glass. I don\'t tolerate my drink glass being empty for an extended period of time.

The trick is to just set realistic and fair expectations of the waitress/waiter in your own mind.

However---good service warrants a good tip. Average service gets an average tip. Subpar service gets a subpar tip--and excellent service gets an excellent tip---especially if I\'m entertaining clients or friends at the time.

I\'ve done the job (and it IS a tough job), so I try to take all things into consideration---
Number of tables they\'re working--the location of the tables, the size of the parties they are serving, their physical condition (pregnant waitress, for example). etc..etc..etc...(attitude is very important to me, as well).

The one time I remember \"excellent\" service was from a young girl that looked 9 1/2 months pregnant, working a rush that was short-staffed---and she would smile every time she got to the table---I would watch her stop mid-walk and rub her back and such as she moved between a number of tables---but still, she smiled when she got there.
I asked her how long she had been working that day---she was on her second double shift in two days--36 hours in two days from a full-term female-----but followed it up with \"But it\'s not so bad\" and she smiled.
Food on time, glass never empty--no complaints from me at all.

I\'ve since guaged every waiter/waitress on this one girl. And needless to say, I left what I hoped was a nice surprise for her.

 

[supervike]

I agree with that Rodnik....Complaining to the chef just gets you snot in your mayonaisse....lol

 

[No Such Agency]

Originally posted by beowulfthehunter
I meant IHOP...International House of Pancakes. 24 hour place in the States

See there\'s your problem right there! (as I see subsequent comments have confirmed). Never eat at a place like that. They don\'t sell good service, they sell cheap, unhealthily satisfying food to the least appreciative customers (most of whom have never eaten good food in their lives). And thus they hire whoever will work for dirt wages, which is to say.... not the cream of the food service sector. Good servers and good cooks are gems, you will never find them at IHOP.

Originally posted by Rodnik
The one time I remember \"excellent\" service was from a young girl that looked 9 1/2 months pregnant, working a rush that was short-staffed---and she would smile every time she got to the table---I would watch her stop mid-walk and rub her back and such as she moved between a number of tables---but still, she smiled when she got there.
I asked her how long she had been working that day---she was on her second double shift in two days--36 hours in two days from a full-term female-----but followed it up with \"But it\'s not so bad\" and she smiled.
Food on time, glass never empty--no complaints from me at all.

Wow, that woman would get more tip than I could really afford, that\'s for sure!

 

[EricJ]

ah Denny\'s, which seems to exist to cater to the increadibly tired or increadibly stoned. I can\'t stand the place, and pretty much try to avoid it, because I think the service you describe is not abnormal. I had a friend who worked a night shift there in college. Her best story is when she had to break up 2 guys fighting with broken bottles.

IHOP though I have a good history with. It got me through many many late nights in college. I think the vital first step is to make that investment and get to know the people there. Once they recognize you as not complete and total asshole idiots like many of their other customers, the service improves dramatically!

 

[Ritual]

Originally posted by reverend

Originally posted by Ogrebane
I am of the fast food ethos. I wont wait more than 15 minutes for food.

I have walked on countless resteraunts but the service never improves.

Terrible attitude. Do you ever cook? You\'ve probably eaten some really poor food if you wait no more than 15 minutes. Do you ever cook? I assume likely not very often if you do, or else you\'d appreciate reataurants who try to surprise and innovate.

Shame on you



But seriously, that\'s a bad attitude. I spend one hour a day cooking if I can at least!

Agreed! I actually get suspicious if I am at a restaurant and get the food too quick! Then I start to wonder if I get microwaved stuff...

EDIT: But, to return to the original post... I would have left after waiting THAT long, especially since the waitress said the food would be ready in 10 minutes and you still hadn\'t got it after 30.

 

[spazzy]

There\'s a lot of valid points here, Rodnic, NSA, I could keep going, but the main thing it comes down to is this, you get what you pay for. If you go to a restaurant that serves cheap greasy food, it stands to reason that you\'re going to get comparable service. The same holds true for any establishment that sells goods or services. Do you think that I\'m going to expect a good haircut and style from a woman that is only going to charge me five bucks? No, I\'m going to avoid that place like the plague. Here in our small town we have a lot of wonderful little restaurants that are owned by local people, not franchised from some big chain, and they are by far the best restaurants in town. It\'s a lot easier to provide quality service and products when you only have one or two restaurants and a staff of 20 or less, than a chain across the country and a workforce of two million.

And by the way, the idea of being polite reguardless of the service is a must. Duende was right, you don\'t want to make an ass of yourself. You\'ll just set yourself up for failure farther down the road.

 

[vincegamer]

I once went to a movie with some friends but we were late so we decided to get a pizza next door and see the next showing instead. We placed our order and started talking when someone noticed that half an hour had passed and we hadn’t gotten our food yet. They guarantee delivery in half an hour! Turns out they had just forgotten our order. Since we still had more than an hour to wait for the next film we really didn’t care, and they probably gave us our pizza free though I don’t really remember as it was almost 20 years ago.

as to IHOP, I eat there at least once a year, around my anniversary. See, I was married at 11:00 am and went to IHOP for lunch. No matter where we\'ve lived since there has always been an IHOP to celebrate. Oh, IHOP was the hottest new joint in the tiny town we lived in at the time, so going there was a big deal.

 

[Zora]

Now see, I \'m an OVERtipper. I\'ve never worked in that kind of environment, and never wanted to, which is why I appreciate the people who do.

However, customer service is one of my pet peeves. And this is where I disagree with Spazzy: you should expect and get good customer service -with a smile- no matter where you go. That should really strike true with those who\'s income depends on tips.

Very rarely do I get upset. But one night in a Carrow\'s restaurant -which I actually like- the waitress was incredibly rude and slow. I knew from frequenting said establishment before that she was not new. It was nighttime and she was bored with her job.

As we leave -it\'s gotten pretty empty by this time- I can see her cleaning a couple of tables away from us. Without looking at her, I put SEVERAL one-dollar bills down as a tip.
Before my friends could ask why, I put a thoughtful look on my face and took most of them back...and then returned after taking only a couple of steps away and grabbed the rest and put them in my pocket.

...All in full view of the waitress who was watching.

 

[EArkham]

A comparatively small amount of what you pay for at a restaurant goes to the food itself. Just look at the cost of food at a grocery store, then factor in that restaurants (even small ones) buy food in bulk. Mostly you pay for service and preparation. You shouldn\'t have to be a regular customer to get that; you\'re paying for it right then and there.

That said, I tend to overtip, too. Especially if the service is good, but I\'ll have no hesitation to leave a handful of change if the service is truly crap.

Kep

 

[supervike]

I tip the hell out of people...it just makes me feel good.

Speaking of Grocery Stores...my Dad once had a whole cart full of groceries, and the clerk was TERRIBLE...More worried about whose break was when than the growing line of customers....

Anyhow, he just up and left the whole damn thing right there in the middle of the Grocery store line. At this point the manager had just come out of his hiding place and said \"what about your cart?\" My Dad just said \"You can keep that shit\". And then walked out.lollol