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Friday, January 23, 2009
Oh So Weird Tales of Dining Out
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BIG WAITERS, LITTLE WAITERS: Do you ever wonder what the heck your waiter is doing?
Photo: Alex Brandon/AP
One of my buddies from my crossfit class at Crossfit Decatur shared a harrowing story of dining at the bar at a local eatery recently. I’ll keep things anonymous for him and them — but here’s the gist: After waiting nearly 25 minutes at the bar for an order of soup to arrive, he told the bartender that he needed to leave, even though the rest of his order hadn’t arrived yet.
The response was something like “yeah, right.” No offer to take the soup off the check or even a free drink. So he paid. As he was preparing to leave, a manager came over and said “So I hear there’s been an incident.” Which of course, made my friend feel like he’d started a brawl or something. The manager offered to take his phone number so that he could call and get his address — apparently so something like a gift card could be sent. The weird thing is, why didn’t he just take his address then, instead of his number?
Do you ever wonder while dining out what the heck the staff is doing? As a former restaurant industry gal, I can usually figure out what’s going wrong and why — and my sympathies more often than not lie with the staff. But sometimes it just seems as if folks don’t have their heads on straight.
In these tough times, I would think a newly opened restaurant (as this one is) would bend over backwards to get people in — and back in, for return business. Have you ever had an “incident” dining out that left you scratching your head?
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