what is the worst thing a server can do to make you mad?

Rgladson...Waiters are paid to wait :D

Know what you mean tho...I hate nursing a half inch of drink in a glass for half an hour before it has a chance of being refilled.

Once we went for a "quick" meal before catching a movie. Told the waitrss in polite, but no uncertain terms, that we had only 45 minutes...what could they offer us to be made and eaten in that time, so the kitchen had a chance to get it done, we could eat it, and walk across the road to the cinema. It was a very slow night in the restaurant, only 2 other couples.

We were relying on her to be realistic timewise so it would work for everyone.
Result? nope. Didn't happen. We were walking up to the FOH after way too long to let them know, basically, sorry, we have to go, etc etc and the meal appeared. I felt mortified for the cook. But we did have to go. It was an hour after we arrived.

I've got to admit, they did offer us both a free meal to make up for it, so no love lost. A matter of more experience on the wait staff's part perhaps.

We never did take up the offer of the free meal. Have gone elsewhere since.

Yes I agree with you unfortunatly that seems to happen very often at restaurants around the world, and I guess I understand seeing how busy that waitors and waitresses can be and it is easy to forget about their customers. On the other hand though I understand being a customer how annoying it is when you see someone come in after you and get their food first, or if you just feel like you being avoided. Yes you should remind them that your there but the first time do not be rude to them unless it happens more and more after you have talked to your server.

I have no problem with someone who arrives after me receiving their food before me, there are valid reasons for this to happen.
If someone in my party orders a well done steak, later arriving group that orders soup and sandwich could and should receive their food first.
The cooks job is to prepare all food as expeditiously as possible.

I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned this yet: when the waiter touches me. :eek:

Yes, I know that there have been studies saying that touching the customer on the shoulder (surely not anywhere else? :rolleyes:) gets a bigger tip, but not from me!

The worst thing a waiter can do is to blame me for the problem -- whatever it is.

BDL

Yes Chef BDL,
Blaming....

But being touched (Suzanne said) or coming toooo close to my face where they are breathing down my neck is a no-no...touche pas S.V.P.


Petals

I can't stand when the server can't explain the speical, becuz she could care less what is happening in the kitchen.

And what about the frickin CELL PHONES. Your at work, don't talk or txt your friends. We all have phones and all have friends. We know when we work we do just that, WORK

Yea I don't want to be touched either, and I especially don't like when the waiter sits down at the table with me to take my order... what's that about?

I always ask what the soup of the day is and most of the time I get this stupid answer: "Let me go check." :mad:

Yes I agree with you unfortunatly that seems to happen very often at restaurants around the world, and I guess I understand seeing how busy that waitors and waitresses can be and it is easy to forget about their customers. On the other hand though I understand being a customer how annoying it is when you see someone come in after you and get theirfood first, or if you just feel like you being avoided. Yes you should remind them that your there but the first time do not be rude to them unless it happens more and more after you have talked to your server.

If the server takes an order before me from a table that arrives after me, yes, it's a problem.
If they take their order after mine but their food comes out first, not so much.
After the order is taken the server has little control....if the cooks put the other order up first (and there are reasons why this would be acceptable) what are they supposed to do, let it die in the window?

Well most of those are not big deals to me but my pet peeves are:

when the waitor waits 20 minutes before returning to your table

refilling drinks quick enough

when they are rude to you

My service expectations vary as to the quality of the dining establishment. These are all things that have happened in fine dining establishments ($50 pp and up type places).

#1 Server sitting down at our table to take the order - don’t kneel on the floor either.
#2 Food auctioning (“who had the duck?”)
#3 Complete lack of knowledge about menu items (“I am a vegetarian I don’t eat meat.”) I don’t care – you are a salesperson you should know your product.
#4 Not refilling wine glasses, yes I know the bottle is on the table but I just paid 150 bucks for it – you want a tip for service, SERVE it.
#5 Timing of plates – appetizers arrived, 2 minutes later entrees arrived, and then the server realized that we had also ordered pre-entrée salads so they brought those also – true story, happened in one the most expensive and highly rated restaurants in the US.

To the restaurants credit the manager immediately removed the salad and entrees and corrected the timing issues, when the entrees came they were fresh and just cooked not reheated. But the server was absolutely clueless and unless I had requested to speak to the manager the plates would have stayed there.

#6 Not knowing how to fillet or carve something tableside (A whole sea bass was presented and the server started to hack away at it, my friend, a chef, who ordered it, stopped him and gave this poor soul a lesson on the dining room floor, he didn’t do it in a demeaning sort of way, but what this guy was doing to the sea bass was criminal.)

Not a “server” but the Sommelier


#7 After ordering a $ 300 bottle of wine by name, a so-called sommelier replied with – “What number is that?” [NOTE: it was NOT a bin number – each wine had a number beside it like cheap Chinese food restaurants.]

And for the finale it came from a Maitre d’:

(drum roll please)

After complaining about a spoiled piece of meat the Maitre d’ came over with knife and fork in hand, cut into the item and proceeded to eat it in front of us and then proclaim there is nothing wrong with it. I am not kidding – I have 3 other witnesses to this event.

I heard later that this gentleman was let go several weeks after our run-in with him, due to a “high volume of guest complaints” – ya think.

I understand this statement but here's where I dsagree. I'm a very slow drinker, I am usually the slowest drinker at the table and I often have dining companions who are capable of guzzling. Everytime the waiter comes by he refills their glasses, but not mine because it still looks full. That means that by the end of the night everybody has enjoyed several glasses of wine while I never got past the first one.

I eat french fries fast, but I don't see anyone coming over to refill my plate on those and that would be a welcome change.

It's not just an age thing. I get treated with the presumption that I won't tip well because I drink only water at certain restaurants. They need to get it straight; I drink water here because your tea sucks, I don't much like soda and your wine list is horrible.

I also agree with giant steak knives being annoying. The serrations give a visceral experience that is just what the doctor ordered for ambiance in a rustic, steak house type establishment, but overly wide blades are just plain obnoxious.

That is the true mark of an unprofessional individual and it makes them look very lazy.

Most people don't realize this. I had a vegetarian waiter in a country club restaurant I ran. I told him not to use this cop-out and just ask one of the chefs about any dish that he would not eat.

I could not agree more.

Timing falls partly on the kitchen and partly on the waitstaff. A good waiter, however, knows to send stuff back if it comes too early and to ask for stuff to be pushed if it is needed earlier than expected.


I have never trusted anyone to carve tableside without first doing it in the kitchen under my watchful eye. If no one can do it on the waitstaff, I'll keep a prep cook/apprentice around for service to do it.

The he wasn't a Sommelier. He was a waiter, and a bad one at that. A sommelier would have known it by name and a good waiter would have written it down and made a stop at the host's stand to reference the wine list.


He should have been beaten with a stick and the chef should have been beaten with a really big stick for letting that leave his kitchen.

In guess from the kinds of places I eat in in Rome, the problems are quite different.

I don;t get mad if it's an actual waiter, because they are paid nothing and usually don;t even get the miserable tips people leave here (if it's 5 % it's a lot) because the owner takes them all (!!!). But often it's the owner, or members of the owner's family that serves the meals. They seem to believe that it is somehow rude to bring the check when you ask for it. I've seen these guys go over to the side, and wait around for ten or more minutes, and THEN go to the cash register and calculate the bill, and bring it to the table. It's like they think it's rude to look to eager to get your money. But since most of the time it's almost impossible to get your food, to get an extra bottle of water, more bread or (heaven forbid) salt and pepper, you spend most of the meal waiting for stuff, and can;t wait to get out of there.

But check this out on the theme of snobby waiters,
YouTube - Mitchell and Webb - Bad Waiter

That's awesome!:lol:

...
--- when they bring me my order long time!!!

--- when they come to me often and ask me "would you like smt else??"

When I was a little kid, my family and I were out at Red Lobster with some friends and our server QUIT mid-service. I guess it was really busy and they didn't have any idea what was going on. It took hours for us to get our food and by the time they finally served us, they were out of more than half the items on the menu.

To this day, I have no idea why we didn't just leave...guess our party was a bunch of pushovers. Not me though, I worked in food-service for a while and though I'm always courteous to those servers who treat me right, I also refuse to be jerked around.

We had a similar situation at a Shoney's. The server walked out in the middle of the shift to go party with his friends.

Making it worse: the manager told me, in a tone of long-suffering, "this is the second time he's done that." The guy then got his nose out of joint when rather than sympathizing, I told him that in any place with a real manager there wouldn't have been an opportunity for it to have happened a second time.

What genius has a server walk out in the middle of a shift, and then allow him to come back as if nothing had happened?

Siduri....thank you for the link! Had the best laugh in a long time :)

Bum's Rush

I had driven for nearly four hours, and it was about 2 a.m. when I arrived, famished, at the Denny's. I can't remember what I ordered, but I had it with hash browns. The waitress had done a nice job so far, but once I finished the meal, other than the hash browns, she seemed to be rushing to get me out of the restaurant.

I had been getting caught up on my email, using my laptop, and thought nothing of being there 40 minutes past the hour. There were two other occupied tables in the whole place, so it wasn't as if they needed the seats. She asked if I was ready for my check, and when I said I was, she whipped it out of her pocket and plopped it down. She asked if she could take my plate, but I told her I was still eating the hash browns. Five minutes later she was back, asking me if I was about done. She took hold of the plate, but I was still not done, thank you. Another five minutes, and she was back, asking if I was ready to pay and go.

At this point, I was worried that I was violating some local ordinance about loitering in dining establishments, and was tired of being nagged, so I grabbed my laptop, coat, and hat, and left.

As soon as I got back to my hotel, I went to the Denny's website and used their feedback form to describe my experience and tell them that if there is a time limit of some sort, they need to make it known. I believe I used the term, "bum's rush".

Two days later I got a phone call from the mortified manager of the Denny's, who said the waitress had been about to go off shift and must have been hoping to get her tip before then. Maybe she needed gas money to get home. In any case, he was profusely apologetic and sent me two magical coupons for free meals at any Denny's.

I have another Denny's service story, but it is about wonderful service, so I'll go find a suitable thread to tell that one.

Oh, and I agree about being ignored. I stopped at a cafe in Beaver, Utah, and sat there for 45 minutes without even being spoken to. I could see servers cleaning tables, chatting with the cooks, etc. A guy came in, sat at the counter, ordered his meal, got it, ate it, and headed out the door while I sat there, waiting. At some point I had decided to stay just out of curiosity to see how long it would take to talk to somebody. I finally got hungry enough to just walk out. I imagine they would have closed up for the night with me sitting there. The place is under new ownership, thank goodness.

Lyle - it's no wonder they are under new ownership. I haven't had the "joy" of being ignored (it will happen one day), you must be a martyr to patience to wait that long. If it's ten minutes to get the drinks menu, I'm out of there and find the next place. No matter what the venue. I'd rather get Macky D's in 2 mins flat than be ignored.

A rule of thumb...if nothing happens after ten minutes - get their attention (even if its just a glass of water)and some action - or walk.

Yes, I agree. Ten minutes is a good rule of thumb. If they are so busy or lazy that it takes that long to get attended to, the entire visit is going to be a drag. I was just curious about how long it was going to take. Like listening to one of your kids telling a wild story to get out of trouble, letting him go on digging himself deeper, just to see how absurd it gets.

Lyle... You have kids? No wonder you're THAT patient!!! :d

Lol Lyle....know exactly what you mean about kids. My teens luckily have always been pretty honest. (Thank the powers that be. Well, no thank me mostly).

But 45 mins is extreme. Did you have your Cloak of Invisibility on? :D

Well yesterday was a good one. My wife ordered sparkling water. The waitress brought flat mineral water. When I pointed out we ordered sparkling water, she replied "I know, but that's all we have". Me: "ok but that's not what we ordered!". Her: "but we don't have By sparkling water, otherwise I would have brought you some". Me, internally: "Huh? So if they font have the rib eye steak I ordered, is she going to bring ne cashew crusted Halibut?"... In the end she said she would take it off our bill, but with a tone that suggested she was doing us a favor!

She'd of brought you something with Spam in it.

Yeah! :lol: I'd like to see her try.... I'll make her eat it in front of me!:laser:

Even Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, cashew crusted Halibut, spam, spam, and spam? :p