Complaint After Complaint

What an irritating jerk. How could you even think that this is acceptable? Let me tell you how your brain should work. If you go to a restaurant that has hamburgers and hot dogs, your idiot friend that you are talking to doesn’t need to know the whole menu? You know why? Because his dumb ass knows what else they sell. It’s certainly not sushi, caviar, or a New York T-Bone steak. It’s every revision of the burger, hot dog, and deep fried food. It’s common sense and you have obviously lost all of yours because you are reading every item on the menu and it’s making me want to kill you. I mean, seriously, do you really have that dumb of a friend/spouse or are you yourself so dumb as to lose the ability to sum up what they have? I don’t know why I am even asking. Of course you are, you are the one reading the menu out loud. Take it outside or know your friends better so that you can get them a meal without having to go through 36 items before you both agree on one.

C’mon. Really?! I mean, seriously.

Marshall McLuhan once said, “Cash. The Poor Man’s Credit Card.“

You know when he said that? 1994. That was 13 years ago. 13! It’s 2007 and you still can’t come up with enough money to process credits cards? You are a business and I might just go ahead and say that if you can’t afford to process credit cards, you are doing something wrong because it’s not that much. Obviously you can’t imagine how much money you are losing due to not accepting credit cards because if you could, you would be swiping my Mastercard and I would be eating General Tzo chicken right now. Everyone else is doing it…for a reason. Welcome to the digital era.

Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I was going to a frat party. I thought that this was a nice establishment. It’s not like I didn’t order a meal, I ordered food as did everyone else in my party. So what’s the deal with the plastic cups? Sure it’s water, but you’ve got somebody back there that either is sixteen years old trying to make a couple of bucks or some surly thirty year old man trying to support kid that he accidentally made because the “pull-out technique” didn’t work and his “need” to smoke a pound of weed a day. Bring me a glass. Made of glass. Not plastic, you cheap bastards.

My burger was delicious, though.

After another long weekend in the restaurant business, I naturally find myself with more to say. I’m gonna cut the bullshit right out of here and get straight to the goods:

When a server is taking your order, don’t keep your head down and speak into your menu. THE SERVER CAN’T HEAR YOU. I am not asking you to stand and shout, but speak at a reasonable volume and preferably don’t have something in or in front of your mouth that will muffle your speech. If you can’t order at a volume and clarity the server will hear, don’t act like you’re annoyed when you’re asked to repeat yourself. Wouldn’t you rather the server heard what you said and you got the right food? Help me help you. Jesus.

Ladies, why are your purses on the floor BEHIND your chair? Do your belongings mean nothing to you? Did you walk into the restaurant and immediately think “perhaps if I set my purse down in this walkway some waitress with sauce-covered shoes will step on it and destroy the bag and its contents! wouldn’t that be fun!?” If you don’t have an extra chair at the table to set it on, between seats or in front of you at your feet are probably more appropriate places than where people are walking.

Another question, why is your blackberry on the table? Even better, why is your $500 iphone on the table? Now chances are, the server won’t spill on the table – but you will. Furthermore, if you’re dumb enough to leave an expensive electronic device on a restaurant table, you’re probably dumb enough to cause the server to drop something, or to grab something off a tray causing the entire thing to pitch sideways…speaking of which…
I know you think the tray with allll the draft beers on it is heavy and you are trying to help, but there is a very careful balance going on when someone is carrying a flat tray with open glasses of heavy liquid. When the server removes a glass, he or she will adjust his or her hand beneath the tray to keep it steady, when you grab a glass off the tray – it falls. Let us remove the drinks from the tray, we’ll appreciate your help as you help us pass them out. Really.

The majority of American restaurants don’t have clamato juice to make bloody caesars. For all you confused Canadians, there is no plum sauce either.

Sentences that begin with the word “gimme” are not made polite by the addition of the word “please” at the end. I am not saying that servers need to hear “may I please have…” in order to not think you’re rude, but if you’re asked what you want, simple replying with the name of the item and the word please is sufficient. Here is a conversation I had recently:
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Gimme a water and get me a plate of sliced limes to go with it…please”

You may feel the urge to tell me that I am being a little ridiculous about what I expect of restaurant guests, but here’s the problem with that. I never broke any of these rules even before I had experience in the industry. For most people in any normal situation, common sense kicks in and people find it effortless to behave completely appropriately. For every bad customer, there are five good ones, but the bad ones can trigger a chain of event that lower the quality of everyone’s experience. I’m just saying, your servER is not your servANT. Learn how to be. It’s not that hard.

Oh ha ha, I know. Another fast food complaint from Mike. But here’s the thing, I don’t often eat fast food but is it too much to ask for that they get my order right? I’m not one of those people that asks for more of this, less of that, extra this, with a side of this but ordering something straight off the menu as is should be the easiest possible thing to get correct. But no. Out of the last half dozen times I’ve gone to Burger King, that they have gotten my order wrong four times . No pie twice , no tomatoes once, and the worst of all was forgetting my French fries and if anybody knows me they know not to mess with my French fries. So what we do ? I know that the obvious answer would be to get a more competent customer service staff but what happens to the people that are the work at your local fast food restaurant? Do we ship them off to somewhere with even less of a learning curve ? I have worked in food service for many years and I understand what it is to get an order wrong but if I go and get my order wrong consistently, I know for fact that there are hundreds of orders that are going out incorrect and guess what, I’m not made of money. So when I go and I place an order , I expect it to be right and I don’t think that that’s a far fetched demand since that is what your job entails . I’ve tried to give you the benefit of the doubt multiple times but you keep screwing me . I had Wendy’s on a three year boycott because not only did they always get my order wrong but I got ridiculously sick and decided that I was no longer going to frequent their fine establishment. I have since lifted that boycott, but I believe I will lower it right down on Burger King . That is a very difficult thing for me to do since I love Whoppers and their French fries are also pretty good .

So here we are in the 21st century and you drive up to a fast food restaurant and you place your order and get it pleasantly display it to you on a monitor so that you can see what you’re going to get. No onions, extra tomatoes, large Sprite , small fry , and a cheeseburger . You pay the woman with exceptionally large fingernails and she hands you a bag or two of your meal. There is no need to check the bags since not only did they read your order back to you but it was printed on that screen and you have paid for the food that was printed on that screen and read back to you. So when I get home to discover that there is spaghetti mixed with a sprite and a hamburger with bacon and orange slices on it, I get tremendously irritated that I just blew money on a meal that sucks .

In closing, pay more attention . I know that you work at McDonald’s or Burger King or Sonics or White Castle , but you’re on the fast track to getting your ass canned because you can’t put out a correct order . And don’t ever forget my French fries again or I may kill you .

This upsets me every time I go and I have now beat it by ignoring it. Here’s the situation. You want a quick meal and you don’t have time to go inside so you have to go through the drive though. You get to the speaker and a lovely voice says, “Welcome to Burger King, how may I help you?”. You instinctively tell them what you want…only to find that it’s not a real person. It’s a recording to keep you busy until the person that is alive and employed comes to the speaker. So by then, I have already placed half an order and then I have to repeat myself…I hate repeating myself. So no, I have outsmarted them by not answering the initial message. It’s a simple solution to a problem that never should have existed. Goddammit I hate that voice. Why is it even there? Who thought that it was necessary? Who said, “You know what, let’s have a voice that talks to people that doesn’t listen and then, 10 seconds later, have a real person ask you the same question after you’ve placed an order. That’s a good idea. I am a genius. I am going to go get one of my perk blowjobs that my high paid position offers me as a benefit. God I hate my wife.”

PS: I love your Whoppers.

Oh my gosh. We live in an era of efficiency and some places still don’t get it. We as people understand pricing. If something is $2, then we assume that two of that same item would be $4. Unless you are at the flea market or somewhere like India where you can haggle prices, this is the way that it is. I have gone to several restaurants and this has been shoved in my face to the most extreme extent. Aside from the image that you see here, I have gone to a pizza place around the corner from me with this sign:

1 Slice : $02.00
2 Slices : $04.00
3 Slices : $06.00
4 Slices : $08.00
5 Slices : $10.00
6 Slices : $12.00
7 Slices : $14.00
8 Slices : $16.00

They even had the zero in front of the price and that bothered me. We’re not computers. I guess what I am saying is that a sign marked “$2 a slice” would suffice. The image, if you will take a look, says that all 7” subs are $4.99 and all 14” subs are $6.99, but not in the “common sense” way. No. They have every sub offered and it’s accompanying price for every one. It’s just irritating.

Cut the crap, and sum up your signs. More people will buy from you.

I’d like to begin this by saying I am a server who, at this point, has worked for the past 2 1/2 years in two popular, large restaurants. I feel like I have pretty much seen it all and i will tell you right now this will be the complaint to end all complaints.

Let me start with your first entering the restaurant. You approach the host stand and they lead you to a table. SIT AT THE TABLE. Do not wait until you’ve been brought somewhere and then point at a table you might prefer to sit in. If you have some sort of preference, the polite thing to do is to tell the host/ess before they choose a place to seat you. You may not realize this, but pointing at a specific table you want to sit in may be a huge pain in everyone’s ass. The host staff of a restaurant seat servers in sequence and you may be choosing a table that has no server at a time, or maybe has a server who has just been sat another table and is already busy. The business may run based on keeping customers happy, but the easier you make it by not behaving like the world revolves around you, the easier it will be for us to succeed.

Now, when your server greets you, don’t cut him/her off when the opening banter begins. Chances are, whatever you end up missing answers a question you’ll end up asking.

Drink orders. Don’t order double soft drinks. If you’re ordering an alcohol beverage or a cup of coffee then asking for a glass of water also isn’t overly annoying. Ordering a diet coke and a glass of water makes you high maintenance and irritating, especially when it prompts the other 5 people at your table to do the same. I am now carrying 12 heavy glasses full of liquid on a single tray to a table with only 6 people. Chances are, you won’t even touch one of the drinks. You’ll drink one exclusively and i will have to keep refilling it. Then some poor busser has to make two trips trying to clean off your table after you’re gone because of the unreasonable amount of still-full glassware on it. Seriously.

Don’t ask for your shit one thing at a time. Nothing makes someone want to spit in your soup more than you sending her to get a fork, then asking for a straw when she returns, then asking for bread when she brings the straw, then asking for another coke when she brings the bread. Are you kidding? Do you think you’re the only table I have? Do you just not care about anyone or anything but yourself? If you need things, that’s fine, ask for everything you can think of at once and I’ll gladly go get it. Also, there’s nothing a server loves to hear more than “when you get a chance,” it moves your request to the top of our priority list. However, “get me…” means you’ll be waiting quite a while. You may control our tips, but we control your entire experience.

Also, modifying your entree is cool. I don’t know anyone who has a problem with it. If you are going to completely invent something super complicated and then freak out when the kitchen gets confused and messes it up, you should probably just cook your own goddamn dinner.

Waving, shouting, or addressing me as “excuse me, waitress!” are completely unacceptable. You’ve got to be kidding me. I am probably at your table every several minutes asking you if you need anything. These desperate cries for attention make you look like an ignorant fool second only to getting up and walking around looking for me or following me. Seriously. While we’re at it, if you asked me for something, and then i took your order, and I haven’t walked away from the table yet, do not ask me for the same item again three times while I am still standing there. I can’t get your goddamn extra napkins until i walk to the place where we keep those things. Telling me you need napkins 6 times while i am trying to take your order is not going to magically give me the ability to pull your wants and needs out of my ass.

Do not, absolutely do not, order something i did not just list after you ask me a simple question and i provide you with an answer. examples:
“what are your choices of sides?”
“Garlic mashed potatoes, pasta, vegetable of the day.”
“I am going to have a baked potato.”
You’re not going to have a baked potato. Did I say baked potato? I did not.
“What dressings do you have?”
“Caesar, creamy parmesan, and italian vinaigrette.”
“I’ll have thousand island.”
Seriously? Not an option. LISTEN.

Do not ask to move tables after you have already ordered. Your order has been placed and will eventually print up with a table number on a ticket that lists the items you want to eat. If you move you are not only screwing up servers who take the same specific set of tables all night, but you are messing up the person who runs that food and takes it to the wrong place.

Don’t get up and stand in a walkway somewhere. We’re busy. We’re really busy. We walk fast, and we only ask you to move because we have to be polite to keep our jobs. Believe me, if we had our way, we would throw hot food at you for being so stupid that you feel it is okay to stand in a place that I need to run back and forth through with a heavy tray of steaming food. Furthermore, if you are in the way and I say excuse me and you turn around and see me with the heavy tray of steaming hot food, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY and don’t you dare have the nerve to look like I am inconveniencing you by doing my job. No one told you to stand in my way and the sooner you move the faster this table gets their food and the faster they eat, leave, and you can sit down and enjoy your own meal. Also, if you weren’t aware, the words “excuse me” are generally understood to be a polite way of saying “get out of my way.” The appropriate response to hearing them is to get out of the way, not turn and acknowledge the person who needs to get past you and then continue to stand there blocking his or her path. If you do this and get hit or pushed, that’s really your problem.

Now, about your kids! First of all, if your baby is crying, get the kid out of the building, you’re ruining the meals of a good 150 people and aggravating a staff of maybe 40 people. Why do you have a 2 month old at a loud restaurant at 10pm anyway? Last week I watched a 5 year old topple sideways out of a tall bar chair that is nearly four feet off the ground. Is there any reason you are letting this rambunctious little asshole behave like this in a potentially dangerous place? Control your goddamn children, and if you can’t, leave them home. I know babysitters are expensive, but if you can’t afford one every now and then, you probably shouldn’t be going out or you should have done a better job training your kids.

Do not ask anyone working in a restaurant to turn the air conditioning or heat up or down ever. NOT EVER. What on earth could make someone so self centered as to ask someone to change the climate of a large building filled to capacity just because he or she is personally a little warm or cool? What if everyone else in the building is comfortable? What makes you so special that you feel our climate control should be changed as if this were your living room? Also, no server in his or her right mind will ever actually send a manager to lower the air conditioning. We are going back and forth to a very hot kitchen wearing uncomfortable long-sleeved polyester uniforms. If you wore shorts and a tank top to a building you knew was air conditioned, you’re pretty frickin’ stupid. We’re hot and customers are comfortable. We’re keeping the building cool. You’re gonna have to deal because you are not the only person there.

Large parties of people who all want to sit together are not easy to accommodate or take care of. Try to be a little bit organized if you’re going to inflict this kind of inconvenience on a restaurant.

Separate checks are generally a pain in the ass. In many restaurants the servers aren’t able to split checks on their own after they have been put into the computer and finding a manager to do this on a saturday night is not easy. In other restaurants the process is a bit simpler but frankly, if there are only two of you at the table, you should be able to do the math. Are you really so cheap that you are terrified of estimating what you owe and accidentally paying an extra dollar or two? Splitting checks, especially for larger parties of people, can be an extreme inconvenience, and usually results in customer confusion leading to severely undertipping, which I will get to in a moment. If you can’t figure out how to pay the bill in a restaurant, you’re probably too stupid to be eating in a restaurant.

Don’t flag down any random server to ask for something, unless you’re in a serious situation like you have your meal and somehow have no fork. If you want napkins, butter, a glass of water, more bread, etc., please ask your own damn server. If you ask someone else I can fully guarantee that person is immediately annoyed, doesn’t have time to get anything for you, and is now stuck trying to find your server to take care of you while at once trying to remember what you wanted along with all of the things the people at his or her own tables need. If you have to be this annoying, you could at the very least be polite about it. Usually, people aren’t.

Now, tipping. I thought about writing this entry separately and then i realized that first, no one is going to read this whole thing, and second, I will probably post 15 more entries elaborating on this. 10% tips are unacceptable. This day and age 15% is becoming unacceptable. Also, there is no high-end cap to where you have to stop tipping a percentage of the bill. Leaving a $10 tip on a $50 check is great, but if you leave a $10 tip on a $100 check we hate you. Here’s the thing about restaurants, servers do not keep their tips entirely. Before we leave each night we do a bunch of math and hand a bunch of cash over to bartenders, host/ess staff, and bussers. If you leave us a $10 tip on a $100 check we’re only seeing about $6 of that. You just left a $6 tip on a $100 check. I have bills to pay. My job may seem easy and mindless but chances are you couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Tip appropriately. Also, tip with money, not words. If you tell me I was a fantastic server and then leave me a 12% tip I definitely hope you get in a car accident on your way home. I appreciate the compliment, but when I have to pick up an extra shift to make up the difference of the money I lose when morons who tip verbally short change me those compliments really mean a lot less. I know i do my job well, but I feel much better about it when i can go out to dinner myself and be pampered rather than struggling to make my car payment because I’ve had a restaurant full of canadians (who tip about 10% on average) screwing me over. Just F.Y.I. servers make $4.something an hour. We pay taxes. We give chunks of our tips away. Yes, some of us make pretty good money, but the idea of us leaving with $300 in out pockets and having more cash than we know what to do with is an absolute myth. We sit down at the end of the night and whine about our backs and feet, we count our tips and are usually disappointed having made significantly less than we should have given our sales and hard work. Don’t make our nights any worse and don’t blame our choice of working there. Most restaurant employees are full time college students who need a flexible schedule and hope to make as much as possible while working few enough hours to pull decent grades. You’re not better than us, the extra dollar or few between a shitty tip and a good one will not kill you. If you can’t afford to tip appropriately then you can’t afford to go out to eat.

Seriously people, I know this is a personal rant and most of you don’t even consider this stuff, but maybe you should. I’m polite to retail employees and I always have my account number ready when i call customer service lines. I am totally courteous when being provided with a service because I am generally grateful to the person who is providing that service. I could write a book of examples of morons I have encountered in my places of business. Seriously sit back and think of how many things I named that you’re guilty of because I can guarantee you some angry person tells that story all the time and people laugh at how frickin’ stupid you must be.

Oh, and when i tell you the plate is hot, don’t grab it and make some sort of exclamation about how you just burned yourself. You were warned. You’re an idiot.

Oh man. I hate that it’s come to this. Restaurants are pre-mixing our food for us again. I know that this isn’t new. KFC has made this dish before and it irritated me before, but it’s back and time to let ‘em have it. Now don’t get me wrong. During Thanksgiving I love to mix my corn with my mashed potatoes and put some gravy on it, but for a fast food restaurant to just slap everything on the menu is just an illustration of how fat we have become. People aren’t even picky with their food anymore. There are two ways to order this.

1. I am just going to order everything on the menu and mix it up and eat it.
2. Put everything that you’ve got back there into a bowl.

Seriously. Get some taste for food and eat that. You are like one step away from eating out of a trough.

Ever go out to eat with one of these? Fucking fantastic. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of vegans that know better than to leave their own private stash of leaves and chemically altered, microwavable, food-products. But every once and and a while they leave their fortress of morality to eat with us normies. Just know ahead of time, other than the table salt, I’m pretty sure NOTHING is vegan at most restaurants. It’s just kinda how it is. Most people like to eat food. Just don’t get stressed out that every restaurant out there doesn’t carry “Tofutti” or “Tofurkey” or something with an equally obnoxious name. You know that bean soup the waitress said was meat and dairy free? It had chicken stock in it. Now run to the bathroom and purge so we can finish our meals. Trust me, this is nothing a back patch, a few pins, and a road bike can’t cure.