What is this?
Back to Historical ListingDisappointing Eating Experience
- 2002-10-17 12:53:42
Ok, so yesterday I had a bad experience at one of my favorite
restaurants. Usually, when I have a bad experience at a restaurant, I just cross it off my list and never go back. After all, there's no shortage of restaurants, right? However, this is a place I go to often, and have loved, and have generated quite a bit of loyalty for. So I'm a little at a loss. Don't want to cross it off my list. On the other hand, when I go somewhere to eat and pay a generous amount I have
certain expectations including but not limited to :
- That wait staff will be helpful and respectful
- That every attempt will be made to feed me what I'm interested in
eating
- That the food will be enjoyable - warm or cold as it needs to be and
prepared as I request
- A minimum of fuss or hassle in getting the previous three points
accomplished
- - - -
So last night we get in the car and go to this place that we haven't
been to in a while, but usually visit at least monthly. We are seated
and a waitress that we've never had before is our server. I don't know
if she was new or not, but she certainly acted new. I placed an order
off the sushi list, and to be fair, I marked the wrong thing. I was
tired, I had an armful of squirmy Sophia (I requested a high chair
but it took several minutes for them to provide one) and I just made a
mistake. In the past, when I've ordered off the sushi sheet the wait
staff has verbally echoed what I checked off and that would have
caught my error before any further harm was done. Regardless, I knew what I
wanted and it was not what I got. Also, I was trying to order the same
thing I always get when I order off the sushi list.
Ok, so I
place my (incorrect) order and my husband places his and we wait. We
take turns feeding Sophia rice because she is starving and, in credit
where credit is due, we asked that the rice be brought out for her right
away and it was. When Kurt finished his salad, the waitress asked if
she could take his plate and he said certainly. She laughed a little
and said she had asked first because some people liked to keep their
salad plates to dip their sushi into the salad dressing and she thinks
that is sooooo disgusting. WHAT?
No wait person under any circumstances ever should use the word
disgusting referring to any food she serves. Additionally, if you're
working in an unusual environment, like a sushi restaurant in
Mississippi, you should be especially careful not to tell people who
already may be self-conscious about what's appropriate and what isn't
that a habit they may or may not have (how could you know?) is repulsive.
Not only that, we're not there for her opinion (unless we specifically
request it at some point during the meal) or to be her best friend:
this isn't confessional buddy buddy conversation time. Let's keep the
relationship formal and polite, if you don't mind.
After that faux pas,
she sets a completely unfamiliar plate with sushi I've never seen before
in front of me and I just stare at it for a moment before telling her
that this is not what I ordered. Ooops! She whisks it away and takes
it to the next table, where presumably someone had ordered that. Next,
I get the sushi that I actually ordered, though not the sushi I actually
wanted. It was very similar so I recognized it and smiled eagerly.
I ate one piece and realized it was a variation on what I usually order,
and not at all what I want. I tell this to Kurt. He said I should get
what I want. We're paying for it, after all. So when the waitress
comes up I try to be helpful and nonjudgemental. I say that although
this may be what I ordered it is not what I want. What I really want
is this other roll that's similar to this one but not it. I'm
thinking that I'm giving her an out, in case she made the mistake
and not me. I'm thinking I'm being magnanimous and just trying to get
the food I want to eat without being bitchy. (ugh, I try to refrain
from being potty mouthed on here, I hope no one will go into complete
shock at my bad language). As it turns out, what I'm actually doing is asking the
waitress to produce EVIDENCE of my mistake and to come back with the
sheet and show me that I did not in fact order what I want.
I pause. I don't know what this means, exactly. Does this mean I can't
eat what I would like to eat? Can I exchange what I misordered for what
I want? Should I try? Is this one of those too bad, so sad situations?
Are they going to charge me for both rolls? Do I mind if they do,
so long as I get what I want? I look at Kurt for help. He asks if we
can exchange the roll. She hems and haws and acts like that is not a
possibility. Forty five seconds of this and I've had enough. I just wanted to come here and eat. I'm not interested in a monumental struggle for food. In fact, I'm no longer even interested in food at all. I say
"Never mind, it's ok." She says, "You sure?" I think how ludicrous this is,
that she wants reassurance from me when all I wanted was to get
something I expected and normally enjoy to eat and she's just made it impossible for me to
do that. I say "Yes, I'm sure." She traipses off and I tell Kurt
this is a terribly disappointing dining experience. I get up from my
sushi roll minus two pieces (I actually ate a bit before realizing it wasn't quite right) and take Sophia who has sat about as long as she can at
this age outside to walk around.
Apparently in my absence, the waitress
correctly deduced that she had thoroughly ruined my dining experience and,
from Kurt's retelling of it, tried to remedy this by bringing me another
roll in a to-go box and asking him if that would be ok and whether I'd
eat it. The kicker? When we got home and I opened the to-go box,
it was the exact same wrong roll I'd already had at the table.
So what to do? I hate to cross this restaurant off my list. It's well
loved by me and my husband. It's not the only good sushi place where I live,
so I could stop going there. That just seems kind of drastic, though.
Barring a place making me sick, I try not to go with the one strike you're
out rule on restaurants. However, I hate having hassles when I eat. I'm
not really interested in going through a big complaint talk to the
manager deal. I'm not interested in having the waitress get in
trouble. I just want to go somewhere and eat. Seems simple enough.
What would you have done if you were in my shoes, and would you go back?
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