Prologue:
I seem to have had some rather bad luck recently with “the service industry”. Actually, this is only somewhat worse than par when we go out, but since it happened on Sunday, since I felt like writing about it and since my Salesman post got good feedback, I thought I would write about the other bane of our existence. Here it is, the ‘crabby waitress myth’.
The Story:
“How many today?” said a voice as Julie and I walked through the door. We had come to the melting pot to celebrate Jennifer’s (her sister) birthday, along with Julie’s parents Stan and Missy (whom I call Lorene, because somehow I can’t get past feeling disrespectful calling her “Missy”), and with Jennifer, and Mr. (Justin) and Mrs. Long who work with Lorene’s parents. Jennifer did not bring her husband Mark, because he didn’t want to come. One of his co-workers got food poisoning when he came, even though this was a restaurant where you cook your own food.
I looked at the girls standing at the hostess counter. Why was there always a minimum of three hostesses when you went to a nice restaurant, and yet there never seemed to be enough tables and waiters?
And which one had said that? They were all looking at me. As usual I chose the one who’s smile least resembled a masked scowl. “Hicks, party of seven.” I responded.
“Oh! OK.” Said one of the girls, marking something off with what looked like a crayon on some list she maintained. One of the girls grabbed some menus and turned and walked away. Julie prodded me, and I realized that I was magically supposed to know that I was expected to follow her to our table. Sometimes the hostess will get all the way to the table, before turning round and either coming back to get us, or waving us over. I usually refuse to follow someone who hasn’t requested it, lest I inadvertently follow them to the kitchen, or worse, the restroom. They have no problem gabbing and giggling to each-other, but hostesses rarely say enough to the customers.
Our table was bigger this time than last time, which was good. Previously I was forced to suffer through an entire dinner of the waitress reaching practically into my lap to adjust the knobs that where built into the underside of the table directly in front of my chair to adjust the temperature for the fondue pots, and ducking forward to avoid being bumped into anytime someone (usually an extremely large person, as this is America after all) walked behind me on their way in or out of the restaurant. This time, I got to sit in the booth.
If you haven’t been to the Melting Pot, it is a fondue place where couples go for romantic evenings. With little booths designed so you could sit diagonally next to each other instead of across a table, and snuggle while you dipped raw meat into boiling vegetable broth and cooked it to your liking. It is very nice, and very good.
We sat at a table that could easily have fit 11 people if they had lined chairs in the aisle, but comfortably fit the seven of us, and had three different pots for cooking.
The waitress arrived and passed out the menus. My first clue that this was going to be “an experience to remember” was that she passed out the menus completely at random, so that Lorene received hers last. Well, this was sure to not offend any possible feminist at the table, but also sure to confuse all of us. We were all basically seated in a long row on one side of the table, and if the seats were numbered left to right, she would have given the menus in this order 6, 4, 1, 7, 3, 2.
After this, she began taking drink orders, which went completely uneventfully. She took our meal orders, and soon enough we were watching as she brought out the first course.
She picked up the first of three bowls of cheese and put about 1/3 in each pot. Once empty, she picked up the next bowl, and put just the tiniest bit in each pot before setting it back on the tray. Next she distributed the salsa and jalapenos into the cheese. She gave each cheese about three quick stirs.
“Would you like pepper in your cheese?” She mumble squeaked to Stan.
“That’d be fine” he replied.
She proceeded to grind a little pepper into his cheese, and then immediately began doing the same to my cheese… Even though I didn’t want pepper.
“Would you like pepper in your cheese?” She asked Mrs. Long.
“Sure!” She boomed back with her loud laughing voice.
I sat staring at the pepper sprinkled across the top of my half melted, very poorly stirred cheese, and tried to take a sip of my water, which I now realized was empty.
“Bon apatite” Said our waitress, and she picked up the tray and quickly drifted back into the kitchen.
“What?” Julie asked, staring in disbelief.
“I don’t know hon. Looks like we are stirring our own cheese tonight.” We looked at the half empty pot for a moment before Julie reached out and grabbed the spoon, vigorously, almost expertly, whipping the cheese into a nice creamy goo. “Hey, looks like you have a fall back career” I joked.
We ate our bread and chips, which were excellent, until the waitress came back and began clearing things away. The problem was… We weren’t really done. We had all run out of cheese for the most part, but had plenty of bread and chips left. I was literally scooping the last little bit of cheese out of my pot as she whisked it off of the table leaving my hand hovering over a hot burner and my mouth open in disbelief.
“Oh, I’m sorry” she mumble giggled, “where you not done?”
“No no, it’s fine, I was finished, really” I smiled and tucked the chip into my mouth. She turned and walked away.
My water was empty again, but luckily there was a bus-boy who kept filling it every now and then.
I began to start on my salad, and was just finishing when the main course arrived. If you’ve been to the melting pot, you know I was in for a treat, an entire plate full of raw meat, just waiting to be cooked to your exact liking piece by piece. Normally the waitress sets your plate down and gives a whole presentation, along with cooking times, meat explanation (so you know what you are eating), and precautions.
Our waitress (predictably at this point) smacked down the plates and bowls and said, “Well, it looks like everyone knows what they’re doing, so, enjoy!” and walked away.
The rest of the meal was filled with, “What’s this?” or “Do you think this is cooked long enough” and “Oh, that’s still bloody… is that ok?” to which the usual reply from Stan’s direction was “I think it’s beef, you should be all right” followed by a “Ew… I don’t know, I’d throw it back in there, that looks nasty” from Missy.
We were about half done with our meal when our “server” returned to take our desert orders. Justin and Mrs. Long (No I don’t know her name, and yes I did call her Mrs. Long) were vegetarians and had long since finished their vegetables, as they did not require cooking for the most part. Stan and Missy had finished their meat, which was predominantly sea-food, and cooked very quickly. This left Julie and I with our poultry, pork, and large pieces of beef half filling our plate. Jennifer had eaten all she wanted to eat (and given a few pieces of her curried chicken to us) and was sitting waiting patiently, chatting idly with Mrs. Long who was seated on the other side of Justin (who looked bored as always) next to her.
We all gave our desert orders, and our waitress said, “Ok, well I’ll bring it all out once you two are finished” somewhat scowling to us. Julie and I looked at each other.
“Ok… We’d better just throw all them meat in the pot, I’m a bit bored of cooking it a piece at a time, and we wouldn’t want to hold everyone up” I said after she left. Julie and I picked up the plate of meat and scraped it into the pot.
The waitress came back, and began clearing the table. She took everything away from everyone else. Our meat was finished cooking and we were taking it out piece by piece and eating it when she came back and started trying to take our sauce and plates away.
“No no, we aren’t done yet. Hold on” I had to say, and “Just a moment, I still need that sauce.”
“Would you like some more water?” She finally asked.
“Yes, yes I would like some water.” I replied cheerfully. Finally!
“Ok, well, everyone can have their desert as soon as you two are finished…” She said rudely and walked off.
“We get it chick!” Julie said (rather loudly) at her retreating back. There was a chorus of “geez” and, “She doesn’t want you to eat” and, “good lord” from around the table.
“Come on honey, let’s just spoon all of this out on to our plates so she can get on with it.” I said as I began to shovel out the meat onto my plate. I stopped once my plate was full, and Julie began to get a few pieces out of the pot as the waitress returned with my water.
“There’s only one piece left in there” she said as Julie dumped a piece on her plate. Julie scooped the last piece out of the pot, and no sooner had she done so than the waitress snatched it up and zoomed off back into the kitchen with it.
Julie scowled after her before exclaiming, “That’s it, she gets a dollar”.
“Pfff.” I exclaimed at her generosity, “A dollar if she’s good for the rest of the time”.
“Yeah… IF…”
There were mumbles of agreement from around the table.
She returned with our chocolate, which she stirred briefly, and which Julie again expertly whipped into a nice creamy froth. We began to eat our desert, but to our dismay, the chocolate was cold. Luke warm at best. At this point we didn’t even care, we just wanted to be done with it, and besides, it’s hard to ruin chocolate, so it was still very good.
The waitress soon returned with our bill which she set down presumptively in front of Stan.
“Excuse me” Julie interjected, “could you split that up please?”
“Oh… uh… you can just tell me which part goes on what card” she said.
I could tell Julie was not going to let that slide, so I intervened, “That’ll be fine”.
‘NO TIP’ I said to Julie as the waitress walked away.
“Well I guess it will be just like splitting it up since we will all sign for it separately, but yeah, no tip for sure.”
When the waitress came back we all handed over our cards and had a time of trying to tell her what went with which. It wasn’t that complicated, but the fact that Jennifer had headed off to the bathroom seemed to throw a wrench in the whole thing for her.
Finally she arrived with our receipts for us to sign, which we looked at in shock when we opened them.
18% gratuity added for large party.
Epilogue:
Julie argued with the waitress about how crappy her service was. Argued. Yes, that’s right, she actually argued with us. The rest of our party retreated to their cars, and we waited for the manager.
After we explained to him that my drink sat empty for over half of the meal, that she did not stir our cheese or chocolate, and that she was rude and that we were extremely rushed, he said he would refund the gratuity to us. He left us standing in the middle of the restaurant while various waitresses walked by shaking their heads and glaring at us, having obviously heard ‘how horrible we were’ from our server.
After what seemed like an hour, her returned and gave us a gift card for a free desert, and took our side saying, “I can definitely see that you were indeed rushed. Normally for just two people dinner takes two and a half to three hours. For a large party like yours… it can be even longer. You guys have just now been here for two hours. That’s really really fast…”
I don’t like confronting people, but rather, I would like to speak with my money. If someone does a bad job, I simply tell them by giving them a crappy tip. If they do well, I reward them similarly. I told the manager this, and he said he understood. If she had been half as nice and friendly as the manager throughout the meal, she would have gotten 20%. However, the manager did inform us that for future reference for parties of 5 or more gratuity will be added, and that this is a policy that is now strictly enforced.
