Suzanne O’Connor’s Bargains LA

Bad Service

Back in the day I worked as a Waitress/ Hostess at a really nice Beverly Hills restaurant. I wasn’t very good at it. As a matter a fact, I was terrible. Really terrible and I knew it. But the manger kept me on because I was so friendly, sweet and honest about mistakes that I made. Somehow customers take stupidity from servers as long as they’re treated nicely and the server apologizes for their fumblings. I was good at that.

So we have patience when we dine out. … to a point.

Last night when we went out to dinner for Fathers Day at a BBQ hot spot, when the service was beyond slow, we initially were okay with that. The conversation was lively and we were having a good time. When they ran out of a bunch of items on the menu, even that was forgivable. We just ordered something different. But when we got a bad “attitude” from our server… that wasn’t okay.

Obviously frustrated with the goings on in the kitchen the server brought out her frustration in her serving style. When she finally showed up at our table, she was gruff, abrupt and dismissive. That’s when we let her know we weren’t enjoying waiting so long for food, especially when everyone around us had already been served. She related to us the difficulties in the kitchen. We waited 50 minutes for our meal. No apologies were given for the really bad service.

The food finally came, tasted great… but we had to ask for extra sauce…. That took ten minutes. A water refill… another 10 minute wait. Neither had anything to do with the kitchen. Our request for wipes and extra napkins completely was ignored so, after 10 minutes we got them ourselves. That’s when the manager took notice and came out to apologize offering us a 25% discount and a free dessert. He gets it.

At least our server was consistent. The dessert took 15 minutes to arrive. However, the bill came quickly. It was paid for and returned in under 4 minutes. Our entire meal out lasted 2 ½ hours.

I lasted at my waiter/ hostess job for 3 months just because I was pleasant, tired hard and always took the sword… apologizing for my ineptness. I’m surprised I lasted that long.

A simple apology from our server would have worked wonders. The low tip was our response.

*I won’t mention the name of the eatery, cause the food was very good and I’m hoping this is just a blip on their radar..