Gather 'round, children, and hearken to my tale. It was a dark and stormy night, with thunderclaps overhead. Weak and starving, we stumbled towards the much longed-for food source, blissfully unaware of the peril that awaited us...
Whoops, got a little melodramatic there. Let me start over. Today we're going to explore a truly awful experience we had at a restaurant. Fasten your seat belts, folks, because it'll be a wild ride.
While in town with my mother and big brother (like almost a foot bigger, yet the giant says I'm short), we were hungry and decided to eat. Now, the place we went to was one we'd been before, and always had good experiences with.
Upon entering, there weren't many people inside. The hostess appeared and said, "Oh, let me clear a table off for you." There were five thousand clean tables around, but okay.
After being seated, a waitress arrived to take our order. Well, Mom and I, anyway. My brother didn't seem to exist. Mom had to call attention to the fact that hey, you didn't ask what he wanted. The waitress then deigned to look at him, not seeming at all enthusiastic about it.
Our food arrived, in varying degrees of quality. My broccoli was fine; Mom's had been overcooked to the point of murder. It had a withered, desiccated appearance to it. Also, her shrimp was cold. She told the waitress, who responded with "Oh, I'll have the cook reheat it for you." You don't reheat shrimp. You just don't. So Mom received some nice rubbery shrimp. Yummy.
Meanwhile, the table across from us suffered their own ill fate. Their waitress accidentally knocked over a water glass, which went all over the poor guy sitting there. "Oh, let me get something to clean that up!" she said. So the guy stood by the table, waiting for her return. And he waited. And he waited. And then he waited some more.
I'm not even kidding. The guy must have stood there for at least ten minutes, Actually, I think it was more like fifteen or twenty. It seemed like an eternity. The poor man, dripping wet, just patiently waiting for that server to reappear. Methuselah was born, grew old, and died, and still the guy was standing there.
In contrast, the woman with him was sitting there stewing. By the time the waitress returned, smoke was billowing from her ears and little flames were shooting from her nostrils. The waitress lightly patted him with a towel, being about as unhelpful as possible. The woman was livid. They had somewhere to be, she said, and now they would have to go back home so he could change. She asked to talk to the manager.
So the manager arrived on the scene. "Well, I guess you won't have to take a shower tonight!" she joked. Because that's exactly the sort of thing you say when a guy has water spilled on him, waits twenty or thirty years for someone to bring towels or napkins to clean it up, and there's a woman whose anger rivals an erupting volcano or a rubellius fire-drake setting an entire village alight.
But wait! It gets better! Mom filled out a long feedback form about the many things that went wrong at that restaurant. We later got a call back about it. The employees in question would be under review, and I think they said complaints had been made about the manager before. They also apologized for the awful time we had, and offered us gift cards to make up for it. Gift cards? To go back to the place we had a miserable experience at?
My brother said he'd take the gift cards and try that place again. Mom and I, on the other hand, were done with that restaurant.
After being seated, a waitress arrived to take our order. Well, Mom and I, anyway. My brother didn't seem to exist. Mom had to call attention to the fact that hey, you didn't ask what he wanted. The waitress then deigned to look at him, not seeming at all enthusiastic about it.
Our food arrived, in varying degrees of quality. My broccoli was fine; Mom's had been overcooked to the point of murder. It had a withered, desiccated appearance to it. Also, her shrimp was cold. She told the waitress, who responded with "Oh, I'll have the cook reheat it for you." You don't reheat shrimp. You just don't. So Mom received some nice rubbery shrimp. Yummy.
Meanwhile, the table across from us suffered their own ill fate. Their waitress accidentally knocked over a water glass, which went all over the poor guy sitting there. "Oh, let me get something to clean that up!" she said. So the guy stood by the table, waiting for her return. And he waited. And he waited. And then he waited some more.
I'm not even kidding. The guy must have stood there for at least ten minutes, Actually, I think it was more like fifteen or twenty. It seemed like an eternity. The poor man, dripping wet, just patiently waiting for that server to reappear. Methuselah was born, grew old, and died, and still the guy was standing there.
In contrast, the woman with him was sitting there stewing. By the time the waitress returned, smoke was billowing from her ears and little flames were shooting from her nostrils. The waitress lightly patted him with a towel, being about as unhelpful as possible. The woman was livid. They had somewhere to be, she said, and now they would have to go back home so he could change. She asked to talk to the manager.
So the manager arrived on the scene. "Well, I guess you won't have to take a shower tonight!" she joked. Because that's exactly the sort of thing you say when a guy has water spilled on him, waits twenty or thirty years for someone to bring towels or napkins to clean it up, and there's a woman whose anger rivals an erupting volcano or a rubellius fire-drake setting an entire village alight.
But wait! It gets better! Mom filled out a long feedback form about the many things that went wrong at that restaurant. We later got a call back about it. The employees in question would be under review, and I think they said complaints had been made about the manager before. They also apologized for the awful time we had, and offered us gift cards to make up for it. Gift cards? To go back to the place we had a miserable experience at?
My brother said he'd take the gift cards and try that place again. Mom and I, on the other hand, were done with that restaurant.
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