A weird staff/dining/service experience

Category: Humor & Offbeat

10/19/2009 Man About Town X. says:

Not your "worst dining experience ever" (although it may coincide with that), but something you just can't figure out. Here's my story:

I've visited Ronnie's Local a number of times, and I find the staff baffling. They aren't exactly too-cool-for-you hipsters and they aren't condescending. It's simply like I don't exist. I have smiled, been cheery, been standoffish, tried to engage light conversation, mumbled, tipped low, tipped high . . . and it's all the same. Nothing. The service is so indifferent it vapourizes. Now, one might argue that as long as I'm getting served, I shouldn't complain. But it seems to me that if you want a decent grat, an acknowledgement of the human body in front of you is in order. This service weirds me out.

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   10/19/2009 susan "My hat is not filled with marzipan" c. says:

   The servers at Terroni (Queen St. W. location) -- WTF?
   I'm no stranger to rude servers (cantankerous corned beef slicers at NYC delis, the imperiously indifferent waitstaff throughout the Italian boot, sullen teens at Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese restaurants)...
   
   But the servers at Terroni seem to go out of their way to be assholes to you, as if it's their shtick. Telling my friend when he asked her to repeat something, "What? You didn't pay attention the first time around??" Then slamming my $12-glass of wine down in front of me.
   
   Here's a tip for these kinds of servers: why not try earning your 15-20% gratuity instead of expecting it like an entitled bunch of attitudinal hacks?

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   10/19/2009 Carolyn B. says:

   Mine is a Tim Horton's story.  I know I shouldn't expect much, but this is rude, weird and perplexing.  This happens at the one on Bay at Temperance.  (Ya, I'm telling on you, TH Peeps!)
   
   Whenever I go up to the counter and start to place my order, they (no matter which one of them it is) always turn their head and starts talking / yelling / barking orders at another staff member.  I went in last week with a friend of mine, and said, "Watch this - I'll start talking and she'll turn her head and start talking to someone else."  Sure enough, it happened again.
   
   When they finally remember me, I stare at them for a few seconds, smile and say, "Are you ready now?"  They say yes and, eight times out of ten, will turn away AGAIN.
   
   Whenever they hand me my order, they shove the food in my direction while looking in the other.  That seems to be standard practice for all Tim  Hortons, though, so I can't fault them for following the Franchise Manual.

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   10/19/2009 Deanna "mongoose extraordinaire" W. says:

   @ Susan agreed. I've spent a few times at Queen Street bar counter being consciously ignored by the bar/serving staff  for a good 15 minutes.
   
   The Drake....waiting at the till/cashier counter for 20 minutes to pay my bill, i'm not sure if that's they're inept or they're consicously ignoring my presence!

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   10/19/2009 Amanda A. says:

   I can't believe I haven't shared this on here before.
   
   I wish I got the name of the place, but this was before my Yelp days and truly I was just in awe. I was walking around John and Richmond one night and there was an obvious issue with a few girls' reservation. There were a few girls outside the front door, arguing with what seemed to be 2 servers/hosts of the restaurant/club. The hosts were persistant that the girls had no reservations there - eventually one of the girls said "forget it, these people are trippin..." and started to walk away. The male host screamed in a shrill voice "I AM NOT TRIPPING!!!!!!" took his cell phone out of his pocket and HURLED it at the girl. It hit the ground and he promptly ran over to pick up the pieces.

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   10/19/2009 Sam G. says:

   @Carolyn - yeah, I hate the whole giving you your stuff while looking somewhere else (eg. not in your eye).  Unfortunately, its not like you can nick them on a tip for it... ;)

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   10/20/2009 Carolyn B. says:

   True, Sam.  I guess the best I can do is to withhold my pennies from the send-a-kid-to-camp box.  ;-)

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   10/20/2009 Man About Town X. says:

   And another: my first dining experience on Queen W was at the Queen Mother, back in 1982 or so. I ordered their Green Salad, and the dressing was this snot green....green on green...yuk. So I (naively, it seems) told the waitress. She took great umbrage (but wasn't hostile), and we talked this back and forth, and she finally said, "Other people love this salad. There must be something wrong with you." I was so furious, I got up and went and found the manager. The waitress stood there and listened while we spoke, and after the manager went away for a minute, she looked at me and said again, "There's something wrong with you." Never went back.

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   10/21/2009 Karl "Kid Don Cornelius" R. says:

   I have two. One was also at the Queen Mother but back in themid 1990s. My GF at the time was a vegetarian.  Not only did the food take a long time to come but she ordered a vegetarian salad and it came with hunks of chicken. When she explained there was chicken in her vegetarian salad the waitress noted astutely there wasn't a lot. Ummm. We sent it back. And it promptly came back with the chicken fished out. Geez. I wasn't going to leave a single dime in tip and I think they sensed it so they added a 15% gratuity automatically. We never went back.
   
   This is going back to the early 1990s... about 1991. Alice Fazooli's just opened their first restaurant downtown. The economy was hurting and I think a big new flashy restaurant scared some others in the area. You'll see why this is important in a moment. Anyway, we went for a work lunch to try out this new Alice Fazooli's place. Everything was going quite well. At the end of the meal they brought out these pans of garlic buttery bread. Oh the smell was amazing. When we broke into the bread, live RED ANTS came crawling out. Dozens of them. I kid you not. It was almost Fortean. We called the waiter over. Their solution was to give us out bill (yes, they wanted us to pay for it). And they offered us each a coupon for a free dessert.
   
   Golly.
   
   I suspect  their shipment of bread was monkeyed with by the competition in an attempt to reduce the competition for a pretty tight fisted downtown office crowd circa 1991. But their method of handling live ants in our food was pretty piss poor. I've never been back.

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   10/21/2009 Christine "Meat. Sleep. Pray." C. says:

   I once got served at a Second Cup by a girl who spent the whole time on her cell phone, propping it up between her ear and her shoulder.  Finally I just looked at her and said why don't I come back when you are through with your call.  She looked at me and said "ok, that's fine with me.  I'm just gabbing with my Mother."  Unbelievable.  
   
   The almost identicle thing happened in the Bay with a check out girl who too a personal call on her cell and proceeded to ring up my purchase while just gabbing away about her night clubbing adventure the evening before.  Just as she finished ringing it up I walked away.  
   
   Both of these clerks where fairly young (21'ish or so) and I think to them this is just acceptable behaviour.

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    10/21/2009 Karl "Kid Don Cornelius" R. says:

    When someone is serving me at a cash, I don't believe in treating them like flesh machines that process my credit card. I say hello, I say thank you. I give them my full attention and stash the cell phone, take the headphones off, etc. Anyone doing that I give the stink eye. But I do expect the same courtesy back.

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    10/21/2009 Christine "Meat. Sleep. Pray." C. says:

    @Karl....I am on the same page with you about making conversation, saying hello, smiling and trying to engage.  I do this often in the grocery store.   I used to get this one gal who insisted on gabbing to the other checkout girl behind me and treat me as though I was literally invisible.  She'd actually lean to her left so she could look around me, all this while she was scanning and chattering away completely oblivious to me.  I started leaning to her left to get in her line of sight, then she'd lean to the right and I would do the very same.  I finally decided to speak up and said to her "if you are going to take my $118 dollars for my groceries could you at least show me the courtesy of actually looking at me and acknowledging me as the customer."  She was flabbergasted.
    
    In part, I hold the retailers responsible for not properly training their wait/serve/clerk staff as to how to deal with John Q. Public which is really short sighted on their part as they are the front line reps for the company.

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    10/21/2009 Neil "indefinite review hiatus" T. says:

    I was in Saigon, Vietnam eating at this really small local joint stashed away in some back alley near the Benh Thanh market.  They served this dish called Banh Beo (http://en.wikipedia.or...).  Orders came in groups of 10, and you needed about 30 of them to be full.
    
    We had a small table that was pushed right up against a wall (this comes into play later).  As we were on dish 25 or so, my friend Dave just nods and points to the wall.  I look over and there is literally a trail of THOUSANDS, maybe tens of thousands of ants running into a hole in the wall.  We shrug our shoulders and finish the banh beo.

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    10/22/2009 Karl "Kid Don Cornelius" R. says:

    Customer service people especially ones I deal with regularly like a Starbucks server, I leave it to them to define the "relationship". Hello. Thank you. At a minimum. I've always thought it improper to use their names (taken off their name tag) unless offered first. "Hi, my name is Sally. What's your name?"   Wait until they lower the barrier first.       For example, they say something like "are you enjoying the sun today?" or "got big plans for the weekend?" I also figure treat all CS people like they really     want to go on break and get to the bathroom. So too much chit chat might be robbing them of time for something more produfctive.  Or maybe I over think this.

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    10/22/2009 Katrina "foot" L. says:

    As someone who used to work in retail, I've had my fair share of those people that are on their cellphones chatting away while I'm ringing them up and what not, so I always say hello to the cashier and make eye contact, most places (grocery stores) have self-checkouts now so going to someone means that you want them to do you a service so treat them like they are doing you a favour and not the other way around.

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    10/22/2009 John "underpaid civil servant" F. says:

    This is from the US and happened about 10 years ago:
    
    My ex (then current partner) and I walked into a Denny's in San Pablo, California at breakfast time.  The host (apparently not a native speaker of English, I guess he might have been Haitian) asked us how many we were.  I said "two."  "Two more?"  "No, just two."  "And two coming?"  "No, two, just us."  After a few more similar interchanges he finally seated us.  We were followed into the restaurant by a lady with two or three kids who looked like she should be on a day time talk show.  She told the host, "We got a big bunch, coming, nine kids or so, they are going to be here right soon and we're going to take over the whole restaurant." in a definitely non-California accent usually associated with Oklahoma, MIssouri or other middle south locations.  Se then called someone on the pay phone and told them to bring all the kids over, the table was waiting.  Fortunately - and we were there quite a while due to the ineptness of the service - the others never showed.
    
    The wait person finally came.  (S)he appeared to be a trans person who was having some difficulty transitioning.    She rattled off a very long list of information in a breathless, mechanical voice and appeared to be on some sort of drug.  The information included the  "soup of the day" even though it was 9:30 in the morning!
    
    She then took our order and after this list of mechanical rote memorization she managed to get it wrong twice.
    
    After this combination of strange happenings I laughed so hard I almost threw up.

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