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What's your worst dining experience ever?
Posted: Jul 21, 2008 in Things to do, Nightlife, Dining
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Craig_Smith's post about a bad experience at Bella Vita got me to thinking about the worst dining outing I've ever had.
Here's mine, but let's hear some other horrifying stories!
Senior year of college, a bunch of us went to a restaurant near my friend's university campus. Several of us over the age of 21 ordered drinks, but we had some people in our party who were of age but chose not to imbibe, and two women who were only 20.
The waitress dutifully checked I.D.'s as required, which nobody minded. But then she proceeded to loudly warn us not to order drinks for the underage women. We said fine.
Before bringing our drinks, she again told us -- in a voice approaching a shout -- that she better not see us giving the women drinks, even so much as a sip. We said again that we understood. The two women in question volunteered that they didn't care for alcohol, and didn't want any samples. The waitress warned us again, gave us our drinks and left.
Several more times during our meal, she returned, unbidden, to warn us that underage drinking would not be tolerated. Then she threatened to call the police and have us arrested and trespass warnings issued so we could never visit the restaurant again. The last time around she let us know in a huffy voice that she knew workers at all the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood around the college, and if we let those girls have a drink she'd call them all and we'd be barred from dining out anywhere.
I should point out that no drinks were shared, or even contemplated being shared.
At first we were tempted to laugh off her ridiculous, repeated obnoxiousness, but finally it got the better of us. Were we older and more sophisticated, we would have asked for the manager and given him/her an earful.
Our response was to leave an insulting tip. Our total bill was well over $100, and we left a quarter.
We discussed stiffing her entirely, which we all felt entirely justified, but decided that she would just think we were stupid over-privileged college students who didn't know you had to tip. By leaving something like a 0.16% tip, we were letting her know her behavior was not acceptable.
How was the food? I don't even remember. But the experience definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, and I never went there again (even without the danger of getting arrested for it.)
I was eating at Cancun's on 82nd street. We had decent service, not great, he forgot some stuff, but no big deal and there were only four of us. We weren't picky or demanding at all, we were there maybe 40 mintues. When the bills came, mine and my date's came to 22 bucks. My buddy and his date's came to about 60. I left like a 3 dollar tip, and my buddy left like a 6 dollar tip.
After we paid our bills, we were still drinking and talking. The waiter came over and interrupted me and asked if everything was OK. I said, everything was alright. He said "Well then, 3 dollars?!?" I didn't even know what to say, I was like, "that's about right." He stormed off, all pissed. Telling all of his employees and pointing at our table, explaining why he was mad. I mean, it was about 15%...a dollar more would have been right at 20%. If anyone he should have been mad at my buddy. Dude is getting upset over a dollar.
So I sat there a while...astonished the guy even picked up the bills before we left and checked them. Then I pulled out another dollar...and wrote "Here's your F*CKING dollar"...left it on the table and will never go back to that restaurant.
I think tipping on dollar amount is silly...it's more effort to refill a free water than a 9 dollar drink. It should be based on number of plates or drinks brought to the table...not what's on the plate!
I was vacationing in South Havon , MI. There were 2 adults and 4 young children in our party. Service was bad from the get go but kept getting worse. After our food came our waiter never came back to the table. It took about 40 min to get the check. My husband took the kids to the car to wait. And boy did they wait. It took about another 30 minutes to pay the bill. The waiter was in the weeds but arrogant about it. I waited tables for years and there is no excuse for the service we got so I stiffed him with no guilt. It took over 2 1/2 hours for a simple meal and this was with four little kids to entertain. But then......the credit card bill came and he gave himself a big fat tip. I did call the credit card and got it taken off but I wanted the @#%@ fired at least. Called the manager and he was dismissive. That's fraud...plain and simple. so the lesson is becareful leaving a bad tip on a charge....check your statement,
Mine is a tie between horrible service and rude management at Rick's Boatyard on the westside and being served completely raw chicken at the Ale Emporium. Both places I will never set foot in as long as I live.
I was eating at Cancun's on 82nd street. We had decent service, not great, he ...
I agree that the tipping system could use some revamping... maybe having the restaurant pay the servers decently (instead of $2.13 an hour) and then have guests decide what the server deserves based on service instead of how much their food costs. There's no difference between bringing out a plate of $6 food vs a $20 plate for the most part.
That being said, serving a huge group of people is way different than just one or two, as well as serving course after course, drink after drink rather than just two entrees and two drinks. So it should be based somewhat on the bill.
The biggest point I want to make is that servers generally have to tip out (ie, split their tip money with bartenders, food runners, bussers, etc) based on their food sales. Which is why it is important to tip based on food (with the system as it is right now). Sometimes if you leave a low enough tip, the server is actually tipping out of their own pocket, and that's just crappy.
I'm kind of in the middle on the whole tipping issue. Like I said in my post, I felt no guilt whatsoever about leaving a near-nothing tip for that horrible waitress. And I think in general that patrons owe their server something for their service. But I also pretty categorically reject the "you must give 20 percent or you're stealing from their children's mouths" argument.
Look, it's not my fault pay scales for wait staff is screwy. If I receive terrible food, should I still give a generous tip on the reasoning that the waiter doesn't cook the food, so it's not his fault? I don't buy that. Same goes if the food tastes great but the service is awful. Tipping is the way the customer expresses his satisfaction or lack thereof for the entire meal experience.
If everything is good, I calculate 15 percent and usually round up to the next dollar. I feel no remorse about tipping lower if things are bad. I don't count an occasional screwed-up order or bringing diet instead of regular soda. Those things happen. But if it's a bad experience, yeah, the tip is going to be lower.
Correspondingly, if I get really great food and top-notch service, I tip higher. On a couple of spectacular occasions, I've given tips that were bigger than the cost of the meal.
When I was a poor college student, friends and I would go to Denny's and the like. My friends, most of whom had more pocket change than I did, would often skimp on the tip, saying "she'll understand, we're just college kids." I always had to make up the difference, because I feel that if you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out. These days, oftentimes I'll tip 50% for a breakfast (afterall, a breakfast tab is usually just a couple bucks) and 20-25% for dinner if service is very good. If service is just mediocre, 15%. Only in the most extreme cases will I tip less than 15%. Although there's no more work involved in serving a $20 plate of food than a $10 plate, I assume there's usually more experience among the waitstaff at the higher-end restaurants, so that's why I'm paying more.
As far as worst dining experience, 2 years ago my husband and I visited Asian Grill in Noblesville. I ordered a soup to start my meal. A few minutes later, the waiter brought us both bowls of a different kind of soup "compliments of the chef," something about a new recipe they were trying. We thanked the waiter, and I asked if he would cancel my other soup order (who needs 2 soups?), to which he replied "sorry, I've already given your order to the kitchen." He immediately went to the kitchen and brought the 2nd soup to our table. I told him I did not intend to have the second soup, and ended up speaking to the manager, who agreed to remove the soup from our bill. For the remainder of the meal, the waiter was very curt with us, dropped off our food, never refilled our drinks, never checked in on us or asked if we wanted dessert. He just brought the bill ... with the soup still on there. We left him no tip, but paid the full price of the bill and left a note saying that he can ask the manager to reimburse him the price of the soup we didn't want as his tip.