Happy Monday, everyone! This past weekend, it was my husband's and my first wedding anniversary. Yay! I received gorgeous roses and a very sweet card...and we decided to go to dinner on Saturday evening at a very nice restaurant that we have never been to before. So, we researched the menu, got all dolled up and headed out for our 8 p.m. reservation.
Now, I was a waitress and a bartender many years ago and my husband was a bar manager for a few years, so both of us understand the service industry and the importance of tips. I can count on one hand the number of times that I have tipped less than 20%. The first half of dinner went great, the food was fantastic and service was attentive and fairly quick. And then it took a sharp downhill turn to negative town...
We waited over an hour alone to get our dessert and check. ONE HOUR. So, our dinner lasted well over two and a half hours long, with an hour of that cromprising staring at my empty coffee cup longing for my dessert. I understand that the kitchen can get slammed, but this restaurant was NOT busy at 9 p.m. I know, I was there. Our waitress ignored us for the entire hour we were waiting for our dessert, only filling our coffee cups once and citing (lying) that our first dessert was burned, so she asked for another one...when in fact I saw her enter in our dessert only moments before. Listen lady, everyone makes mistakes, so you forgot to type in our desserts, no big deal, but don't lie to me about it. The lying made it one million times worse. I'm sure I was giving her the stink eye.
Clearly I'm ranting, but my point is, service was bad and not once did we receive one apology, one comp, one "I'm sorry for the wait". Nada. And guess what, it happened to us again at dinner at a local tavern tonight. At an EMPTY pub, it took over one hour for our sandwiches to arrive and then another thirty minutes for our waiter to remember to get us the check.
I'm an understanding person in the restaurant world, but I really thought we were getting punked these past two days. In a world where great service is underrated and underpaid, I wonder, where have you received your best service or your worst? This can be retail, restaurant, auto, whatever. For me, Nordstroms always offers the most amazing customer service, for new purchases, returns and information. Same goes for a few local Charlotte restaurants, namely 131 Main and 300 East.
Do tell, where have you received the best or the worst service and why?
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