My husband and I along with another couple dined at this restaurant on 8/27/10. We arrived at the restaurant around 9PM and were promptly seated, we were excited because the place was surprisingly not packed for a Friday night. Unfortunately that's where our service seemed to stall out. We waited around twenty minutes for someone to come over and greet us and take our drink orders or get us started on some appetizers. Finally, one of our companions flagged down a passing server and asked her if anyone was even assigned to our area. The poor girl acted like she had no idea where she was or what she was doing but offered to take our drink orders. After another fifteen minutes with no drinks we flagged down another passing server who had no idea who our server was either but she offered to take our food orders and check on our drinks. Another ten minutes passed and our server finally showed up for the first time and brought us our drinks.
At this point, we asked to speak to a manager and explained that we were unhappy with the service. He seemed very friendly but not at all apologetic and told us he would take care of the situation. Unfortunately, it seemed like it only made our service worse.
We waited an hour before our food was finally brought out. When it was, our server brought out everyone's food but my husband's. He told us he would be "right back" with my husband's dinner. Because we were all starving by this point, my husband told us to begin our dinners with out him. It was obvious from the first bite that our dinners had been sitting out for a while. My fajitas, which are supposed to come to the table sizzling, were lukewarm. The chicken strips on our companions salad were ice cold like it had been sitting in the refrigerator after being cooked. We finally had to GO LOOKING for our server who had forgotten all about my husband's food, by this time we had all already finished our meals and my husband ended up taking his home in a to-go box.
What should have been a 45 minute experience became a two hour ordeal and the food wasn't even worth it. After we hunted down our server once again for our bill, we requested a manager again. We explained our situation, again, to the manager who became rude and unprofessional. He was obviously annoyed that we were complaining and stated he would take 10% off of our bills. We explained to him that that was not good enough after the terrible service, the sub-par food and the fact that my husband had to sit and watch the three of us eat without ever receiving his own plate.
The manager took 50% off of our bill, which we appreciated, but he was not apologetic for the terrible service and food and didn't seem to think that our situation was out of the ordinary at all. I was appalled by his lack of professionalism; even though we were obviously disgruntled, we remained polite and courteous.
We have dined out at Chili's quite often and we have never gotten such terrible service before. In fact, I have never gotten such terrible service anywhere I've gone.
We did leave a tip because we know it's not always completely the server's fault in situations like these but I have never been so tempted in my life not to leave SOMETHING. I think I'll find another Chili's in my area if I ever get the urge to go back but I think this experience has ensured that I will not be patronizing any of their establishments again. read more