I originally posted this on Google Reviews but felt compelled to download Yelp again to post here, so I copied and pasted:
I am so surprised to have such a poor experience at Chili's, one of my family's favorite and go-to places. We showed up a half hour before they closed after 10+ hours on the road moving our parents across the country, and with them being the only sit down restaurant open at the time. We were met with a waitress (I believe her name is Jen) who greeted us huffy and puffy because how dare we had the audacity to show up at that time, right? As a waitress myself, and my husband as a full-time chef, we get the frustration, but she crossed the line when she continued by asking if we could finish our food in the next half hour (implying eat and leave) without even trying to cover up that ugly attitude. Then she was further irritated because what she thought was just 2 of us who went ahead of our parents, was actually 5. How dare we be a family needing food after a really long day (definitely meant sarcastically). She then still seated us (why bother if it's really such a problem), slammed our menus down, and gave out quite the dirty look that if it was not obvious we were not welcomed by then, we definitely knew then. My family and I felt so uncomfortable that we didn't even get our appetizer before we asked for all of our food to go so we could just enjoy it at our hotel. It was 9:45 pm, after all, and hadn't received our food that how could we possibly be done by the required time set by her?
One star given for the server that actually waited on us, David. We could tell he was tired and pushing through, but he still tried his best, even offered lemons in our water, was speedy when we requested our food to go. I'm really sorry if we had taken out our frustration out on him because we were still reeling from the hostility of the one that seated us we hadn't quite recovered enough. Another star given for the manager, Katrina, who took the time to listen to our complaint and assured us that we were not asking for too much on our end. She said she would speak with this server but judging by the other bad reviews related to the service within the last few months, I doubt this will really improve anything. It's a shame that this one server ruined the whole experience and for David to show-off his great service! We paid using the fancy table kiosk and got the heck out of there ASAP!
We enjoyed the food, the kitchen staff took great care even though it was close to closing.
Again, I get that we all have bad days, I have them too as a waitress. But when you come to work, you have to learn the art of separating life from work. If you don't, then your whole life just sucks and you make it suck for everybody else, including your coworkers. I really try to find something stellar about my experience at places so I can write good reviews but I was so SHOCKED that I want other customers to BEWARE.
We always talk about Sioux Falls and how everyone and all the businesses we have gone to in the past are so welcoming and friendly that we didn't see an issue bringing our parents and brother there for the first time. Boy, were we wrong. read more