Come for the food. Stay because you're trapped in a service time warp.
This wasn't our first time at the Coquille Broiler, but it was the first time we questioned every life choice that led us there.
We arrived at 7:25 p.m. to a nearly empty dining room. You'd think that meant smooth service. Oh, sweet summer child. Our waitress greeted us with all the enthusiasm of a DMV employee on her 13th hour and kept repeating, "This is how I get when I'm tired." (Spoiler: VERY tired.) That should've been our cue to leave. Instead, we pressed on--like fools with hunger-fueled hope.
Drink orders took 20+ minutes. We ordered an iced tea and a rootbeer. We had to ask for them, like they were being handcrafted in a Himalayan spring.
My husband dared to ask what came on a sandwich. The reply? "I don't know. I've never had it." No attempt to find out--until he begged for sauce clarification like a man negotiating a hostage situation. She finally went to check, but not before announcing (again) how tired she was. Girl, same. But I'm not serving tables.
Other tables weren't faring much better. One couple had to request their salad like it was a rare artifact. A pickup order was missing chicken strips and sat waiting forever. Another poor soul picking up food stood around so long I almost offered him a seat at our table. When his chicken nuggets finally arrived, she didn't even walk them over--just waved at him from behind the counter like a disinterested cafeteria lady. I'm sure the rest of his already prepared order sat in his car cooling as the Sun began setting.
After 45 minutes, the restaurant slowly emptied. Orders trickled out like molasses in January. The other couple got their food at 8:15. We finally got ours... and mine was wrong. So wrong I had to wave the waitress back like I was flagging down a taxi in a blackout.
I said, "This isn't what I ordered."
She blinked and replied, "It isn't?"
Ma'am. I didn't whisper it into the wind--I said it, and you keyed it in right in front of me.
At that point I told her, "You know what? I think we'll just leave."
She looked... relieved.
She said, "I won't charge you for your dinner."
And I said, "Good. I wasn't going to pay for it."
My husband pushed his untouched plate away and said the same.
She hit us with an "Ohhh... well..." like she still thought she deserved partial credit.
Look. We've been here before. It's usually a great place. We chose to come back, we didn't just wander in off the street. But on this particular night, the Twilight Zone had a table for two, and we were seated promptly. I'm not sure if she was overworked, underpaid, or just done with humanity--but she'd clearly clocked out emotionally long before her shift ended.
Will we be back? Maybe. Eventually. But for now, we'll be recovering from the memory of being ghost-served by a walking burnout monologue in an apron. read more