Incredibly disappointing experience today…read more
When we arrived (around 1:45pm on a Monday), the restaurant was completely empty with one server working. He seated us and took our order for two beers, a pop and calamari. We received our drinks and waters, and then were not checked on again at all.
About 20 minutes later, another server, Jade, arrived and two other tables came in. We continued to wait, with empty waters and an empty pop, without anyone checking on us. At around 40 minutes, I went to the washroom (after a discussion that if the food still wasn't there when I came back, we would cancel it and leave) and on my way watched Jade bring full meals to a table that had arrived about 20 minutes after us.
While I was gone, Jade came over finally checked in and my family member asked about our calamari. After coming back, she then told him there had been an "error with the POS" and that she was putting the order in now. We have both worked as servers and, frankly, this felt like an excuse for an order that had simply been missed or never entered. Regardless, to have only 3 tables and 2 servers working for almost an hour - how was this not noticed beforehand?
When I came back and was caught up, I told her not to bother with the food as it had already been over 40 minutes and we needed to leave. My family member had a flight to catch and this was the final stop of his trip. Her response was immediately quite rude, with some eye rolling involved, and she then called across the restaurant to the original server, "Yep, I guess we have to cancel that"(not verbatim) in front of the other tables.
When she returned with the bill, I explained that I understood she wasn't the one who took our order, but regardless, we had been waiting for over 40 minutes without food, refills or anyone checking on us. Her tone became much friendlier, but she then told me that "it looks really bad for us when we void things in the system." That was a particularly frustrating comment. How a void looks internally should not be the customer's concern when the reason for the void is the service they received. It should be a bigger deal how bad it looks to have paying customers have a bad experience...
She continued to emphasize that it wasn't her order and that this wasn't "her style of service," and said the other server probably would have comped the calamari if we took it. At that point we had already explained that we needed to leave and no longer had time to eat. I mentioned that offering to comp our drinks would have been appreciated, or at least making some effort to address the experience before I paid. Nothing was offered.
The original server was standing about 15 feet away during this conversation and never came over to acknowledge the mistake or apologize himself, I even mentioned to Jade it would be nice if he could've apologized himself.
An order being missed is an understandable mistake. What made this such a poor experience was waiting over 40 minutes without being checked on, watching tables that arrived well after us receive their meals, being given an excuse once we finally asked about our food, and then receiving attitude when we asked to cancel it.
I'm especially disappointed that this was the final stop of my family member's trip. We came here specifically because it had been recommended to us, and unfortunately left with a very different impression.
Oh, and the male server/bartender didn't ask for ID from my very young looking 22 year old family member, just as another thing to note.
