While visiting my parents the Labor Day weekend, my girlfriend remarked about how she had never been to Texas Roadhouse and wanted to try it. Well, we told her that there was one in Prescott, but the last time we went there the service wasn't great, but the food was pretty good. So, after debating, we ended up going there anyway to see if maybe the last time was a fluke. It wasn't. This time was exponentially worse than last time.
When we first arrived, there was no greeting from anyone. We waited for what seemed like an eternity for a hostess to come up to us, and, when she arrived, she didn't even acknowledge us. She went straight to answer a phone call, and didn't even have the common courtesy to acknowledge our presence. A, "Just one moment, please." would have done, but we didn't even get a glance, smile, nothing. Now, I was a server for a number of years and still work in the customer service industry, and my father owned a restaurant for years, so, admittedly, we tend to hold restaurants to a little higher standard than most people, but come on. A greeting isn't too much to ask.
Then we were seated by the hostess with the worse freaking attitude ever. If my dad had been her boss, he would have fired her. I understand seating charts and all that, but rolling your eyes when we ask for a booth or throwing menus down on the table and treating us like a burden is not ok. I don't care where you are or what kind of day you've had. Whatever she was dealing with needed to be left at the damn door, because it was just rude.
The server (Kim) who came up to us greeted us so very nicely, which was a pleasant change from our experience so far. Then, she took our drink order, and that's where everything started to go downhill. She brought my dad a coffee and water after he asked for a Sam Adams (...they don't even sound the same), and then she argued with him about what he ordered. Holy cow. Was it really worth arguing about with a customer? And it's not like she was right and he was just being difficult...the four of us sitting there all heard him order a Sam Adams. From that point on, it was a slew of things from not bringing us bread or butter when we asked for it to not refilling our drinks until my dad had to physically call for her to come over. Then, the hostess sat another table in her section, and, as if we thought we couldn't be further ignored, we didn't see her again for almost the entire night. She catered to the one other person in her section...some doctor...who she felt the need to flirt with, while she was ignoring us. Was his tip more valuable than ours? Apparently so, because she was a ghost after that.
Then a food runner came out with our food. Three of our orders were wrong, and by that time, we just wanted to leave. But, we were all hungry and the food was there (whether it was what we ordered or not). This poor food runner did everything in his power to make the orders right, and he did an awesome job of helping us resolve our issues, but there were some things we just couldn't wait for. So, we ate our food, which was also sub-par (I swear I'm not looking for things to complain about--it really was not that great). The steaks were done wrong, the sides were wrong, the drinks never came, there was mushrooms and onions on two orders (that we never ordered on), and the roadkill was super undercooked. So, what do you do? You tell your server, right? Well, we couldn't find her, so we had to ask the runner to find her for us. She came out, apologized that the cooks messed up (yeah, blame the cooks), and then offered to take something off our bill. Silver lining, right? Wrong. We got our bill, and she had charged us for the coffee my dad didn't order, extra sides that the food runner had to switch out, and the toppings (that we didn't order) that we had to scrape off our steaks. Seriously? And what did she take off our bill? My soda. Come on, lady. Get real.
Ugh, it was just such a rough experience that we were prompted to really find a manager and give him a piece, but after we paid the bill, we couldn't find anyone to help us find anybody, so we just left. It was the worst experience I have ever had in a restaurant, and I plan on telling everyone that. I can't even tell you how this was supposed to be the cherry on an excellent vacation, and it ended up ruining the last experience of the weekend.
Hopefully this gets through to SOMEBODY and doesn't fall on deaf ears. read more