Awful Service Stories

[motheroftinydragons]

DH and I had a rare opportunity to go out for dinner last night (we have two very young children). We were so excited! Booked a table at a restaurant and off we went.

Well. I've never had mishaps like it, and in the end it so awful it was actually hilarious. So I thought I'd share in the hope you found regale me with some of your crap stories and make me feel better.

We arrived fifteen minutes early for the table but it was ready. Ordered drinks - a wine and beer plus jug of water. Also ordered our starters and mains at the same time and was told there would be a ten/fifteen minute wait on food. Fine, no problem.

Drinks arrive, but no water. Starters arrive after about twenty minutes. I'd had smoked salmon and prawn salad, started eating and realised there was no salmon. DH had a fishcake with a runny yolk poached egg on top. He's eating when suddenly he says "touch this". It's only the frozen centre of his fishcake. Like an actual solid lump of frozen fish. Call staff, send both starters back politely and ask for the missing water. She comes out, offers free desserts to say sorry and new starters. No problem, say thanks and wait.

New starters take over half an hour to arrive. Waitress tells us because of the delay all of our food is free which was unexpected. They come, mine is nice and everything there. DHs fishcake is cooked, but his poached egg is so overdone that when he slices it, the yolk falls out whole. Waitress comes to take plates, notices yolk, pulls a face. We order more drinks and ask again for the missing water.

Mains come out quickly after, with water (yay!) and new drinks. Both are missing the apple purée (it was pork) on the plates so we ask for it on the side. No problems with mains other than that.

Plates cleared and waitress brings dessert menus. And then promptly disappears. Twenty five minutes later, no ones come to take our order. Finally have had enough and ask to speak to manager. Who takes twenty minutes to come out and see us.

We did get desserts in the end, very quickly after that. The manager was very apologetic. Mine was fine DH ordered ice cream, chocolate and strawberry. What he got was chocolate and vanilla. We laughed all the way back to the car!

Oh my God that's terrible! At least you're in the kind of relationship where you can laugh!

My worst experience was when I rang up a holiday park...an independent caravan place...to ask about tents and hire.

The woman was incredibly rude...so I said "You're being very rude and unhelpful and I've had enough." so I hung up.

About two minutes later she rang me back! She must have had my number on her computer...she berated me for being rude!

So I said "How dare you use my number to call me and tell me off!" I hung up and emailed the owner.

He emailed me back and said I rang her and was rude!

Oh my God!

We had to laugh, honestly it was like a farce! Just when we thought nothing else could go wrong it did. The worst thing was they were only half full, and we didn't see one other person having a problem. It was just us

That's awful! I hope you took your business elsewhere.

@motheroftinydragons

As a hospitality worker, including waiting on and duty manager, I can confirm that once one thing on a table goes wrong, the law of oh ffs! sod will dictate you must continue to make a twat of yourself with that table until you can't take any more, at which point something else will go wrong.
Seriously though, that does sound pretty bad, would you ever give them a chance again to see if it was just a one off?

@Grumpymug My ILs eat there all the time and love it so I'm sure it was just an off day. Also the food we got, when we got it and it was properly cooked and all there was nice.

But we do rarely get the chance to eat our we'll probably go somewhere else next time. To be fair they only charged us for the drinks and that was without us kicking up any sort of fuss so that's definite bonus points there.

I did feel sorry for the lady waiting our table, she seemed so embarrassed but she then didn't help matters by buggering off (her break maybe?) without making sure we were sorted. We didn't leave a tip, where we normally would.

Our worst was on a Devon holiday. One evening all the coastal bars were fully booked so we drove inland a couple of miles. We found a lovely pub on the side of a hill, not busy at all.

There were a few plates left on tables. Oh, we thought they’ve just had a rush and will clear up shortly.

Ordered food. It arrived promptly with human hair pretty much embedded in most dishes. To avoid being physically sick we had to leave. On the way out, we looked closely at some of the still uncleared plates....most of which had not really been touched by the diners. Yep, again human hair in all of the food.

To this day I believe it was an act of sabotage by a disgruntled chef and someone somewhere knows exactly that.

Omg @Al2O3 that is just gross! Has to be deliberate surely.

We arrived in St Lucia yesterday afternoon for our 20th wedding anniversary. Not only did the pre-booked, pre-paid 90 minute transfer to our hotel not turn up, but the only unmanned desk at the airport was Virgin’s (and it turned out the Virgin office in St Lucia isn’t open on Saturday afternoons). Fortunately a local taxi company took pity on us, but bloody hell, Virgin- terrible service.

It really annoys me when you get bad service, I rarely eat out it's a treat so you feel your evening was spoilt .
Chain restaurants are usually quite bad slow service, food not great . Usually staff are overworked so I do feel sorry for them but not real complaint just wouldn't go there again .
My birthday meal wasn't good I booked in advance group booking but had to repeatedly asked for drinks 1 hour gap between courses and had to remind them for the cake and the bill as we had young children with us and it was getting late . I really didn't want to leave a tip but we did but I won't be going back . It just spoilt it and and you didn't relax because you were waiting for so long .

We had a similarly rare night out when a friend offered to babysit the DC - it was pretty last minute so hadn't booked anywhere. Tried three different places we like, all full, before plumping for the local Harvester in a panic as we were worried about being too long for our friend. Had never been before but thought we could at least get a drink and something quick and easy. When the lady came to take our drinks order I asked for a glass of wine and she immediately said she'd need to see ID. Slightly nonplussed (because I am pushing 30 and general lack of sleep means I look about a decade older, not younger) I explained I didn't have any on me, but we'd be ordering food. She said that didn't matter and now she'd asked for ID, she couldn't serve me alcohol unless I produced some. I wasn't hugely bothered so said I'd have a coke, but DH then ordered a beer, and she said she also couldn't serve him in case he gave it to me. We'd already explained at this point that I'm coeliac as had asked for allergen menus, so DH pointed out that quite apart from the general ridiculousness I couldn't drink beer anyway. That was irrelevant. He was all prepared to argue the point but I didn't think we'd get anywhere, and it was about 9 o'clock by this point and I was ready to chew my own arm off.

We asked to order food but she said she'd only be a minute getting the drinks. Ten minutes later she came back with two flat, warm cokes, and took our food order. They didn't have what we wanted for starters, but eventually I ordered something she assured me would gluten-free 'without the sauce'. When it (eventually) arrived it was in fact covered in sauce. I queried this and first of all she said the chef had made special gluten-free sauce for me , but I pointed out it looked identical to DH's. At this point we demanded to speak to the chef, and/ or the manager, and she had a rant about how difficult we were being and stormed off. The chef came and it turned out she hadn't even said about needing a gluten-free meal. By this point it was 10ish, I didn't trust them to eat anything and DH found his pretty grim anyway, so we asked to pay and leave. They took off my meal but still charged us for the two flat cokes and DH's food...

Friend was somewhat confused when we arrived home at half past ten with a takeaway!

@motheroftinydragons

Fair enough to not want to go back, I totally get it when there's been bad service, it ruins it especially when it's something you rarely do.
I had a bad hotel experience, working in one I know my way around booking systems etc and I booked a nice room, with a view, and breakfast for me and DD, and I know that's what I booked. I also know that the booking can be 'amended' by the hotel if it needs to be (if you ring up for instance) when we arrived our booking had been amended to a suite, not a room and breakfast removed. I showed booking confirmation and was shrugged at and told the booking had been amended - by them though not me! The room was filthy and you couldn't see the view for the muck on the windows! I got absolutely nowhere with complaining, and being someone who gets complained at I know how to approach complaining, it was a big chain too and such a shame because it was a beautiful place just let go to ruin. I'd saved best part of 6 months to give DD the experience of staying in a really nice hotel (she wanted to see what it was like to stay somewhere similar to the place I work in) and although it didn't ruin the trip as we still had a good time, the way they failed to handle the complaint at all annoyed me, because she didn't get the experience I wanted to show her.
I wish I'd just taken her to where I work now! I know we'd have got good service there!

@AveAtqueVale
The harvester near me is quite bad that I refuse to go .
Service slow and food not very good either . It used to be quite nice so it's disappointing.

Oooh, I have been looking for somewhere to perform my Nuffield Gyms rant...

Classes at my local gym are always full, even if you have the app and look first thing in the morning. They are all fully booked 8 days in advance.

Complained to the gym, who told me Yes, the classes get booked up, but people don't turn up, so I should go to the gym anyway just in case there is a space.

Essentially, their booking system is not fit for purpose and they expect people to get their gym kit ready and arrange childcare on the off chance they can get into a class.

The last time I was in a Harvester it was dire. Supposed to be a staff Christmas do, turkey and all the trimmings. Turkey was as dry as a bone, roast potatoes were still raw in the middle. We did complain, but nothing doing.
Went to a birthday party at a local Indian restaurant. 25 people, pre booked well in advance. They decided to only have one waiter dealing with our whole table. Took ages to order and then when the food arrived it was the same one man stood at one end of the table hollering out the names of the dishes and then it being passed down the table to the right person.
By the time the last person got their food it was cold and the people served first had already finished! Inevitably one person forgot what they'd ordered and caused significant confusion around them by fussing and arguing with people when they wouldn't swap with her. Drink orders were just as bad.
Then some people were trying to order desserts when others were barely started on their mains. Confusion reigned and then it came time for the bill. They'd automatically added a service charge. Quite a few (Inc me) refused to pay it as the service had been glacial. Then a big debate about splitting evenly or not (ok that wasn't the restaurants fault) which ended up with a shortfall.
Some of it was down to people having ordered side dishes that they hadn't received so therefore had no intention of paying for. It was hard to know if the sides had been forgotten or had just got lost in the chaos and been eaten by the wrong person. When the waiter wasn't taking an order or delivering food he'd totally vanished so people hadn't been able to query.
I've never been back there. Food was ok, but service was just plain bizarre.

I once went to a pub that specialised in home-cooked pies, lots of different ones. Most of us ordered pies - they came with no pastry, just the filling smeared across the plate. We complained and they said they hadn't received their order of "pie tops" that day! (So much for being home-cooked!) I just don't get why you would think it is acceptable to serve a pie without any pie crust?