Eating out is just a waste of time and money

[Batshit1234]

Went out for dinner tonight. Husband, two teens. service was just shocking and everyone is home in bad form.
Had booked a table in a certain area ( you can pick your area)
table wasn’t ready - that’s ok so offered one in another area and took it.
Were left with one menu between 4 of us for ages.
Had to ask to order.
Ordered drinks and food after 45 minutes we didn’t even have the jug of juice.
Went to bar for two pints of water - think he went to Antarctica for the water and I walked away as seen food coming to table.
Food arrived with no drinks on table
No steak knife and I couldn’t cut my steak with the normal knife - I did try
Had to get up again and go and get someone to get me a steak knife
Son’s order was wrong had to go back they really did apologise.
Sat with dirty plates in front of us for 20 minutes
I was ready to bale at this point but kids seemed to want dessert.
Got dessert menu and ordered another glass of wine after 15 minutes no one came back with the wine or to take dessert order.
Got up again and said cancel the wine and can we just have the bill.
They ran over with the glass of wine and said it was on the house.
Bill was near 100Euro
I would have rather stood in the kitchen for two hours cooking than deal with this shite.

Why is service so shocking in restaurants. I do 99% of cooking at home and think I would just prefer to be in the house. My teen daughter was telling me to chill and I am trying to explain she would feel different if she had to pay for this carryon. We were there two hours and only got a main course. The dirty oil is repeating on me #raging Am I being unreasonable that this was shit!

I've never ever had such a bad experience eating out. I suggest you stop using that one restaurant.
Put a bad review on TripAdvisor. But don't brand eating out as a general hobby a waste of time and money.
I really, really enjoy the social aspect, and nearly always enjoy the food and drink. If I didn't I just would go elsewhere.

I think service & food quality has gone down in general.
I am careful in choosing where & when to eat out because of this.
Usually I only go to places that have been reliably good, but we don't eat out often so tend to go to nicer places, where the experience is more consistent, as a treat rather than it being a regular thing.

yeah we never eat out in UK. I hate it all and find it too stressful, eat out on holiday though outside in the warm air

Nah I agree with you. 100 Euro is prob on the cheaper side but service and quality of food has gone hugely downhill in recent years. We are living in the North but regularly travel south of the border to a very famous themed type restaurant…. Think Halloween/Christmas events…the bill often way over 500 euro for our group of friends, but the service, attentiveness, attitude of the staff is abysmal and yet close to 30 euro for a fairly standard pub lunch. Ireland is currently an absolute rip off. Don’t even get me started on the price of drink- ridiculous. Had a recent European holiday, fantastic food, brilliant service, competitively priced wine/beer.
Ireland & NI restaurants are in a sorry state and seemingly just view customers as cash-cows at the moment- 10 years ago I would have argued vehemently against this viewpoint but lately every local meal I’ve had out has been a very expensive disappointment.
Since Covid/brexit, there’s been a lack of service industry staff and the youngsters who are filling the gaps in this industry simply do not care.

Agree, OP. RIP off Ireland/NI. Vote with your feet.

I'm with you OP.
9 times out of 10 i get home feeling the bother of getting dressed up, driving out, waiting for the food, paying hard earned cash and driving all the way home again wasn't actually worth it. Even though i had looked forward to it and gone willingly.

Nice not to have to cook and wash up, yes, but you can get that much with a mcdonalds.

We're rural and surrounded by villages with little pubs but sadly the gems have changed hands and are serving reheated pies and soup of the day out of a tin. Or charging the earth for a roast you could have done a bigger/better version of at home. Justification is a 'country atmosphere' apparently. Well ... all the customers are locals 🤔Most of the waiting staff are about 16 and quite reluctant to utter more than one word per hour.

We have a spa town about 45 mins away from us which has a few lovely restaurants in it but the parking's crap and i don't want to spoil the atmos at the end of the meal by having to hike down streets back to the multistory to fight with the pay machine 🙄

Humph.

I love eating out. 100 euro seems cheap for 4 including at least one steak and wine. Was it really busy? I dont mind waiting if I am not in a hurry. If it wasn't good, don't go back. I had an amazing meal out last night, also in Ireland.

I think I know the place you are taking about OP. Does it begin with an F 🤣
Mains were def not expensive but I would have expected better service in McDonalds.

Should.of just gone to nandos. The nandos near me is always usy despite how much it now costs!

Yes @Batshit1234, we have been customers for over 8 years. Never again. I’ll probably give in for the October event due to peer pressure, but absolutely not paying for Christmas lunches again there. You are just seen as cash cows. And the price of a glass of wine, unbelievable. They seriously need to improve on all counts. But I’ve found loads of previously very good, to even good enough for pub food, restaurants go the same way these last few years

I live eating out but I agree. YANBU.
What really pisses me off is that many restaurants in the city centres now add a 12.5 -20% tip on to the bill. (They put discretionary in brackets). The point is you then feel obliged to leave a tip. We are not in America. The staff are on the same wages as those in supermarkets, retail and NHS staff!

May I add, I’m more than happy to tip and ive tipped a good amount if I’ve received a good service as long as it goes to the staff and not the management! And not feel like I’m being forced into it!

I don’t think being a regular customer means anything anymore 🥲can’t cope with it anymore. Went to another place for a birthday dinner 15 of us and they completely mixed up the medium, well done and rare steaks. If I named this you would know it too! Everyone swapping plates.🙈 I never understand why they don’t ask about condiments before the food 90% of kids will want red sauce with a burger. They dump the food and run. No vinegar for chips, stuff half cold before you have all you need before you eat. Could be safer going for a FT chicken burger and super chip. 😉

In case you're not aware, when they add 12.5% to the bill, they "accidentally" calculate it including the VAT, which doesn't apply to tips, so they pocket over 15%. (or 24% when the tip is 20%)

It's a well known trick of the trade, and usually not shared with the staff as they don't realise.

I think one of the problems at the moment certainly in England is that restaurants have trouble getting waiting staff, which then necessarily then affects service. I’ve been to a couple of restaurants where the service has been surprisingly slow, and when I have asked, they have blamed staff shortages. The changes making it more expensive to employ people will not help, either - most hospitality venues operate on very tight margins. I have heard the same from family and friends, eating out in different places. I like going out to eat, but it is an occasional treat rather than a regular thing - so if the service isn’t good enough, just take the service charge off the bill.

Assume you are in Ireland. Like the UK, hospitality isn't a proper profession there generally. It's what people do to pay the bills. And like in the UK the divergence between pay and cost of living is now so stark that they can't even do that comfortably.

And yeah 100 EUR is dirt cheap for four! I'd usually expect to pay that for two.

I rarely eat out as I find it weirdly stressful. My biggest bugbear is delicious starters followed by bland mains. The way restaurants make food taste lush is by adding butter or oil, sugar and salt, and I would only eat like that as an occasional treat anyway. There's a great Italian we go to that has never let us down, and the service is a delight. We go maybe twice a year.

Yes. I’m not a big fan of eating out either. It’s generally expensive now, quality of food is not always great and service is very variable.

We’ve also not spent more money due to the staff not returning with dessert menus or being available to take additional drink orders.

Much the same, we hardly ever eat out except with friends/family.

When I (rarely) just CBA to cook, we’ll have ready meals.

That's some generalisation from one restaurant to the whole concept of eating out!

Fully agree with you OP. We rarely go out now such is the poor service these days. Supermarket food has also degraded in quality significantly, which means you pay more to buy rubbish. Didn't used to be like this. We now find we are better suited to just laying on the bare kitchen floor with an IV drip in with a few electrolyte supplements added for nutrition. We do this every evening now and lament the decline of society through rhythmic chanting.

Well as a society, we're reaping what we've sewed with regards to hospitality staff unfortunately.
There's a real shortage of chefs, so it costs more to employ one, and even more for a good one, and more again to keep them. And good ones are like hens teeth at the moment, so they end up burned out pretty quickly, working 14 hour days cooking and then prep, menu planning, ordering, cleaning. And then they get told they're shit. Not going to inspire much that is it?

FOH jobs have been devalued for years, poor pay, poor conditions, poor treatment by customers and zero respect for doing the job, the opposite in fact.
The attitude that no one should do these jobs past being a student, or wanting a bit extra cash, that people are too lazy/stupid/uninspired to do any better. That it's just a stop gap job, it's not important.
Only now that the service matches the attitude towards those delivering it, people are baffled. It's really an entirely predictable result of the attitudes towards anyone in a service position, the culture is that these jobs aren't important, they're not worth much in society - except clearly they are because people are complaining about the service.
Can't have it all ways, either good service and the people who deliver it is something we value and therefore invest in, or it's not. At the moment it's not valued, so it's hardly surprising it's not good.

Unfortunately there's not an endless supply of people willing to be treated that way.

Send a summary of your experience to the restaurant. I’m sure the owners would not be happy.