I couldn't make this crap up if you paid me!
I know I've said that statement a lot over the years, but really it's sooooooo true! At times I wish it wasn't. Tonight yet again I got to live it. My mate who I went to Norwich University with & I decided to go to dinner. We try to do this weekly. Sounds innocent enough right? Actually before I continue let me back up a step & tell you about our dinner date 2 weeks ago. We decided we'd go to Chile's cause of their awesome 2 eat for $20 meal deal. You get an appetiser to share & each get a main meal . . . easy enough right? WRONG! Took us forever to get our drinks (cause ya know water is hard to come by here in Shrewsbury, MA) and then again we waited forever to get our food. Luckily the manager noticed there was a problem & came over to offer to "help" and gave us 50% off the food bill and a $5 gift certificate for another time.
Tonight was our second attempt. We waited 10 mins to be seated, not a problem, it's a busy place during school breaks. But after at least 10 minutes of waiting for a waitress to take our order my mate Kristina had to go to the front to ask for one to help us. She came over with big smiles and explained there'd been a mix up and she'd be helping us - okay minor blip we'd let slide - we understand these sorts of things. Ordered 2 margaritas, 2 waters, appetizer: chips, salsa & guacamole, and both ordered quesadilla explosion salad. 26 minutes later, yes I said minutes, NOT seconds, our drinks came out! Now I don't know if they had to go to Mexico to get the tequila or were squeezing the limes fresh, but that's just ridiculous! But again we were busy chatting and trying to give them a second chance, so we kept our big mouths shut for once - I know not very Norwich of us ;-) Then another 15 minutes later our salads came out. For those of you not following the story yet, our appetizers should have come out by now! Luckily Kristina was on top of it & said she'd like our chips & guacamole before the salads - which for some reason confused the waitress. So back the salads went & 5 minutes later the appetizer arrived. After awhile she came back & offered to bring out our salads and we said okay. Little did we know all they'd done was put our meal in the fridge - making for rather cold quesadillas and grilled chicken. Please note we've had this before so we know these items should be hot & the salad part should be cold. We tried to eat what we could, but we'd lost our appetites by this point in the evening & THANK GOD we had lots to talk about & were not in a rush or this would have been a disastrous evening. But being the strong Norwich grads that we are, we managed to keep our cool while explaining to the manager about our 2nd horrific experience within 2 weeks of each other at her restaurant. At first she was receptive, but then of course she had to add in there about how wonderful the service there is.
Now I understand the customer is not always right, but in this case with our second experience being so bad, I think she might have been better off just apologising, cause really I don't want to hear an excuse at this point, I'm really just looking to get out of there as fast as possible. I mean I've been there for 2 hours now and only managed to eat a handful of chips & salsa and a few bites of cold quesadilla and some salad before my frustration & anger has turned our stomaches.
Okay, I should stop complaining, cause she did give us our meals for free and a $10 gift certificate for our next visit (the manager is obviously waaaaay more optimistic than I am about our next visit) and we were nice & gave the waitress a $3 tip, which works out to about $1 per time we saw her all night . . . not bad in my mind!
Be warned Chile's in Shrewsbury, when we come next time (which we promised the manager we would) you better kick it up a notch or you'll go right to our black list. Remember we have lots of friends who will join us in refusing to eat at your restaurant - you don't want to mess this up - it will hurt your business!
Kristina, did I miss anything off here?
Labels: rant, restaurant
posted by Sara @ 3:38 am
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