Unfiltered Story #252933

Quite a few years back my school had an exchange with an Italian school. Our school wanted to show the Italians real dutch cuisine, so they took us to a restaurant with traditional dutch meals. As we were quite a large group, 2 school classes, we had to book in advance and also select our meals in advance. This meant that the restaurant had the exact numbers on how many of each meal were needed.

Things got off to a bad start immediately. When we arrived, the waitresses treated us like we weren’t worth their business and we should just hurry up and leave already. They took our drink orders more or less correctly, but the meals were when the real trouble started. Not only did they sent out the meals really unevenly, some people were almost finished when others finally got theirs, but some of the meals were really bad quality cooking and some fairly lukewarm.

On top of that they also messed up on the numbers. They brought out the meals per dish. The first dish was one the majority of people had. After giving everyone that had that dish their plate, they still had 2 plates of that dish leftover. They started blaming us, telling us that we gave them the wrong numbers. They then told us that they would wait and see who didn’t get their plate after the other dishes had been served and they would just have to take it.

Luckily our teachers protested against this. They even double checked with the list to see if everyone who ordered that dish had been served. They had. After a bit more whining the waitresses took the dishes back to the kitchen. Sure enough, at the end, 2 people didn’t have a plate in front of them yet. The staff managed to pull those 2 dishes from somewhere quite fast.

Dessert was served fast and with very grumpy staff. Throughout all of this, we, the students, had been fairly well-behaved and been talking at an acceptable level for 40+ teenagers. We had smiled at our waitresses despite them not smiling back and we rarely complained right in their faces.

We all wanted to leave as fast as possible and immediately cleared out when everyone had finished their food. Our teachers had kept a meticulous record of what we had ordered for meals, desserts and drinks. The teacher who had originally found the restaurant and booked everything went to the register to pay. I noticed this fairly patient and calm woman get agitated quite a bit and while exiting the place, she told the few of us who were slow packing up (including me), what had happened. Apparently they not only tried to put the 2 meals that had been their error on our tab, but also a few drinks, including alcoholic ones, that we had never ordered or had been served. What had really gotten to her, however, was that after all that mess and grumpiness, they had asked where their tip was. Now, tipping in the Netherlands is generally only done when one is happy about the service and only in restaurants and not everyone even does it. When my teacher expressed her outrage at them still complaining about the lack of tip, they tried to convince her to tip by complaining about the size of our group, saying that we were a very large group. Our teacher still refused. One of the waitresses stormed into the kitchen after this, the other begrudgingly took my teacher’s money, although she nearly refused to give the chance back.

I tried to look up the restaurant a few years later but although I did find a website it seems they have gone out business since.