Redress The Salad And Address Your Attitude

My friend, her eleven-year-old daughter, and I go to a local village today for their Scarecrow Festival, a tradition that we’ve been enjoying for about seven years. Before getting started, we go to one of the restaurants for lunch.We didn’t go last year due to the weather.

We arrive a little after 11:00 and are seated right away. The waitress brings our menus and takes our drink orders. When she returns:

Me: “I’ll take chicken salad on a croissant with American cheese and mayo on the side, please.”

Friend: “I’d like roast beef with horseradish sauce and a bowl of French onion soup.”

Daughter: “I’d like a house salad with ranch dressing and chicken fingers.”

The waitress leaves and comes back a few minutes later.

Waitress: “Where did you see roast beef?”

Friend: “On the menu.”

It turns out that they have new menus they started today, and the one my friend ordered from was the old menu. [Friend] changes her order to a crab cake sandwich. No problem.

The food comes out and my friend’s daughter tries her salad.

Daughter: “This isn’t ranch dressing.”

[Friend] and I try it and we both agree politely that it’s not, and we request the correct dressing. When the waitress brings out new dressing, she has an attitude.

Waitress: “Try this one.”

The ranch is right this time. I politely remind her about my mayonnaise, which she has forgotten.

For the next forty minutes, our waitress ignores us. She doesn’t check to see if everything is okay and doesn’t see if we would like refills. I never get my mayonnaise. She serves the tables around us since it’s gotten busier now. But she walks right by us and looks right at us but ignores us. We’re finished eating but she doesn’t even come back to take our dirty plates. My friend and I are both getting pissed, but she’s keeping it together because her daughter is with us.

Finally, after we’ve been there an hour, the waitress FINALLY comes back to our table and asks if we’d like anything else. We say no and that we just want the check, and she leaves. Five minutes later:

Waitress: “Hey, I just wanted to double-check. You didn’t need anything else, right?”

Us: “No.”

Ten minutes after she first asked us, she brought our check out, and then we had to wait another five minutes or so before she took the card to run it and then finally came back with the receipt. She got a $2.99 tip on a $60+ check.

We didn’t blame her for the first two things; they were out of her control. But the attitude and the fact that she ignored us for most of our lunch is inexcusable.