My father basically sold me to a restaurant when I was 14. That may be exaggerating slightly, but the end result was that I spent every Saturday morning of my freshman through junior years of high school waiting tables for the breakfast and lunch shift of a busy local diner. After that, I spent a horrible summer as a hostess at an Outback, and just a couple of years ago, I briefly waited tables at a Polish diner in New York City. The point is, I am highly sympathetic to people who work in restaurants.
Of course, I’m human, so if the service is slow, or the waiter doesn’t refill my drink, or the food is bad, I of course don’t like that — but I rarely say or do anything about it. I naturally avoid confrontation to begin with, but after years of having people yell at me over eggs, I have no desire to even approach doing that to someone else. The few times I’ve ever sent something back, it’s been because I completely cannot eat it. i.e. there’s meat in it, or a hair. Other than that, I’ll just take what I’m given.
So I found myself in quite the quandary recently. Luke and I went to a restaurant whose service was so bad, that we were faced with the immortal question: should we just leave? This is how things went down:
7:05: We arrive at a new Italian restaurant in town. A man in a suit is at the door, and he shows us to a table upstairs.
7:10: We’re still sitting at the table, with no menus, water, or sign of anyone paying attention to us. The restaurant is busy, but not packed. they have a fair amount of business, but I notice that several tables are near the end of their meal. In other words, there has not been a recent influx of customers.
7:15: A busboy/back-waiter comes and fills our water glasses. He does not give us menus or speak to us at all.
7:20: Finally, our waiter arrives. He introduces himself, looks down at our table and says,” You don’t have menus.” He retrieves a couple, and proceeds to tell us about the specials. He gives us a wine list and tells us he’ll be back in a few minutes. This is a lie.
7:25: We’ve decided what we’d like to order.
7:30: Still no sign of our waiter.
735: We’re chatting, but we’re both distracted, because we’re looking around, trying to see if someone will notice us.
7:40: No one has noticed us.
7:45: We’re kind of getting pissed. We’ve been here the better part of an hour, and haven’t even had our drink order taken yet. We debate what to do. Do we tell someone? Do we leave? We don’t want to be assholes, but at this point, I don’t want to spend money at this place, because I know I’m just going to be pissed off when we get the bill. We decide to give them five more minutes, fully expecting someone to show up any second.
7:50: They don’t. It’s been almost an hour, and no one has shown any interest in serving us. We start thinking of all the better restaurants that are within a block of where we are, and how we’re starving. We decide to leave. We get up, look around, still see no sign of anyone, and head downstairs. I expect someone to stop us, and I have a crazy feeling that we’re going to get in trouble or something. We make our way outside without anyone noticing us.
7:55 We to another restaurant, sit on the patio, listen to live music, and have the most amazing dinner we’ve had in a long time. The night ends successfully.
I felt like a jerk, but it had been almost an hour. I’ve never walked out of a restaurant before, but we just crossed a point where I knew that any money I spent there was going to feel like money lost. Did we make the right move, or should we have found someone to speak to? What would you have done in this situation?
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Sep 07, 2010 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I remember something like this happened to my family when I was a kid (i.e., ten years ago). It was at a Ruby Tuesday’s (go figure). We waited for a good hour, the restaurant was not busy, and the waiter was vacuuming the carpets instead of serving us. My mom, who is generally the mellowest person on earth, had a word with the manager. This resulted in an apology, the quick arrival of our food, and dessert on the house. However, I think you want to be careful about complaining to anyone who looks like they might retaliate by spitting in your food.
You gave it 45 minutes. You weren’t the jerk, they were. You went to a restaurant expecting service. Your role is as customer, their role is as service provider. You’d have upheld your end of the arrangement if they had, but they didn’t and lost your business, possibly forever. This would be enough for me to tweet about it, possibly affecting their business some more.
You should call or email and speak to the manager.
I have done this. I was alone and at Cheesecake Factory. I waited to be taken care of after quite a bit of time and watched as other (fuller) tables tables around me were served. I told them I was leaving and they encouraged me to stay but I was too angry at that point. Don’t remember where I went to but I have never walked into a Cheesecake Factory again and will never do so in my life.
By the looks of his teeth, I’m pretty sure our waiter went on a meth break.
You were more patient than I would of been. After 15 minute without even a menu I would of peaced out and gone elsewhere.