My wife and I pulled into an international burger restaurant on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands one night for dinner. We placed our orders at the speaker, and then pulled up to the window after waiting a while for the cars ahead of us to pick up their orders. We were asked by the young lady what we ordered. Thinking that she should know what we ordered, I recited our meal selections to her. “Let me see your receipt,” she firmly requested. After looking at the receipt, she emphatically said, “You’ll have to turn your car off.”
WTF?? “Turn off my car?,” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Save some gas.”
“What about our orders?”
“They’re not ready. We want to make your food fresh.”
“How long will it take?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?!”
“Yes. Ten minutes.”
“Should we pull our car forward to let the cars behind us get their orders?”
“No. Turn off your car.”
“What about the people behind us?”
“They will have to wait,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Exasperated, we sat in our car and waited. Amazingly no one in the growing line of cars behind us blasted their horn as surely would have happened in the states. After about ten minutes our meals were handed to us. Never mind that they weren’t exactly what we ordered. We were in a hurry to catch some Fourth of July fireworks over the bay. Fortunately for us they were late too.
This is for a great number of Brits out there, travelling the world, dining out, and just being so mean. I am 100% sure that they are not as unaware as they pretend to be about tipping practices in the countries they travel to. I am of course a waitress who has been the receiver of such meanness for the past 12 years. I live and work in L.A., and even people who regularly come to the restaurant I work for, friends of the owner, most of the time getting free stuff, will still at the end put down max 15% of the check. If they had a free bottle of wine, which I opened and served for them, or I brought free desserts, or the owner picks up the whole check for them, they do not feel compelled to make sure I am taken care of. What’s up with that Jerry would say!
Finally what brought me to write this was last night’s five English and one American wife. One couple who are regular patrons comes in with two other couples, slow night of course (is Jewish New Year Holiday). They sit at one of my patio tables, they order, everything is fine, they order three bottles of the expensive Brunello Di Montalcino wine, food is fine, they are happy, except for having to fan themselves with menus since diners next to them are smoking. I tell them that since the other diners (who are nice tippers) are finished with their food, I will drop off the check in the hope they will leave and by so doing please them. I do and after not too long they leave.
After a while the person at the table who had ordered the wine asks for the check and when I pick it up, thanking them, I noticed that on $664…. he has left $44…which is barely 15% on the food. I was really distressed, how rude is that, and on a slow night, and even if he is fresh from British Airways, why didn’t our regular customer or his American wife make sure I was not stiffed like that? What’s up with these people? Plus I did open the wine, brought our best glasses out and poured it! I think that if you can afford to buy $360.00 + tax worth of wine you should be able to tip on it.
Can you imagine a restaurant boasting that it serves food that is harmful, and whose owner advises diners not to eat at his restaurant every day or “it’ll kill you?” That’s the unique marketing angle of Heart Attack Grill located in Tempe, Arizona. The menu includes the massive Quadruple Bypass Burger (2 pounds of beef, 12 slices of bacon, 4 triple-thick slices of cheese, a whole tomato and half an onion), high caffeine cola, beer, Flatliner Fries, and unfiltered cigarettes. Food is cooked in 100% lard. Of course, the restaurant’s registered trademark is, “Food Worth Dying For.”
Diners (called “patients”) who finish a Triple or Quadruple Bypass Burger are escorted to their cars afterwards in wheelchairs pushed by scantily-clad waitresses wearing naughty nurse uniforms. Ironically the restaurant’s founder, Jon Basso, used to operate a chain of personal fitness centers. Basso, who goes by the name of “Dr. Jon,” wears a doctor’s coat along with a stethoscope draped around his neck. He calls his food “nutritional pornography.”
Not surprisingly, Heart Attack Grill has had its share of controversies, but not as much as would be expected from the food police. Rather, most of it arose from the Center For Nursing Advocacy which objected to the personification of nurses as “brainless sluts,” and expressed concerns about stereotypes arising from nursing being “the most sexually fantasized-about profession.” The restaurant also received notice from the State of Arizona that it was violating a statute regarding usage of the title “nurse.” Needless to say, the complaints have generated a lot of publicity for the restaurant whose website states that it’s never spent “a single advertising penny.” Below is a video from NBC’s Dateline program about Heart Attack Grill. Many more videos about the restaurant are posted on YouTube.
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