This isn’t really a dinner from hell but a good lesson learned. My wife and I were invited to go to an upscale steak house with a neighborhood couple (Bill and Sarah) and Sarah’s parents. Bill works in sales and does extensive traveling. While traveling, he is on an expense account and typically not too [...]
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Servers have a lot of bad days. With so little control over who and what comes our way, and an income 90% dependent on the largess of our clientele, days can be rollercoasters of emotion. But there are bad days, and then there are days that are slow-motion train wrecks, threatening to derail our sanity, [...]
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If you look up the word c*nt in a dictionary, there’s a better than average chance you’ll find a picture of a restaurant Regional Manager. Regardless of gender.
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This happened last night and it was so weird, I’m still going over it in my mind. My husband and I took our 25-year-old niece out to dinner at a new restaurant in town. We had a reservation and were seated promptly. Very lovely atmosphere. Upscale. After 10 minutes our waitress showed up and took [...]
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I was working as a waitress at a hotel restaurant. It was my first job so I didn’t have much experience and the restaurant was always woefully understaffed. People would just call in 5 minutes before their shift started and cancel or simply not turn up – and for some reason the managers never fired [...]
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The last job I held waiting tables was at a neighborhood restaurant chain that catered to families and tried to liven up their bar area at night for the adult crowd. I tended bar at least one night a week and waited tables or expedited the rest of the time. One day, my friend “Lacy” [...]
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I had my 30th birthday in November 2000 and arranged to go out for a meal with friends and colleagues. We booked an Italian restaurant I had been to before and liked. There were 21 of us. The starters were fine, the main courses were fine. Service was very slow, but we were a big [...]
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In October 2010, I drove 300 miles to spend the weekend with my first love from high school, 26 years later (we had recently reunited after not seeing each other for over 20 years). I met him at the hotel and we left for dinner in his car. We went to a fairly nice chain [...]
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Let me set the scenario… I work at a world-renowned health spa. I’ve been in the food and beverage industry for 20 years. I’ve opened many a bottle of wine and Champagne throughout my career. Since it’s a health spa I work at, not as many people order alcohol as in other restaurants, so it’s [...]
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I had my reservations about going to this hamburger restaurant in the first place, given the number of less than stellar reviews on both Yelp and FourSquare. As a social marketer I do my research on new places and generally think the crowd gets it right. But I figured, “What the heck, it’s in the [...]
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It was my first Paris layover and since I don’t speak a lick of French I decided to stick with my crew (I’m a flight attendant). Usually I like to venture out on my own in a new city, but I knew dinner was going to be a massive problem if left to my own [...]
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A few years ago my wife and I went to a comedy club in Toronto, ON for an evening that included a preshow dinner. We showed up a few minutes early and were promptly seated by the manager of the club. We knew quite early in the evening we were in for a crappy night. [...]
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