About 4 years ago, to celebrate an occasion when I was in primary school, we went to a local pizza restaurant. We had been here several times before and we were satisfied with the service and food. But on this particular night, we were shocked with the service that we were provided with.
We had made a reservation prior knowing the place did get busy at times. We all packed in the car, and headed over to the restaurant looking forward to our meal.
When we arrived, the store was packed to the rafters. Every table that we saw was full. We had mentioned our reservation to the person at the front door and we sat down, waiting for our table. We had to wait for about ten
minutes until we got our table. A bit annoying, but we shook off the thought; we wanted tonight to be an enjoyable night.
After a few more minutes, the waiter came and took our orders. We ordered a jug of lemonade, three pizzas for us three kids, a schnitzel for my dad and some pasta for my mum.
Things started out well. We got our jug of lemonade first, which was followed by my parent’s meals. Seeing that my parent’s meals had arrived, I was expecting my big pizza soon.
But after thirty minutes, the time that it took last time we went to the restaurant to get our food, we still didn’t have any pizzas. We did give the staff a bit of grace knowing it was a busy night. We decided to be polite
and wait a bit longer.
Another 20 minutes went past. By this time my parents had already eaten their meals. My siblings and I were still hungry and we were salvaging the only thing that we had to cease our hunger: the jug of lemonade, which was almost empty.
My parents knew something was up, so my mother went up to one of the staff members, a teenage girl, and told her our problem. She said that she would “get it fixed.” Nothing else. By now we were very annoyed.
Another 20 minutes had passed, and my parents were very angry, and my brothers and I were becoming restless and annoyed. It had been an hour and ten minutes and we had still not received our pizzas, whilst everyone else around us did. My parents had almost done a dine and dash, but being the polite and well-mannered people they are they decided not to. My mother then got the attention again of the teenage girl, clearly stating that we had ordered our food over an hour ago and we were about to leave. The girl apologizes, says it will be ready soon and rushes back to the kitchen area.
It had been an hour and a half. We were relying on water to fill our stomachs now, the nine-dollar lemonade jug being drained long ago. The girl reappeared again, but this time with the three pizzas in her hands. We were happy that we finally got them, but were extremely annoyed that it took that long. Being very hungry and tired, we dug into the pizzas. But they just didn’t taste as good as I remembered it. It seemed like the chefs were in such a rush to get them to us that they just piled ingredients onto the pizzas without even thinking about quality.
After almost two hours, we were finished with our food, paid for our meals and requested that our pizzas be boxed up so we could take them home and eat them later. We were escorted out. But when we were walking back to the car, we realised that they never gave us the boxed up pizzas! Furious, we marched back up, told the staff, grabbed them and hastily made our way back to the car.
It has been 4 years now and that whole experience has left me with a bad impression of the restaurant. We usually leave tips, but we were so unimpressed with the quality of the food, the time that we were waiting, and the bad customer service we received, that we left no tip. It would have even been fine if the waiter had come up to us, told us the pizzas were coming late, and asked my parents if they would like their meals served with ours. That would have been a bit more pleasant, if we were told what was going on. If I had to go back to that day, I would have told my parents that I just wanted to go to the fast food place across the street. Looking back now, I believe that doing that would have been more enjoyable than waiting one and a half hours on a pizza.
- Ramsay
Tagged as:
chef,
food & beverage issues,
long wait,
server,
tipping
