Frustrated by Server’s Failure to Communicate

May 9, 2016

in Food & Drink Stories

Me and an old boyfriend went out to eat one night at a chain family style restaurant. I ordered myself chicken fingers with honey dill sauce and Caesar salad. The server never mentioned any issues with my order and proceeded to bring out our drinks. Honey dill sauce is a chicken finger dip made from honey, mayo and dill; this particular restaurant makes it in-house since they have all the ingredients for other items.

After around 20 minutes, our food comes out. The server only now decides to tell me they are out of honey dill sauce. I ask what other options they have and she tells me HP Sauce is the only option. I request a menu to instead order something else, because HP Sauce is disgusting and dry chicken fingers are not appetizing.

Fifteen minutes later she takes my new order, a quesadilla with extra sour cream and salsa; she goes and gets my order in. My boyfriend has long finished his meal and mine is yet to be seen.

Twenty minutes go by and my food gets brought out. I am now informed they also do not have any sour cream or salsa for the quesadilla.

At this point I get really upset. They should have told me well before the food was ready that they were out of something I ordered, rather than simply make me wait until the food has come out before informing me. I’m also upset that at this point my boyfriend has now been finished with his meal for 20 or so minutes, and if I order something else I’m now waiting over an hour to actually eat. No apologies, no offer to accommodate us in any way. I haven’t been back since.

It’s completely fine if you run out of things; it happens. Simply being too lazy to make more of a sauce you’re out of is poor customer service, especially when you have all the ingredients on hand. Not informing the customer that you are out of things that they are ordering is rude.

{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }

flossiesdoll May 11, 2016 at 5:13 pm

HP Sauce is delicious.

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Dylan May 15, 2016 at 8:09 pm

This woman threw a huge fit over not having sauce. Honey dill sauce is an emulsion and requires a very time consuming process to make especially during a dinner service. Most normal people just order different sauce for their chicken tenders (note she's ordering chicken tenders, not exactly an expensive steak dinner, at s chain restaurant). To the point where she orders something else entirely….the restaurant was going to give you free food??? Honestly I would have ignored the hell out of some lady at one of my tables of she acted like that. More like customer from hell.

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Zombie May 16, 2016 at 12:39 pm

The point, it seems to me, is that either the kitchen is slow in informing the wait staff, or the wait staff is slow in informing the customer of items unavailable on the menu. That's a bad experience for the customer.

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Author May 18, 2016 at 9:05 am

Honey dill sauce is made by mixing mayo with dill and honey, not other work or ingredients required. It's a chicken finger dip popular in Manitoba, where it was first created. Many people here only order chicken fingers if the place has honey dill sauce. Had they offered an alternative chicken finger dip such as honey mustard, plum or sweet and sour the lack of honey dill would be at most an annoyance, they offered none of the above and never bothered to mention being out of chicken finger dips until the order was presented at the table. Being out of something is fine, as long as you inform the customer upon their ordering the out of stock item or prior to bringing out their food. No where in my post do I say anything about free food, nor did I request free food. I ordered one thing, they were out of it and didn't tell me until bringing my order out, had they told me to begin with I would never have ordered chicken fingers, I try ordering an alternative item that appealed to me and again they don't bother informing me they are out of parts of my order, no apology.

Not only did they not apologize they suggested I just take the order to go and use stuff from home in place of their lacking ingredients, the point of dining out is to dine out and not eat at home. Had I wanted to eat at home, I would have simply stayed home to begin with.

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Cory Turner February 18, 2017 at 6:11 pm

Don't you think there is a chance that the kitchen didn't tell your server that they didn't have either of those options until the food was ready? They don't need any of those condiments to make the main food in Thomas entrees

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Cory Turner February 18, 2017 at 6:13 pm

Those entrees, so it would be the last item plated. I'm about 95% sure the server had no idea they were out until the food was gone and the kitchen told them. Sometimes, there is literally nothing we can do but run the food and hope for the best.

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Ben May 17, 2016 at 6:33 pm

HP sauce is lovely but only with breakfast surely!

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saffie May 19, 2016 at 11:36 am

This reminds me of an experience we had coming back from the beach two days before Christmas. We stopped at this quaint roadside diner we had never seen before in our travels. They were hosting a family dinner but were nice enough to seat us since we were starving. So the waitress gives us the menu and automatically tells us that three of their big dishes are completely gone because of the party. No problem, we're STARVING. So we order what they have left on the menu and wait. Not five minutes later the waitress comes back and tells us that four of our orders JUST sold out to the party. So we get the menus out again to find something else, and the four of us finally find something different we can eat. She goes back and disappears for ten minutes so we think…SUCCESS. Then we see her coming, face red as a beat, my husband's dish already coming out and informs me the dish I ordered was now gone. I could see her physically brace for the screaming torrent that was sure to come. Instead I started laughing really hard. "Boy, we can't win for losing tonight, can we?" I told her. She laughed and the tension was broken. I ordered a salad, because, hey, apparently lettuce was plentiful and I could be eating in five minutes. The salad was great (my dressing wasn't available that night, but a change is as good as a rest, right?) and at the end of the night the manager insisted he take one of our adult orders off our bill as compensation. We agreed, paid the bill and left the cost of the adult menu item on top of our server's twenty percent, writing "Merry Christmas! Hang in there!" under the signature. As we got in the car she actually came outside and yelled, "Thank you! Merry Christmas too!" Heck, if the worst thing that happens to you is missing your favorite sauce, in my book you're doing pretty good. We were missing half the restaurant! LOL.

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Dinner Games May 19, 2016 at 8:09 pm

It can get a bit annoying or you might feel a bit strange because your other half are already finished eating but you are still to get your dinner. It might make you rush your dinner which won't be too good.

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Serverperson June 6, 2016 at 10:55 pm

As a server myself, I can't imagine doing this to someone. If she didn't know they were out of those items because the cooks didn't tell her, then she should have sent a manager to the table to inform the customer of the problem and talk with the table about how to fix it. If it were up to me I'd make sure she didn't have to pay for her meal.

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