I have worked on-and-off in the restaurant industry for years.  In that time I’ve come to understand that a certain level of service is expected both in the kitchen and in the front of the house.  Granted, the level of service I expect depends entirely on the establishment in which you happen to be dining, but there are certain standards that any waitperson should keep if they intend to make a tip at the end of the meal.

This post is about one hapless person whom, in the opinion of this particular food lover, should be banned from hospitality services for the rest of his (or at least my) natural life.  For the first time in my life, I complained about the service I received, not so that a small issue could be corrected, but in hopes of having the individual removed from service.

To put it bluntly, had this incident occurred in any establishment I have ever had the privilege of working in, he would have been sacked on the spot.  Had it been my own restaurant (which I am still planning to open someday), he would have been sacked and docked pay for at least three meals.

Yep, it was that bad.

Let me first set the stage for this calamity and make it clear what I expect from an establishment of the type we were seated in:

(Note: names have been changed to protect me from lawsuits the innocent.)

We headed for breakfast on a bright Sunday morning with the intention on dining at our local Lenny’s, but one look at their parking lot was enough to tell us that we should probably head for another restaurant our son would enjoy. Please take into consideration that our local area does not offer a plethora of choices for breakfast on a Sunday morning.  This is the Bible belt.  Most Mom and Pop establishments don’t open until brunch, so we go where the kiddo is comfortable.

With one Mega-Franchise too overloaded to be anything like enjoyable, we found ourselves heading to one of the area’s International House of Somewhat Edible Pan Pastries. While not the most glamorous fare, they have a menu that satisfies both a child’s palate and they have options that are less than inedible for his parents as well.  The atmosphere is usually comfortable, and the coffee never stops flowing.  For me, that’s good enough.  For the kiddo, it’s heaven with syrup, which makes it our number two choice.

In an establishment like this I have pretty simple expectations for wait service.  I expect for us to be greeted and seated as promptly as possible. I expect a clean table and utensils.  I expect to have my drink order filled immediately and our order taken in a reasonable amount of time.

During the meal I expect the staff to show back up at the table from time-to-time just to assure that drinks are still full and that the meal is satisfactory. At the end of the meal I expect to be handed my bill with a smile (or at least a chipper attitude), at which time I’ll decide what tip to leave.  I pay for the meal, compliment the cashier or manager and go about my merry way.

I’m not expecting top-notch service.  I expect diner level service. I almost always go to places like this often enough to have a regular waitperson.  I know his or her name and they know ours.  We chat, it’s fun, the kid likes it and it’s usually a good time.  This day none of these things happened.

Our experience went like this:

On entering, we were greeted with a smile and seated immediately.  The hostess thought ahead and seated us at a table that would easily accommodate a high chair, which she collected on the way to the table. Up to this point our day was better than usual.  I was impressed with the hostess and the greeter.  They thought ahead and were attentive to our needs.  They thought of our son.  They were personable.  I wanted to hire both of them.

The rest of the morning went quickly downhill…

Our server, whom I will call “Rufus”, arrived at the table promptly to take our drink order. He seemed rushed, but so far everything was going well.  We gave him our order and he scooted off to get our drinks.

Upon returning to the table he asked if we were ready to order.  My wife was ready, we had our son’s meal chosen and I was still deciding between two new menu items.  He asked if we needed more time and I said “No”, I would decide while my wife ordered her meal and the kidlings.  Unfortunately, Rufus was not having any of this.  He decided that I needed more time and left the table to tend to his other guests.

When Rufus returned to our table, he took my wife’s order and she gave my son’s (I always let her order first… It’s polite.) I began to give my order, which does differ from the menu offering, but almost had to chase him down to finish it.  Once he’d asked how I wanted my eggs he was already moving again.  He seemed inconvenienced to find that I did not want pancakes, but sourdough toast.  He was even more confused by the fact that I wanted an additional side order of sausage. (Kiddo likes it, and if he doesn’t want it that day, more for me!)

By this point I was getting irritated, but while waiting for our meal I had forgotten about him,  playing with a child tends to do that to me.  Lil’B. was having a good morning, so we spent the wait signing, clapping and listening to our son jabber about nothing in baby speak, with a  few random tickles thrown in for good measure.  Our moods were high and the morning was wonderful…

For a minute.

All the good feelings and happiness dissolved with Rufus’ return.  In his defense, he didn’t screw up my son’s meal.  As for the rest of the morning, well…

My son’s meal was delivered without incident and my wife’s meal was placed on the table.  In his haste to get everything set, Rufus managed to drop half of my side order of sausage all over the table.  It took Rufus a moment to decide that he should not just put the stray meat products back on the plate.  He apologized and stated that he would bring out a fresh sausage.  My wife reminded him that she had ordered PB&J to go along with her pancakes, which he promised to deliver on his return, and then he was gone again.

While we waited for the kitchen staff to grind, season and stuff a single link sausage, my wife noticed another issue.  She had ordered eggs over easy for her breakfast but our server had apparently not bothered to look at the orders, as what was on her plate was eggs over hard.

After about 10 minutes, Rufus returned with my solitary little sausage.  Nowhere in sight was my wife’s peanut butter or jelly.  We informed Rufus of the error made with the eggs and reminded him again that my wife had requested PB&J to go with her pancakes.  Once again Rufus apologized and rushed off without a glance back at our table.

Once again we waited…  And Waited… Finally, we flagged down another server to get the rare and elusive peanut butter and jelly packets for my wife’s meal.  It took this fine young lady less than 45 seconds to walk to the wait station and retrieve said condiments, a fresh drink for my wife and a refill for my carafe of coffee.

Rufus finally returned after about 15 minutes with a plate of ice-cold eggs.  At this point we had had enough so we asked for our check, but he refused to give THAT to us until he’d comped our drinks. He never considered comping the meal my wife never got to eat all of.

After another 10-minute wait, we finally got our check and left.  When I asked to speak to the manager, I was informed that there was no manager on the floor and that “Rufus” had was just back from a break, so he was just a bit “rusty”.

RUSTY!

In the time we were there, I heard this person apologizing to every table he served.  There was not a single order that came from his hands correctly, and not a single ticket that left the restaurant at full price.  Worse than that, he was comping the most profitable item any restaurant serves, the beverages!

This utter lack of competence is something that should never be tolerated.  If he was “rusty” enough for the other servers to have noticed it, there should have been someone checking his orders, or he should have been put back on training for a day or two so that he did not singlehandedly drive business out of the restaurant.

Worse in my opinion is the fact that no other person on staff stepped in to correct this idiocy.  It would not have taken much to make sure that these errors never occurred.  Any one of them I would have taken as human error.  The combination is nothing short of catastrophic failure and in the end the restaurant and the customer are the ones that suffer.  The restaurant because my wife and I will never step foot in that establishment again , and the customer who ended up going home to make his wife something else to eat because nothing on her plate was the way she ordered it.

So for all you would-be service professionals out there remember this:

It’s not about whether you are having a bad day, your customer should never know if you are having a bad day or not. It’s not about how well you did yesterday, no one you are serving today has a clue if yesterday went perfectly well or not, you are only as good as your last interaction with a customer. It’s NOT ABOUT YOU, it’s all about the people you are serving.

Needless to say, Rufus did not recieve a tip. What he earned for his efforts is my eternal disdain for a job poorly done in an industry that never tolerates anything less than absolute perfection.

Well done “Rufus”!  You are one of the only people in the world I have ever been disappointed enough by to make him or her the entire focus of a Food Snob rant.  That takes some doing.

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Some things just aren’t meant to be. Apparently one of those things was the birthday dinner I’d been planning for my wife for an entire week. It was nothing over the top fancy, just a simple dinner of seared scallops over wilted romaine with garlicky butter and olive oil fettuccini.  All-in-all, a dinner that should have taken less than 20 minutes to make from start to finish if everything had gone right.

Of course, it didn’t go right.  It didn’t go right at all.

First, for some reason my stove doesn’t like to boil the wter in my pasta pot.  I blame it on both the pot itself for having crappy heat conducting properties and on the burners, which have no center vents, just a ring of outer gas jets that force all of the heat towards the outside of the pot and up the sides.  at times it can take nearly an hour to get a good boil going.  Add the pasta and the water will immediately drop below a boil for a good 5 minutes.

This in itself would not have deterred me.  I’d bought fresh fettuccini, so a qhick 2 minute dip in the water would have rendered it perfect regardless of a rolling boil.  (See, I plan ahead sometimes!)  so once the water was getting good ad ready, I pulled the scallops out of the freezer and plopped a sufficient number into a collander for a quick thaw under cold running water…

Only to find that they were completely freezer burned!

I’ll admit that this put a hitch in my semi-well thought out plans.  I’d run the menu in my head enough times that I should have been able to slam out this dinner with Gordon Ramsay-esque precision.  But hey, I’m the seat of my pants guy.  I’m adaptable. I’d just substitute the scallops and romaine for sauteed shrimp with a bit of thyme and a hint of lemon, no problem! I dashed to the freezer and grabbed for the jumbo shrimp, only to find that instead of a lovely milky flesh color, they too wore the mottled and splotchy signs of freezer burn as well.

OK, one pack I can see. maybe I punctured the package unwittingly or had stored it for too long.  Two damaged seafood packages and now it’s the commisary’s fault!  Unfortunately, those were the end of my options.  Every other protien I had available was inthe deep freezer outside so ther was really no other choice.  I’d already waited to start dinner because my wife had been talking to her best friend for two hours. (I’m not complaining, they only talk every few months.), there was nothing I could grab and make in a hurry and we’d both already toasted her <censored>’th year on this earth several times, so driving was out of the question.

So for my wife’s birthday dinner, we oredered Asian. She had the cashew chicken, I had the broccoli beef, and they managed not to screw up the fried rice this time.  That in itself is a kind of miracle.

However, I don’t take this type of insanity well.  I’ve had nights where something didn’t work, but I am not accustomed to finding that my product has gone bad, especially when I have not had them for long at all. (The scallops were bought just about a week ago, the shrimp was unopened.)  I’ll be back at the commisary later today for more scallops and whatever greens I can find that look perfect sot hat I don’t have to write off the pasta as well.  This dish will be made tonight, I swear it on all that is culinary.  I will not be defeated by a bi-valve and a piece of bad packaging!

Have any of you sufered through a comedy of errors like this?  What did you do at the end of the day?  I’d love to hear about it.

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OK, the morning started out with a plan.  I was going to start out making candied cranberries as a topping for a tartlet I’ll be making tomorrow.  This was to be the “pop” of color and flavor on top.  Well, they popped, all right!  I dropped my perfectly and carefully prepared cranberries into my oh-so-gently simmering simple syrup, as per the directions and each and every one of them split wide open within five seconds.

The end result? See for yourself…

Great looking jelly.  Not so much a bunch of pretty cranberries that would be worthy of topping a white chocolate tartlet.

Ah well, I suppose I’ll have to find a different garnish, but i was looking forward to candied cranberries!  Maybe if I plump up some Craisins in wine or rum, that would be good?

Any suggestions?

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This was initially slated to be one of 12 cookie recipes for the Holidays. Instead it has become December’s first Kitchen Disaster. I should have known from the recipe that these cookies would never work as promised from the recipe at Food Network. I would have been right to follow my instincts. Why I decided to pick a recipe from Giada DeLaurentis is beyond me. I should have known that an Italian cook wasn’t going to have great success with a native American fruit like blueberries.

Instead of the beautiful blue flecked cookies shown there, we ended up with these mutant sons of the monster from the Blob. Not only were they unappetizing to look at, but these cookies wouldn’t have been all that great even if I had followed my first instincts and used the berries while still frozen. (Which would have made them prettier.)

So Giada, you let me down. I’ll remember that the next time I see a recipe on your show that makes me go “Ooooooh!”

I’ve included the recipe just in case a more talented cookie maker can find a way to repair this mess. As always, my thoughts are right near the end. Ciao.

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