Bad Service

Not sure if this has ever been posted, but I do have a few pointers for people before they complain about some aspects of restaurants.

I have worked in restaurants and have even done health inspections.

If there were two things that I want people to realize it would be:

A) Using gloves does not protect your food from germs any more than using bare hands. Gloves accumulate just as many germs as hands. Cleaning hands is equivalet to changing gloves. Do the research please

and

B) Many, and almost all fancy restaurants have food runners. Realize that when someone else brings your food, he or she is probably being paid to just run food for the night. Please take this as the company's loyalty to providing you with the fastest service possible.



Finally, if these two things have already been mentioned, please forgive me.

Thanks

for those of you in canada, if you don't know what bank to go with, avoid scotiabank.

i have had an account there for over 20 years, and i am constantly being treated as if i am a stranger who is not to be trusted. every time i deposit cheques, they are held- despite the fact that i am always told "no, your cheques won't be held." i have to call the bank and have the hold removed every single time. same thing if i deposit more than $100 in an atm. they hold it for like a week. anyways, that's not bad service, per se; just bad banking. but last week, i experienced something that brought my opinion of their services to an all-time low.


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Saturday my Husband and I walk over to the local CVS to have three disposable cameras developed. These are photos of our nineteen year old cat a few days before we had him put to sleep. They are very important to us.

The boy (not out of his teens yet) who took the film asked us if it was inhouse or send out. I explained that I wanted whatever would give me a photo CD as well as prints. He said we could get that with in house.

Went back Sunday and picked up the prints and the CDS. Prints okay. I'm not a world class photographer. It wasn't a great camera. Lighting was iffy... no complaints there.

Loaded CDS into the disk drive of the computer. No images on any of them. Tried the computer, the lap top, the other computer. NOTHING.

Can't load a single photo of Ashford onto the computer because the disks don't work.

SIGH.

We're going back to CVS tonight and gently complain... all we want are the photos of our dead cat on CD format so I can post them and make icons and share... and save forever and ever.

Hope it works out.

*Edited* Someone commented on why I mentioned that the guy wasn't out of his teens. I made the aside so that you knew I was not being delibretly insulting by calling him a "boy". He was a boy, it was a description. He was polite and nice and I have nothing against teenagers. Apparently the comment was deleted. I don't know why...

*edited 5/9/2006 went back to CVS last night, they're going to redo the CDs and refunded me the original charge. (wasn't expecting that, extra niceness) should be done today. Cross fingers.

i'm not sure if this is bad, or just annoying...

we have a whole bunch of stuff coming piecemeal from dell via DHL.

the driver keeps trying to deliver it next door. our street number is 63, their street number is 83.

we don't have mailbox numbers, but our street number is CLEARLY indicated on the curb and on our house. we aren't the only ones in the neighborhood that don't have numbers on our mailbox, and i'm pretty sure it's not required (we would have received a nastygram from the postmaster if the numbers were required on our mailbox).

other than putting numbers on our mailbox post (which i will probably do now), is there anything else we can do about it? our neighbors are cool--they will bring us stuff that ends up at their house... but i don't want them to accidentally deliver my new laptop to the neighbors.

thanks!

This entry probably should wait until tomorrow after most of my exams are done, but due to discussions in this post (link), I thought maybe we should have a master list of counties/states/provinces/cities/etc. that have restaurant health inspection reports online. Since this is a bad service community, and we'd all love to avoid bad service, it makes sense to have one here.

Generally, I find that many restaurants with poor sanitary conditions have crappy food/service. If a restaurant has a near-perfect or almost perfect record, they usually have wonderful food and service. In some cases, you can even tell when restaurant management has changed hands by a sudden drop/increase in health code violations. Where I live when I'm not in college, I can tell which of two towns/cities restaurants are in just by the number of violations that they have (less violations = harder health inspectors).

Of course, a list isn't all that useful without some explanations of what critical and noncritical violations mean. As far as I know, critical violations are the ones that pose the most hazard of causing foodborne illnesses, while the more minor violations have little or no chance of directly causing illness.

I suppose some people could abuse this list and will only go to restaurants with no violations at all, but if you're that paranoid, you probably shouldn't be going to restaurants anyways.

One of the sites I already knew, but the rest I found whilst looking other info.

List

USA
USA: All of Virginia
USA: Fayette County, Illinois
USA: City of Fort Worth, Texas
Nashville, Tennessee Thanks to mildlydisturbed!
And just a big arse list of USA websites. Unfortunately some sites might have the reports more hidden than others. Some sites might not even be accessible. I can look more into it later.
Maricopa County, Arizona Thanks to mauvaise!

British Columbia
British Columbia: Northern Health Authority
British Columbia: Coast Garibaldi Area, Vancouver
British Columbia: Vancouver Island Health Authority

Canada
Inspection Agencies for every Province and Territory except Nunavut Thanks to blondebeaker!

Feel free to add to the list!

I am so annoyed at the moment. I have been home all day ill. I've just gone downstairs from my flat to check my mail box for post and find a "we tried to deliver your parcel but you were out so we've taken it back to the depot" message.

I have been in all day. My entry buzzer is working fine. The postman never even TRIED to deliver the parcel!!!!

Also, the complex I live in has a security lodge where parcels can be left. It's not there either. I shop on e-bay and amazon a lot and collect parcels left there about once a week. This includes parcels that require a signature So:

1. They've lied about me not being in.

2. They've ignored normal procedure about what to do with the parcel.

I hate them so much. I don't need this on top of spending four days constantly throwing up to the point where I've lost 5 pounds in less than a week.

Okay.. does this sound right to you guys?

On April 26th or 27th, I tried to use my AAA credit card to get gas.. because I get small cash back refunds when I use it for gas. It didn't approve.. so I used my other card and went on my way. When I got home and checked my account, it was obvious I had NO funds on the card because my payment I sent out had not cleared yet. On the 28th, it cleared and I assumed everything was okay. According to my online statement, I have $350 available.

Cut to a week later, I am putting gas in my car, and the same thing happens. I insert the card, put in my zip code, and it says "unable to authorize." I was a little put off by this, and used my other card again. I had forgotten to call them until today when I tried a THIRD time, and again, unable to authorize.

I called the 24hr customer support for my card, which gave me a run down of my balance and then gave me options of checking another card, something about a pin number, and ending the call. Um... I want to talk to someone? So I called back and hit 0, and low and behold some hidden menu shows up and I can choose to talk to a real person. (why this wasn't an option the first time around is a whole 'nother rant)

Apparently, some chains of gas stations have a real problem with authorizing the use of a cash-back credit card many times in a row.. or that is what she told me is probably the issue. She also issued me a new card, in case it is the magnet strip. I used the card later today, and yep, it works otherwise.

So I am being told that my card, which the whole reason I got was for the cash back on gas, won't work at the same gas station so many times in a row. Does this sound right? I think I might need to call Chevron next to see what is going on.