a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely. (winterbymorning) wrote in bad_service,
a sparkling girleen, painted and lovely.
winterbymorning
bad_service

Today was the last official day of my spring break study week and my boyfriend and I decided we'd have a nice day on the town to make up for a week of mind-numbing homework and readings. But for some reason we just kept getting mediocre service everywhere. None of these are horrible, "OH MY GOD, CALL CORPORATE!" stories, but they bugged me...

The waitress at the diner where we had breakfast spilled coffee on his leg. Fortunately it was cold (she'd picked up his cup to reheat it) and alright, it was an accident, but still.

We went to MAC because I wanted to check out their Hello Kitty line. There was one salesgirl talking with a customer and another doing a makeover on a girl who couldn't have been older than six. The makeover chair was right next to the Hello Kitty display stand, but all my attempts at making eye contact were evaded. I decided it wouldn't kill me to wait and that I could actually use that time to decide what I wanted to get instead of being pressured by staff.

And I waited... and waited... and waited. It wasn't more than five minutes, but it was still annoying. I'm not the most confrontational person, so I kept dropping hints to my boyfriend, like, "Oh, hey, I would sure love to BUY THIS EYELINER and maybe BUY THIS LIPGLOSS TOO," but they didn't work. The makeover-giving girl kept saying things like, "Okay! Now you're done... wait, I'll add a bit of concealer to get rid of your under-eye circles!" (What under-eye circles? SHE'S SIX!) Meanwhile the other girl had come up to the till, and when she was done ringing up her customer, I caught her eye and said, "Excuse me, can you..." and she walked off while I was talking, without acknowledging me. >_O So we finally left.

Then we went to a nearby restaurant for lunch. We weren't sure how hungry we were because we'd had big breakfasts, so we started by ordering tea and tiny little sandwiches. We were still hungry. It took ages to flag our waiter down. Granted, he was only one of two waiters in the place... but we were one of only two tables! And he kept checking on the other one and ignoring us. When I said we wanted to get some lunch and asked for a menu, he looked really confused. He asked the other waiter to bring us one. Other waiter said, "Alright... who asked for a menu?" despite the fact that (1) as I said, there were only two couples in the restaurant, including us (2) the other couple already had food on the table.

We decided what we wanted to order and flagged Other Waiter down.

Me : We've made up our minds!
Waiter : (in a really confused, incredulous tone) You want to order food?
Me : (jokingly) That would be why we asked for a menu!
Waiter : I thought you just wanted to look at it.
Me : ...
Boyfriend : What's the soup of the day?
Waiter : It's mussels! It's very good.
Boyfriend : I'll have that!

Waiter : Here is your lentil soup.
Boyfriend : Thanks.
Me : Didn't you order mussel soup?
Boyfriend : That's alright. I like lentils.
Me : Oh-kay.

I left it at that, since he didn't seem to mind. It was especially the "You want to order food?!" bit that got me. A friend suggested that maybe the place closed between the lunch and supper services, but I checked and they don't. Is it a regular practice for people to walk in, sit down, and ask for the menu just to look at it?
Tags: *restaurant, ^wtf
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  • Silly Sprint people

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