annoyedA tiny bit of backstory here - my husband had been working long hours all week and was exhausted, and I had worked a normal shift (8 hours) but I hadn't gotten to take a lunch, so I was really hungry. We'd gone up to Canton, Ohio to do some shopping, and we decided we'd get dinner too.
All the restaurants we normally eat at had long wait times, and I have a back injury that prevents me from standing or walking for more than a few minutes at a time. So we noticed that the IHOP didn't seem to be too busy. We've eaten there before and the food and service were both pretty good, so we decided we'd go there.
We went in around 6PM or so, maybe 6:30 at the latest. As we're walking in I see this pretty waitress who was smiling until she saw us, and then she SCOWLED. I'm thinking, great, watch that be our waitress.
It turned out that she was, and she maybe smiled once the whole time she was taking care of us.
My husband ordered a stuffed French Toast combo and I ordered a "NEW!!!!!" crab and shrimp omelet. We also got a basket of mozzarella straws (i.e. long, thin cheesesticks) and two glasses of iced tea. I tend to drink a LOT of tea, so I went through my glass fairly fast. The spouse took a little while to go through his. Then we sat there for about 10-15 minutes before she brought the appetizer, and I had to actually say to her "Could we have some refills please?" (Usually, most good waitstaff I've dealt with won't wait for you to ask, they will ask YOU first.) She brought them, then shortly thereafter she brought out our dinners.
Hubby's was fine.
Mine was stone cold. The bacon and toast were warm but the omelet was so cold the inside sauce was thick.
I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt because sometimes with seafood it's MEANT to be served cold (i.e. shrimp cocktail) but when she came back through I just asked her if it was supposed to be cold. She says it's not and apologizes, so since I'm determined NOT to end up in
customers_suck, I tell her if they'd heat it up it would be fine. She insists that they need to make me a new one.Okay, fine.
A couple minutes later she comes back out with a new one. The egg part is hot. The sauce is still cold. So she commandeers her manager and says "She says it's still cold." So he offers to make me a new one. At that point I should've just told them to go ahead and take it off, but I let him attempt to make it. By the time he got it out to me I'd eaten all my toast and bacon and was nearly full. But this time it was perfect, so I ate what I could of it then took the rest home.
He refilled my drink one last time, but we hardly saw the waitress after that, and we had to flag someone else down to get us a box. I left a less-than-stellar tip and we left.
I'm not sure if we'll ever go back or if we'll give it one last chance since we've had good service there before. But it was the 'perfect' end to an already shitty week.
