We were off work and wanted to go to a little specialty grocery store to pick up a few things. Problem? It's across town and through rush hour traffice. Solution? Eat dinner nearby and avoid the mess and fill our tummies. So we walk into a local burrito place. It's the kind of place where you can walk up to the counter, have them make you a burrito and pay and go -OR- sit down, get menus and bar drinks. The whole first floor is totally empty. We pick a great table. And wait. I checked my timepiece when we sat down because we plugged a meter and I had to keep an eye on the time to avoid a ticket. So no exaggerations here.
After five minutes we begin to wonder if they have table service on the first floor (we'd only ever been upstairs in the bar area before). So my lovely man walks up to the counter to ask...I mean there's no sense sitting there looking dumb if nobody is ever going to stop by. The folks behind the counter gesture to a corner with a woman and say "she'll be right over." Now this woman is furiously digging through her purse. At first I think the problem is that she can't find her card for the POS (a very resonable reason to delay getting to a table: if she can't enter our order into the system, there isn't much sense coming to take it), but then I see it hanging from her belt. She keeps digging and digging and we keep waiting. Keep in mind, the only people that have acknowledged our existance are the people behind the counter. No hi, no water, no menus. Also keep in mind that we are the only people there, in full view. There is no way that we could have been missed.
A full ten minutes after we sat down and she finally finds what she's looking for. And she walks away out of our sight. At that point we decide we're too hungry to deal with this and decide to walk down the street to a small Thai place. As we walk by, we pass the patio and we see that she disappeared to the outside staging area. And what was more important than saying hi and giving us waters and menus and service? I kid you not, she was standing outside painting her nails.
Sadly a letter to the establishment regarding the incident was also completely unacknowledged.