A recent trend

Callie and I have been out and about like everyone else this holiday season. Unfortunately for us, we've noticed a bit of a recent trend at the restaurants we've dined at.

The service has just been terrible across the board. We're not talking bad food or the wait staff being rude. We've had trouble just getting refills or to even get or waiter/waitress to come and do their job.

Take today for instance. We're at a local Big Boy for lunch today. There's maybe 7 tables with people and our waitress has to take care of two tables. Two tables! We get there and she's asking us what we want to drink before our coats are even off and before we've even sat down. No, that to me is very rude. I would like to actually open the menu before ordering a drink. So we order our drinks and then our food a short while later. Then she disappears for somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes. Another waiter brought out our food and then Callie's was messed up. No waitress in sight. Finally Callie has had enough and here comes our waitress wandering over. That pretty much sums up our meal. The waitress would disappear for long periods of time and leave us hanging.

Which leads us to a few weeks earlier. We're at Steak and Shake and it takes at least 15 minutes for our waitress to even bother coming over to our table. This meal was also an ordeal because we had to mention my drink at least 3 times to get them to bring it out. And then our waitress has our food but decides she wants to talk to some other table for 5-10 minutes. So here we are, sitting there, watching our food get cold because the waitress is more interested in goofing off than doing her job.

This rant was born from a fairly long streak of bad service. It started at Genji about 3 weeks ago. We ate our meal and our waiter didn't even ask us about a refill till we were leaving. I went the entire meal and show with no drink. And since then I've had a constant problem with refills.

I'm sure it's a crappy job and I wouldn't want to do it. But I feel there is one thing that should be a really easy part of your job and that's drink refills. That seems like a quick and easy fix and the one thing you as a waiter/waitress can control about your customer's dining experience. I hate the fact that I have to walk into a place and then have to ration the entire meal because I don't know if I'll actually be offered a refill again.

Callie and I will be back with reviews again shortly. This was just a rant that had been breeding for a few days. Happy Holidays!