Friday, May 9, 2014

Good Ol Customer Service pt 2

At a small family run Asian restaurant, I once had these two old ladies come in... the restaurant wasn't too busy so there were many choices of seating available. It honestly took them way too long to decide where to sit, they decided on a table meant for six.. not that it mattered, since like i said, it wasn't busy but I found it a bit odd.
There was a special at the restaurant for spring rolls, one spring roll for one dollar. They offered two types, a veggie one and a meat one.  Veggie spring rolls are offered with plum sauce while meat ones are offered with a fish sauce..
They each ordered one veggie spring roll (one while ordering said egg roll instead, which I had to ask to clarify since her friend ordered the veggie spring roll and we were all discussing what was in the veggie spring roll)... first let me say, if you've been to a chinese restaurant, you would know sharing dishes is pretty normal. So we normally put any spring rolls ordered on to one single plate.
I brought their food out, few minutes later they complained about the sauce exact words saying "It's bland, watery, doesn't taste like anything" I noticed I accidentally brought out fish sauce instead of the plum sauce that goes with the veggie spring rolls. Fish sauce, bland? Bland my ass, woman. I owned up, apologized stating that it's fish sauce and i brought the wrong sauce to go with your spring rolls. I go grab the plum sauce and bring it to them, again apologizing (I thought I sounded sincere, since I was ... but who knows, maybe they thought I wasn't).
Few minutes later, one complained that their teriyaki dish lacked any teriyaki sauce.. a few people ordered the same dishes at different tables and none of them had complained of the lack of sauce. I go grab her some extra sauce from the kitchen, bring it out to them. At that point, I found them to be continuously rude and honestly thought I could not be serve them without showing some sort of attitude or pretend to even smile. So this other server jumped in at the end... While she was clearing their table and asking if they were ready for their bill (I was standing a few feet away at the counter doing something, so I did overhear word by word their conversation) one lady said "This whole meal was very gross, and the spring rolls... why did you put it on the same plate? Are you guys broke?"
She literally said the words, "are you guys broke"
Sorry lady, sorry that I put two spring rolls on the same plate, sorry that I didn't want to waste a plate, sorry that you had to deal with the nuisance of your deep fried spring roll touching another spring roll. The horror.
My friend was so caught off guard that there was a moment of silence and then the lady continued "And why didn't I get another plum sauce!? We'll never come back here again"
Finally my friend responded, "Yeah! We always put the spring rolls together on a plate... I'll go grab your bill" and just walked away.. She did give them a fake smile... how she managed to do it - I have no idea.
The thing is,  I checked on their table a couple of times, refilling their water and such. After my wrong sauce mishap, I did go back and ask how they were doing... and they both said they were doing fine!
While I asked that, you could have told me you wanted an extra dipping sauce to drown your one spring roll in...  Or when the one lady asked for more teriyaki sauce, you could have mentioned something about some extra plum sauce...
I just do not understand.... and the fact that they had the audacity to ask if the restaurant is broke because we put TWO SINGLE SPRING ROLLS on ONE PLATE is ridiculous.



Another time, I was working at a big restaurant in a hotel, fairly spacey and by that I mean that some tables are really far from the bar/kitchen. Big parties are usually seated far since that is where the bigger tables are.
I had this one table of 14, most of them were really nice... the dinner was a form of engagement party for the intermediate family. What I noticed is that the daughter that was engaged and her sisters were all super high maintenance. The daughter that was engaged always had snide comments, not about me or the restaurant but just everything in general that they were talking about. I don't mean to eaves drop, but when I'm walking around filling water or handing out things I can't help but overhear things.
Anyways, the problem I had was with one of the sisters, she had to be around 16 (Side note: she was wearing this weird pink fluffy coat that I would not mind burning) and had honestly no respect for me. I do not know if she had no respect for servers in general or if it was just me personally... Maybe I bumped into her on the street and didn't apologize or maybe I looked at her the wrong way on the street, who knows!
Throughout the night she would order me around, no "can you.. take these sugar packets that you can't reach away", no "Please.. take this half finished can of Dr.Pepper out of my sight" no "thank you". For the used sugar packets, they were spread out and hard for me to reach without pushing my body in someones face, so she just grabbed them and threw them at me. Well not at my body, but I was clearing a plate out of the way and she just threw them over to me but them being empty it landed pretty short from the plate I just grabbed... so wait I guess she did throw them at me. But anyways through the night it was just these little things, her throwing things to me for me to grab out of the way, the way she ordered a drink.
Another thing was, her boyfriend was with her at this family event and she ordered for him throughout the meal! "He will also have a dr.pepper." "He'll just get the sirloin.." I'll ask how the steak was to be done tonight, I looked directly at him and she still answered for him on how his steak would be cooked and what he wanted for sides... He was staring back at me, he gave a small awkward smile. And I knew he could talk since I heard him talk and he would say thank you when I gave him something or took something away.
At one point as well, her younger sister (Three sisters in total here) asked for another drink menu. I went and grabbed one and placed it in front of her, and then this bitch grabs it and starts looking through it...
If you wanted one, ask me for one! Her sister then had to ask me for another one...
Sooooo at the end of the night, this really set me off. There is 14 of them, and there is only one of me. And I only have two hands.
I was clearing the entree plates out of the way since most of them were finished, I did walk by her first but she still was finishing up. So i did my circle grabbing almost all the empty plates out of the way, my hands full of big dirty plates not stacked nicely, heading on over to the kitchen that was far away when she says "excuse me" in a veryyyyyyy rude loud tone. The whole table was pretty quiet at that time, and this princess says "Take this as well", pointing at her plate that she just finished.

Hello bitch, Do you not see that my hands are full? Do you not think I will come back? Do you really need that darn plate out of your way?

I sort of lost it... I have an attitude problem and my attitude came out. I put down all those other dirty plates at small empty table beside me and go over and grab her one darn plate and walk that one darn plate to the kitchen.
Later that night, I'm assuming it was her aunt, came over and apologized saying "Sorry! Thank you for taking such good care of us, I hope our drunk asses at this end weren't a lot of trouble" (They were drinking a lot of wine)

Honestly, if it wasn't for that big tip that I was pretty sure I was gonna get from their high bill, I may have lost it. 

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