Recently we’ve had some issues when eating out. We thought it was because we weren’t being specific enough.

Our first issue is with the high chair situation. You see we would go to eat and we would politely tell the hostess we have 4 including a high chair. The first time something went wrong was at the Olive Garden. We waited an hour and 45 minutes for a table. It’s a new restarunt and we knew we were in for a wait. Our little buzzer finally goes off and we head to the hostess stand. A gentleman took us back to a booth. No problem with that but then the dreaded question came. “Sir we need a high chair please?” To which he answered me, “No problem I will be right back with a booster seat.” Me: “That will not work. My daughter will not sit in a booster I need a high chair.” This went back and forth with him asking me are you sure 2 or 3 times before he finally asked us to go back and wait in the lobby while he found a table.  This then happened at Famous Dave’s, Applebees and a local place. Now I don’t think I can be much more specific than I need a high chair. I realize that most of the hostess probably do not have children but still we said a high chair for a reason. But even more is the attitude we get when we get to a table and ask for a high chair. This “Oh she’ll be fine in a booster.” I swear the next time this happens I’m going to say “Absolutely she can sit in a booster because you will be sitting next to her and helping her eat and picking up the forks, knives, spoons, and sugar, as well as placing her back in the booster seat upteen million times during the meal.”

My second issue with eating out is the lack of customer service. That same trip to Olive Garden was a disaster. We waited forever for our waitress to finally take our order.  We ordered an appetizer, and our meals at the same time. Steve told me it was going to be a problem but no it’s new they’re going to be on top of it. I kid you not our soup came out, immediately followed by our appetizer. Not even 2 minutes go by and our meals are on the table. OK so small fail there but the bigger fail is that the kids’ drinks had never shown up. We asked the porter that brought our plates out to please see if he could find some milk. (After he walked away Steve and I joked that they must be milking the cows.) Finally our waitress brings two cups of milk. I had ordered the seafood portifino. One of my favorite meals there but it had almost no seafood in it. I kid you not there were 5 tiny scallops and 5 bits of shrimp (Yes bits they weren’t even whole shrimp.) The porter we had asked about the milk evidently asked the manager to bring it to us. At which point I expressed my displeasure. Our waitress asked other people to do everything for her, never came to check on us, the food was brought one right behind the other and my kids were without a drink for a large portion of the dinner. To which he said “Oh I’m really sorry. I’ll take off the appetizer.” And he walked away. Now I did say they were busy but our waitress had I kid you not 3 tables including ours, one of which ordered nothing but salad and soup.

But the crappy service didn’t stop at Olive Garden. Oh no it continued to Outback.

Does the steak above look medium to medium well to you? Yeah We didn’t think so either. Steve would have been perfectly fine with this steak as he actually prefers his rare but me I need my steak to stop mooing before I eat it. But here’s the sad part this steak was the second steak that was brought to me and it was worse then the first one was. The lady at the table next to us had the exact same problem. I ended up bringing this steak home and finished cooking for lunch the next day. Take note that I only cut a small portion off of the steak. I’m sure the middle would have been rare. It was quite some time after our food was first brought to us for our waitress to come back. By this point it was rather late and the kids were toast. Steve was almost done eating. So I asked them to make my food to go. Yeah for dinner that night I wound up eating nothing but some veggies. The manager brought the to go food out to us and walked off. Our waitress handed us the check which we promptly paid. I took the box out cut open the steak and found the above. Not happy. After several minutes we finally asked a bus boy to find the manager for us. The manager came back and asked what was wrong. For some reason he didn’t think there was a problem with the steak. He did finally give us a gift card but I think I’ll donate to a friend. I don’t think we’ll be going back.

Are you noticing a decline in customer service too?