Adventures in Bad Waiterland

Last night we went out to dinner with some friends and had yet another bad experience with a waiter. We have a running joke in our group of friends that we must be like kryptonite to a waiter because we seem to almost ALWAYS have terrible waiters.


Now, I get that when we have 15-20 people in our party that task can be a bit daunting and confusing. I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt when we have that many people. But last night we only had 9 people...I feel like that's a manageable amount of people.

Our waitress last night was extremely slow at getting anything to us {my friend actually had to get up and get our silverware for us after we got our food}, got 3 of our orders completely wrong and then basically tried to blame it on us saying that we actually ordered them wrong. Uhhhh no. And where in waiter training did they tell you that "The customer is actually always WRONG." ??? I've been through extensive customer service training before and I don't recall that ever being the mantra that they drill into your brain.

Luckily last night the manager of the restaurant stepped in, comped a round of drinks for all of us, and comped the meals of those of us who had our orders screwed up. The manager seemed legitimately embarrassed by her waitstaff and did a great job of making us happy again after a bad situation.

However, in the past we have had many other bad waiter experiences and the manager doesn't always step in. It's just baffling to me that so many waiters can be so BAD and so many managers can be so nonchalant about their staff.

I've never been a waiter before so I'm hesitant to make too many judgments about the difficulty of the job, but I definitely don't feel that it's acceptable to not own up to your mistakes once they've been made. And I'd really like it if waiters in my area could start taking some extensive training on handling large groups. Is that too much to ask??