The Fancy Pants Restaurant Rebuttal
Published January 16, 2012 | After sharing my disastrous dining experience with you last week, many people urged me to immediately reveal the name of the Fancy Pants Restaurant that done me wrong. I resisted—not because I’m a classy dame who takes the high road, but because I was hoping for some restitution in the form of a free meal.
The day after I sent that letter (minus the subtext), I received the following reply:
Hi Lori,
This email just came to my attention. I apologize sincerely for the unsatisfactory dinner experience you had at my restaurant. Please provide me with detail as to the date you had dined here, who your waiter was (if you do not know the name, please describe him or her), and also who had paid for the dinner. I will get the situation straightened out and follow up with you with a personal phone call!
Best,
Ms. Fancy Pants Restaurant Owner
Obviously I was thrilled with such a prompt and promising response. Then I realized I would have to speak to her, which I wasn’t so keen to do. My best work is done with a laptop as my buffer. Talking often leads to inadvertent Canadian politeness that could diminish the impact of my grievances.
Thankfully the Serb saved the day by pissing me off (who needs 9 jackets in the hall closet?!?) right before the owner called me and I had an appropriate edge to my voice. The owner kindly offered a complimentary meal for me and a guest on a night of my choosing—all I would need to do is phone in advance and speak to the manager.
I hung up quite pleased with myself; a feeling that lasted for all of three minutes, until I began imagining how it would feel to show up at the Fancy Pants Restaurant with every employee knowing that I had complained. What if someone spits in my soup? Or wipes my fork in their armpit? Or worse?*
Herein lies my conundrum: do I risk the wrath of wait staff for a free meal? What do you think? Should I walk in there with my head held high and demand some decent food without the attitude, or should I take the apology as my prize and forget about the meal? I know I’ve done a lot more for a lot less in my time…
*The Serb has worked at FPRs all over the world and he assures me that yes, worse things could easily happen.
Sweet Jeezuz, I am screwed.
43 Responses to The Fancy Pants Restaurant Rebuttal
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I worked in the service industry for years and years and if I were you, I wouldn’t go for the free meal. I would say there’s *at least* a 70% chance that something untoward will happen to your food before it arrives at your table.
Gah! Noted.
SERIOUSLY?! This really happens? I need people with restaurant experience to please post examples of horrific things done to people’s food. I’m basically incapable of being rude to a server, so hopefully I’ve remained unscathed, but I find this entire topic morbidly fascinating. Like… sink holes.
Hmmm…you might be Canadian…
Ask for your money back! You paid in good faith and they didn’t deliver. Why should you return??
I don’t think they do that…I’d take the money, even with spit on it!
I would not take the meal. You will be freaking out the whole time, and is it really worth it to you? I would consider giving it to someone that I had to begrudginly do something nice for.
I special order at every restaurant and always worry that I will be getting spit in my food.
Judging from these comments, we should all be worried!
Yeah, we’re a bit paranoid in these parts about food service retribution as well. I was a foodserver in a past life, and my boyfriend has been in the industry too. He won’t even so much as return a plate of french fries that is cold, for fear of the payback.
I have a friend who worked at a Del Taco. I won’t even tell you what he and his “friends” routinely did to refried beans.
I’d say, chalk this one up to a bad experience at a Fancy Pants restaurant — one to which you will not return.
Oh Em Gee – we had quesadillas tonight for dinner! #refriedbeansfail
Yup, I agree.
I wouldn’t go back. I also have worked in a restaurant and, yeah….don’t do it.
Take the apology and move on, it’s safer that way.
I think you’re right!
Firstly – love your posts – each and every one!!
My comments… Wow. Call me an (apparently) naive country bumpkin (ignorance is bliss), but I’m horrified to believe that food service people would do the aforementioned implied things to food for any reason. I’m sure there are customers out there that might deserve such treatment – the arrogant, holier-than-thou types for instance… but wow (again) to think that a genuine bad service complaint would possibly be retaliated against this way is horrifying (I may never eat out again!). The business owner responded well, I would have probably offered the free meal also in response to such a complaint. Hindsight being 20/20 as always, would the only way to have received the meal for free would have been to complain at the time of the offense? Meanwhile, I agree not to go back for the freebie – unless it’s at a much later date so that the staff has had time to forget about it, and I would certainly describe the offending server so that at least he/she would get reprimanded.
Apologies for being so wordy…
Awww – thanks for the sweetness, Rhonda! And don’t worry about going on – this is the place for wordiness
Good lord. After reading the comments, I may never eat out again. Or maybe I should just referring to eating out as “building up my immune system.”
Or perhaps, “French kissing strangers without touching mouths”
Even if they didn’t spit in my food I would spend the whole meal thinking they did and wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. Someone once told me they found a condom in the clam chowder. Now, eating creamy soups at restaurants makes me gag.
Oh jeez – it keeps getting worse the more comments I read!!!!
Yeah. Couldn’t do it. No way.
Not even because I’m afraid of what they’ll do to my food .(Could it be worse than what goes on in my home on a daily basis? What?)
I’m simply not ballsy enough to show up anywhere after having made a fuss.
I like to be liked.
It’s a serious flaw.
But it also leads to far less bodily-fluid in most of my restaurant meals.
I’m assuming.
You are obviously hiding some Canadian blood underneath all that Swedish blonde perfection… #politetoafault
I’m afraid to complain about anything in restaurants. Unless a utensil is dirty. I have never had anything bad happen because there was an obviously dirty utensil. That is where it stops. I can’t believe how many of us live in fear of the food service industry.
Apparently we need to form a support group, STAT.
SEE?
I’m not the only one.
WHY I NEVER complain, b/c , yah..who wants a pube in their wild rice?
Me and you: sistertwins…
Dear Sistertwin,
When I read “pube in their wild rice” I spat oatmeal on my keyboard.
Love,
Me
Take that apology and run. Because every bite I put in my mouth I’d be wondering. And then the gag reflex might kick in. And that would just be mortifying, because they’d all see me gagging because they’d all still be giving me dirty looks and whispering, “Is SHE the one?”
I think this is the real problem – I’d feel the shame of being “that” customer.
I like the laptop buffer too. I can’t even go back to Home Depot after I complained about a jack ass in customer service – and what’s he going to do, mix my paint wrong? Don’t do it.
Ha! I can think of so many ways Home Depot could screw me over…
Ew! I always figured that such things happen when customers complain but now that I read all of the comments, I am definitely going to continue with my good ol’ Canadian ways and just swallow the crappy food with a smile.
Seriously. The Serb is suddenly EXTRA appreciative of my home-cooked meals
Oh, yes, there is far worse that can be done.
But I have a very, very hard time believing that any of the waitstaff would treat you as anything but royalty if you were there. Because, if they were, somehow, caught, it’s more than just their jobs on the line.
And I don’t really exist without the laptop buffer. Heck, I get pissed at friends if they call me instead of txt’ing.
Ha – I think one day we’ll all just walk around with screens in front of our faces….
I cannot believe these comments! I worked in a bar/restaurant in Scarborough and a high-end resort in the Cayman Islands and I have never seen such behavior! I don’t know who these people are spitting in your food but honestly, maybe I am just naive.
I say if this is a 5 star restaurant that you think you may want to go back to because you obviously liked the food the first time then go back. Make sure the owner is on-site when you return. Every waiter has a bad night occasionally. If this place is not really your cup of tea and you can’t see yourself ever returning anyways then don’t bother.
Also, make sure you tip well if the service is good. That way they will remember you the next time and fall over to get your table. Even if the meal is free, a tip is still in order. I would also express your anxiety to the owner. They are struggling to run a business…why not give them a chance and be honest.
I think you should go back. The owner is trying to make up for bad service and everybody deserves a second chance, even the hipper-than-thou waiter. One of two things can happen: you have a terrible night (again), in which case you will be totally justified in revealing the name of the restaurant and you can always get a great post out of a bad meal (not many people can make bad service enjoyable but YOU can!); or you’ll have a great time, you’ll get a chance to change your mind, you can tell us all that the restaurant made up for the previous disaster and you might even get a new favorite place, or at least a good time, out of th experience. Funny post or good time? It’s a win-win!
You are SPOT ON: the only reason I want to go back is so I can write about it!
Here’s what you should do: go to the restaurant and take a critic-looking friend with you as your guest. Tell him/her to bring serious, black little notebook and a fancy pen. Then write EVERY. THING. DOWN. Or at least pretend to. Drop the words “book”, “blog”, “health inspector husband” and “Saveur magazine” whenever a server comes by. Let us know how it goes!
I’m a worst-case scenario person, and after hearing horror stories of spit and pubes, I would definitely not go back.
Oh! And also! Once when I was in high school, I ordered chili for lunch, and the next day discovered that the wrestling team, who practiced in the cafeteria, peed in the chili mix the day I ate it.
This story is not pertinent.
But it involves bodily fluids in food and I thought you’d enjoy its relevance.
Bodily fluids are always relevant. Somehow.
I am going to eat at home forever and ever.
I worked in several restaurants and don’t remember anything gross or untoward happening to people’s food. Although my brother worked at a rib place and he told me that once one of the line cooks dropped a slab of ribs, and then just picked it up, added extra sauce on the floor part and put in on the plate.
My memory may not be what it used to be. And now I’m going to barf.
The stories I could tell you from my time spent as a McDonald’s drive-thru girl in my teens…
(I still don’t eat there. Continue with your barfing.)
There is one ray of hope (and this is coming from my own server experience). Other servers in the restaurant may have the same ill feelings towards your server. They may be jumping for joy that he/she got in a bit of trouble for being such a dush-bag. You may get a big thank you from your server!
Maybe…but it did seem like a breeding ground for douchiness…
I worked in a Fancy Pants restaurant (I also worked at a strip club for awhile…totally different story) and, uh, yea, the waitstaff does some seriously fucked up shit to the food! Especially if you’ve complained!
But you live in Canada where folks are always nice so maybe that doesn’t happen there? I’ve lived in Texas and New York where ‘survival of the fittest’ is tattooed on your inner psyche. (Note: I, personally, have never done anything to anyone’s food. I believe in Karma. Although with my luck you’d think I’d crapped in everyone’s food I’d ever waited on.)