The Awkward/Shitty Restaurant Experience Thread!

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^ I once saw a guy just haul his chair up to the buffet itself, and eat directly from the troughs everyone else was trying to take their food out of.
 
I remember one time when I was little (I was either 2 or 3 years old), we went to Friday's for dinner, and the people sitting at the table behind us had accidentally dropped their salt shaker. Being the autistic toddler I was, I decided to throw the salt and pepper from the table because I assumed it was some kind of game. All I can say now is that I felt bad for whoever had to clean up all that glass.
 
Magpie said:
I am generally a very sympathetic person when it comes to people stuck working shitty service jobs, considering how abusive customers can be. If someone is short or a bit rude I won't hold it against them. It's generally a case of them having a bad day. Case in point a few years ago my mom and I were at an Outback for an early dinner. It was very quiet there. Our waiter was barely ever there and aloof when he was. The time gaps between ordering drinks, getting them, and ordering food were absolutely massive. Mom was peeved but quiet, mulling over a small tip. Food was fine and all of that. Towards the end of it all the waiter apologized profusely, clearly upset and almost on the brink of tears. Apparently the elderly couple over at the other end of the restaurant were giving him tons of shit over any minor thing, so they kept him under their thumbs. Old people can be downright entitled bastards when it comes to treating others with respect.
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Older customers tend to be massive dickheads. I'm part of the floor staff at a local fast-casual restaurant, so I'm usually around the dining room making sure guests are happy, everything's stocked, etc. I was in the middle of sweeping up the dining room, and these old men yelled at me because their fries were cold. Since I was fairly new at the job, I was hesitant to tell them that I was busy and so I immediately exchanged their fries. It's policy at my restaurant to take away empty baskets/trays for the guests, so I offered to take their trays away, and they yelled at me to "LEAVE IT!" as if I was trying to steal their food. They were just awful people.
 
I don't have any stories of my own that I can remember, but recently, my dad talked about how he was waiting in line of this sandwich shop at the mall. There were a lot of people there and only two people up there. One at the register and the other making the food.

A guy walks in and gets chewed out by the manager for being 40 minutes late to his shift and how he was always late.

The guy responded something along the lines of "Well I'm here now, don't sweat it".

He was fired on the spot. My old man felt that she should have at least had him do his shift first as it took 25 minutes before he could even order.
 
I was working at a very busy ice cream parlor/restaurant when a table of seven walked into my section and sat down. They proceeded to order nearly $200 in food, drinks and ice cream. I gave them top-class service, and when they left I went over to the table to help the busboy and pick up the tip. The tip turned out to be a check from the Bank of Heaven for my Eternal Soul.

I offered the busser a portion of the "tip" -- he looked at it, crumpled it up and tossed it in his garbage section. (The restaurant's policy stated that I could not add a tip on a check unless it was a party of eight or more -- I somehow suspect they knew that.)
 
I've posted this here before but it's awesome so:

Slow day at work, so I was browsing the kiwi farms and giggling over my fav cows; customer finally comes to my bar and me, being the airhead that I am, asks him if he would like more or less autism in his martini.

Olives.

I meant to say olives.

He saw no humor in the situation at all, and I did not get a tip.
 
My mom was absolutely awful to go to restaurants with. She'd always get drunk an yell at the server for no reason. Her favorite thing to do was to either insist that her rib-eye was a sirloin or that it was under cooked.
 
My mother (God bless her soul, I love her and miss her) couldn't leave a restaurant without stopping at one or two tables and talking to complete strangers. They would all smile and be polite, but you could see in their eyes they were thinking "Who is this woman and why is she talking to me?" I'd be several feet away before I'd realize she was doing it and be to embarrassed to go back.
 
I ate at Amy's Baking Company a couple times, each time with a small group and we would all watch the Kitchen Nightmares episode before going. The first time, Samy immediately came over and started an unsolicited spiel about how Kitchen Nightmares was biased, Gordon Ramsay didn't know what he was talking about and Yelpers are full of shit. To be fair, there aren't that many reasons for chortling 20-somethings to be in their restaurant, so it's not like his suspicion was unwarranted but yikes dude.

He and Amy were actually pretty nice, but there was never a single other person working there, and only ever one other occupied table at a time, and they got rid of all the pizza on the menu after the first time I went. The counter was covered in cat memorabilia.

There was one time where Amy and Samy started going on about how Amy lost 50 (??!) pounds due to the trauma of the Kitchen Nightmares episode.

10/10 desserts though, would drown my ambivalence towards giving them money in creme brulee again.
 
I was with my brother at the crappy cafe in Morrisons (think of a UK version of Target), when across from us sits a really ancient old dame. Naturally adding her pissy smell to the combined reek of all the other OAPs in the area...Well, out come the servers with five or six plates of yellow custard, some of which have apple slice cakes included. She sits there loudly slurping from random plates...Then sits back and starts to scream unexpectedly at her table. A terrible fuss ensues, as customers look on is amazement and cafe staff are trying to calm the old insane harpy. I turn to my bro, and simply say; "Too much custard"...
 
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voiceguy said:
My mother (God bless her soul, I love her and miss her) couldn't leave a restaurant without stopping at one or two tables and talking to complete strangers. They would all smile and be polite, but you could see in their eyes they were thinking "Who is this woman and why is she talking to me?" I'd be several feet away before I'd realize she was doing it and be to embarrassed to go back.
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My mom (and myself by default) have had this issue quite a few times over the years. We'll barely pick up the menus and the person at the nearest table will learn over and start talking until we leave. Not even their own food gets them to stop. It's definitely all kinds of awkward for sure.
 
Had two weird encounters in the same restaurant visit a while back, at an IHOP in Tupelo, Mississippi.

First, the hostess was a stroked-out old lady that could pretty much only say "Praise Jesus!" or just "Jesus!". She showed me to my table, going "Jesusjesusjesus!" all the way, but then she wouldn't go back the the front. She stood there kind of babbling to herself about Jesus for about five minutes until she finally wandered off.

Second, after I got my meal a white trash family sat down in the booth across from me, a husband and wife and three or four young kids maybe like 4-8. They weren't really loud or obnoxious or anything, but at one point the older boy said "shit" so his mom punched him in the face. I don't mean smacked him or slapped him, she hauled off and slugged him right in the mouth like a boxer. He didn't cry or scream, so I guess he was used to it, and nobody in the IHOP said anything.
 
MysticMisty said:
My mom (and myself by default) have had this issue quite a few times over the years. We'll barely pick up the menus and the person at the nearest table will learn over and start talking until we leave. Not even their own food gets them to stop. It's definitely all kinds of awkward for sure.
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It's kind of odd, but here in the UK, that sort of thing seldom happens, unless you are stuck with an eccentric person.
I would say it has much to do with the British fixation on reserve and paranoia...I prefer the US with its friendly folk.
 
I guess I could share an odd experience I had at a Wendy's back in 2005. We had ordered a couple of burgers and a grilled chicken sandwich. I don't know how this happened, but they gave us FIVE hamburgers, and the chicken sandwich was missing. That was one of those experiences in which I realized that it is a better idea to order inside even if you are bringing the food home, since there are fewer chances of miscommunication.
 
Had a bad restaurant experience down by the ocean, where the restaurants are normally amazing. I ordered onion soup, and instead got salt soup. There was so much salt in it that was all I could taste. This probably isn't an entertaining story but that soup was so fucking salty
 
^It was actually Tumblr Soup.

I once went to Wendy's and ordered a burger and fries. Somehow, I wound up with a bag full of apple slices, which I hadn't even known they sold.
 
Magpie said:
Old people can be downright entitled bastards when it comes to treating others with respect.
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MalWart said:
There was a time I ate out, and this old lady was going from table to table asking for some kind of headache relief medication or some shit. Elderly customers can be the biggest pains in the ass from what I've been told.
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MerriedxReldnahc said:
There's a less-then-great diner that I wind up eating at whenever I visit my relatives in the valley. It's not an absolute dump, but it's still kind of dated and frequented exclusively by obese senior citizens.
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I find it's generally wise to be cautious of dining establishments that are frequented by the elderly. As a group, senior citizens are either happy with low-price-high-volume food, or just want to complain and go into an establishment determined to not be satisfied no matter what. Either way, the restaurant really has no incentive to try and deliver a stellar experience.
 
Curt Sibling said:
It's kind of odd, but here in the UK, that sort of thing seldom happens, unless you are stuck with an eccentric person.
I would say it has much to do with the British fixation on reserve and paranoia...I prefer the US with its friendly folk.
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I've read quite a few accounts of Europeans who find American friendliness to be unsettling and insincere so reading that is a breath of fresh air.
 
ChurchOfGodBear said:
I find it's generally wise to be cautious of dining establishments that are frequented by the elderly. As a group, senior citizens are either happy with low-price-high-volume food, or just want to complain and go into an establishment determined to not be satisfied no matter what. Either way, the restaurant really has no incentive to try and deliver a stellar experience.
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I haven't really thought about it but I too am biased against restaurants old people like. The restaurants themselves almost always end up being poor quality.
Also, asian restaurants that are primarily frequented by white people. If I'm the only white person there it's a pretty good sign the food will be good. If everyone including the staff are white it's usually crap.
 
I work at a restaurant.

We figured out that it wasn't our food by the fact that the people who were sick had all had different meals and that the cleaning staff later caught it. Even I'd caught it later on, and I hadn't eaten any food from the restaurant.

Someone missed.

It was everywhere.
 
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