I get that restaurant staff are always under stress, but why are some such bad listeners? My husband and I went to brunch at a restaurant on Yonge last week (after finding out that one of our regular stops no longer does brunch – WTF??!!), hoping to have an enjoyable meal. Instead, it was a semi-nightmare. Okay, maybe that’s taking it a little too far, but the server was SERIOUSLY not listening. First of all, he asked me how I wanted my eggs – I already told him when I ordered and saw him writing something down. I assumed that he got things right…
WRONG! First, our drinks came. My husband ordered orange juice and I asked for a cappuccino (so he didn’t remember who ordered what? I thought servers were supposed to have a good memory. That’s why some don’t even write things down). Sure, the drinks were correct, but he was about to hand ME the juice when we corrected him. Okay, that doesn’t REALLY count as a mistake. Then, the food arrived. I asked for a meatless version of the breakfast, with salad as the side. Guess what they gave me? Both the salad AND potatoes. I’m not a fan of potatoes – especially hash browns/breakfast potatoes (roasted is okay in small amounts. And I’ll have latkes at Chanukah just for the spirit of it. Otherwise, please give me sweet potatoes. YES, that’s how I take my poutine). *EYEROLL* I mean, the guy DID write it down. Or did he? He then said the kitchen put both. Well, when you actually TELL the server that you wanted salad and NO potatoes, then it’s something the kitchen SHOULD know. I mean, it was on the slip, right? They shouldn’t automatically ASSUME, just because you didn’t want meat.
Maybe I’m just being a little too spoiled. I mean, the food was more than okay (even if they skimped a bit on toast. I got one slice, split into half triangles). But really, you really don’t need to ask twice, do you? It would have been better if he repeated what he wrote down to make sure the order was correct. Of course, I was in a bad mood at the time – I was already starving, thanks to our original plan not working out (this was our second restaurant. The first place no longer serves weekend brunch – something I didn’t find out until I arrived. The place is dreadful with social media, so I wouldn’t have known unless I actually went to their website and scrolled down to see that their brunch menu was no longer live). At least the server wasn’t rude (although he didn’t seem too happy when I asked for jam. He was like “I’ll see if we have any”)?
NOTE: I wrote a review of the place on Yelp, so (hopefully), the restaurant knows about this experience.
Image by: Jennik/Shutterstock
