#1 Pet Peeve!

For many of you who don't know me very well or for those of you who do know me well I would consider myself a very patient and understanding person. I would hope my friends would agree. In different circumstances when I'm at the store or out in public and get treated badly with bad service I try not to let it get to me. I try to put myself in that person's shoes and just brush things off because life is to short to hold grudges, but the one thing I will not stand for and have no understanding for is bad service at a restaurant!!! That is my #1 pet peeve! I believe that if I voluntarily choose to go to a restaurant and decide to give them my money I am expecting them to treat me well. All I ask for is when I first walk into your restaurant until I leave I am treated well. I will not stand for crap! There has only been twice so far that I have had the worse service at a restaurant. The first time was a few months ago, Steve and I went to Olive Garden around 3 in the afternoon and we were completely ignored. I will not get into that story, but in the end we did walk out. The second time was this last weekend, Valentines' Day weekend to be exact! On Saturday Steve and I planned to go to Madeline's Steakhouse for dinner. I had only been there once before and their prime rib was delicious. We got there later, around 8, but we had hoped we had missed the Valentines' Day crowd. We didn't make reservations, but the young high school hostess (let me repeat, young high school hostess!) told us the wait would be 45 minutes. We were okay with that so we sat down and watched the Slam Dunk contest. To make a long story short, 45 minutes had now passed and we still hadn't been called back. Steve went up to ask the hostess how much longer we had to wait and guess what he found out? We had been passed up 3 times!!! I was livid! I was to the point where if I talked to anyone I would not be saying very nice things. The hostess looked embarrassed (which she should have been) and told him we would be next she told him that they had been having problems with their pagers all night. Well, that's fine that they were having problems with their pagers, but if the person you paged didn't come up to the desk in a couple minutes wouldn't you call out their name? I hate the round pagers! They never work with me. 5 minutes later they sat another couple, 10 minutes later they sat 2 more couples. What happened to "we would be next?" Steve then went up again, and asked them again what was going on. The young high school hostess was really embarrassed now, hurried and grabbed two menus and told us to follow her. She took us back and there were no tables available! She had us wait in the middle of the restaurant while they finished cleaning a table! You bet I gave her a dirty look! I had never been so upset in my life! I could not even look at her without looking mean. That is how upset I was. I'm not the type of person to cause a scene when I am upset, but you bet your life I will let you know in my own way that I am upset with you. Steve and I were finally seated and I was literally shaking because I was so mad. As Steve was trying to calm me down, somehow the manager found out what happened and came over to apologize and offer us a complimentary dessert. He felt really bad and I'm sure he did, but that couldn't change the situation. We tried to enjoy the rest of our dinner which turned out pretty well. Our server was really great and tried to be helpful and at the end of the meal Steve and I both got a dessert! Not one dessert, two. We were going to make the complimentary dessert worth it. Needless to say, our night started out badly, but it did end on a high note, a very little high note!