Usually, when going out to eat, you don't suspect that there will be many problems. But sometimes we have to realize that we have too high of expectations. These people have some interesting stories to share about why they won't go back to certain restaurants...
Well-Done?
“When I was younger I ordered a steak, it came out way too rare for my liking (I was about 10 or so). It took about 15mins to come back and the steak was now charcoal black. My family got pretty pissed off, because everyone had their meals except for me. They sent me another steak which was black again. We just left. Worst experience ever.”
Forged And Fired…
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“A new Italian place opened up in my hometown, so my parents, my wife and I went one day for lunch. While taking our orders the waitress turns and walks off without taking my order. Took another 5 minutes before she came back around so I could put my order in. When they came to bring out our soup appetizer, the waitress forgot mine. She apologized and left to go get it. After 5 minutes she returns to check on our table and I reminded her about the soup. She says she forgot and goes to the kitchen to the get the soup. The manager comes out to say that they have to remake my soup and it would be another 10 minutes. Once the food finally comes, my pasta is completely wrong. I ordered chicken alfredo and they brought me chicken marinara. I was so pissed at that point, I just ate what they brought. To top it all off, the $5 tip I left MAGICALLY turned into a $15 tip, when I got my bank statement. The waitress had forged a one onto my receipt. We called the restaurant and she was fired. In all honesty, the food was amazing but the service was horrid. Never went back. The place was closed within 3 months.”
No Napkins?
“My worst experiences have also been at Outback Steakhouse. My fiancé and I went there and he ordered baby back ribs and they didn’t give him any napkins. We tried flagging the waitress down and she ignored us. So finally he had to walk up to the kitchen, with BBQ covered all over his hands, to finally get some extra napkins. No drink refills the whole time we were there. To top it all off the light bulb went out a over our table and we sat in darkness for nearly 30 minutes before finally getting our check. We left a tip of 27 cents.”
Wendy’s Did WHAT!?
“The worst / best had to be a time when I went to one of my local Wendy’s they had a sign at the drive through that said: We are out of the following: Burgers, Chicken Sandwiches, Chocolate Frosty, Fries, Sprite, Coke, Potatoes, Chili, Garden Salads, Large Cups, and… All condiments. I took a picture of the sign and posted it on my Facebook saying something like ‘Seriously Wendy’s what DO you have’ as a kind upset / joke. Then something creepy happened. I got an email from a Wendy’s corporate person (without ever going to their website and complaining) they apologized, said they saw my post on Facebook and would like to make amends. They offered me 10 free meals and gave me the names of the store owners to the two other local Wendy chains in case I didn’t want to return to the store in question.”
Why Outback, WHY?
“My dad also has the worst luck at Outback Steakhouses. It’s almost a game for the rest of my family when we go to see what will happen to him. He’s received raw fish after waiting over an hour, he’s also received no food at all, a drink was also spilled on him. My personal favorite was when he bit into the rubber backing of one of the pins from someone’s name tag, while eating steak. It’s really only him that anything ever happens to.”
Eating For Two?
“Went to IHOP, ordered an omelette with toast and OJ. The waiter brought the cook out to look at me, because the cook wanted to know what woman could eat ‘all that food’ alone. They stood there and stared at me for a minute while I chewed on my toast. I made up a story about being pregnant and being really hungry and they were like ‘OH OKAY’. I gave them NO TIP.”
How Much For Soda?
“We’ve had several pretty bad restaurant experiences. One we laugh at still is from IHOP; IHOP all you can eat pancakes. We didn’t plan on eating a lot of pancakes since it turns into a brick in your stomach, but three of us ordered all you can eat. The waitress was already rude, asking us how we could drink so much (needed a refill before ordering) but when we ordered a refill on pancakes, she scoffed and asked how we could eat so many pancakes and that it was disgusting. We laughed because we thought she was joking, but there was no joke being made. 50 cent tip. I mentioned in another thread, a different time, the three of us were charged for individual soda refills without being told refills were no longer free. $45 in soda charges with no warning… meant no tip.”
Over Twenty Percent?
“When I was younger my father and I went to Applebee’s for some chicken wings, we were seated and placed our order with a rather disillusioned waiter. We ate subpar wings with a side of subpar service, and received a bill of around thirty dollars, to which my father tipped twenty percent as is his standard. After the waiter took the bill, and we left the tip on the table we began to walk away, the waiter came in from behind us, tip in hand, and proclaimed that twenty percent wasn’t enough, and that was over a decade ago. Needless to say we never went to that Applebee’s again.”
Krabby Patty?
“When I was younger I was at some restaurant, out of state, and their menu had a Krabby Patty on it. As a child, you could guess that I got pretty excited. I was eager to sink my teeth into a delicious mouth-watering Krabby Patty from spongebob, but… nope. When my patty arrived, it had hard as rock, old, stale bread with freezer burnt cheese and what looked like they took a piece of sewage and slapped it on as sad excuse of meat. NASTY and GOODBYE.”
A Little Fishy…
“I ordered fish tacos at someplace around long beach California. Each taco had one Gorton’s fish stick in it… WTF!”
Creative Tips!
“Ordered a drink at a patio last Wednesday. We got a new waitress and we were her first table of the night. We ask her to bring us the special, and when it arrives we ask if it is any good. She replies: ‘It would taste better with a tip’. We all shut up instantly, just dumbfounded by the audacity this waitress had. We didn’t get served for another hour and a half, so we up and left. My buddy left her a note saying, ‘Here is a tip: Don’t be a b—h’…”
Coffee Burns
Shutterstock/Mariyana M
“This didn’t happen to me, but rather the table next to me. Some woman ordered a coffee, but the waiter accidentally spilled it on her. She started SCREAMING from the heat. After she washed herself off, the manager brought her a brand new coffee, which he spilled on her. I felt bad, but we left before anything else happened.”
Denny’s Quality
“The Denny’s at Virginia Beach stinks. We went in as a group of about eight. There were maybe three tables full in the whole restaurant. First off, our server acted as though we were being terribly annoying (we were polite and quiet). She took our orders (after a long wait) and left. Our drinks came out 15 minutes later, at different times. The food came out, cold, an hour and 15 minutes afterwards. My eggs weren’t scrambled (I asked for scrambled) and my brother’s pancakes had a strand of hair in them. We flagged the manager down, who turned out to have an equally cold attitude as the server. Nothing was compensated for or discounted. We got a curt apology. Denny’s sucks.”
Rock Croutons?
“This one time, I found a rock in my salad at olive garden, that was pretty bad…”
Six Flags?
“We were at Six Flags and the waitress forgot to get our drinks, then even though we were very patient and nice about it, after getting every detail of our order wrong she was too embarrassed to show up at our table again. We semi inherited a second waiter who wasn’t much more attentive. We noticed another couple next to us was getting the same treatment – appetizers that came after their meal and cold. At this point we were just waiting forever for the check so we could pay and get out (It was a theme park! We wanted to go ride things!) My boyfriend finally went to the front desk to pay and they said that we had to get our check from the waiter. In our search of the restaurant we were informed he had gone on break and the first waitress was nowhere to be seen. So we sat back down, now fuming and the couple started talking to us about the service. They convinced us to just leave – something I’d never done before or since. It had been almost three hours, a good part of our day wasted, so we did. We took two steps out of the building and the original waitress came running after us furious with the check. We paid and left ‘lol no’ as the tip.”
Be Back, NEVER!
“Another time the waitress came and brought us our drinks and then just never came back. We waited for half an hour before propping a note up on a glass that said: ‘Out to Dinner’…lol.”
McDonald’s Thieves?
“Drive thru at McDonald’s: we ordered 3 hot fudge sundaes. Pay for them. Pull up to the second window. Person working the window hands the tray to my friend. My friend still has them in his hand and is about to pass them off to me when another McDonald’s worker storms up to the window and yanks the sundaes from my friend’s hand. “Those aren’t yours!” She yells. We were all dumbfounded! It happened so fast, too! My friends tells her they are indeed ours because we paid for them and shows her the receipt. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says half-heartedly and hands him back the sundaes. We drive off. We laugh about it to this day that my friend was trying to steal sundaes from the dollar menu! Haven’t been back to that McDonald’s since.”
Jalapenos!
“I once went to T.G.I. Friday’s with a group of co-workers on lunch break. The company I worked for always picked up the tab. I order a jalapeno burger. I am with about 4 other people and we have to wait a really long time for everything to come out. It wasn’t so bad, because we didn’t punch time clocks, so everything over the usual half hour break would be paid. Finally our food arrives. I am eating my burger thinking, ‘man, this tastes really bland’. I take the top bun off and discover this burger had no jalapenos. I am finally able to flag down our waitress and explain that my burger wasn’t what I ordered. She says she will go tell the kitchen. I am literally waiting about 10 minutes, in the meantime my lunch companions have all finished their food. I am waiting to eat with a bit of burger growing cold in front of me. The waitress finally comes back and says she told the cooks, but they wouldn’t give her the jalapenos or make another burger. WTF? She leaves, then finally comes back with a little bowl of jalapenos. I am quite mad this time, and ask to speak to the manager. He come over and explains that is it employee appreciation day, so they are short handed. Most of the staff went to Six Flags. So he explained to me, and I quote: ‘Everyone isn’t going to get what they want or the food that they ordered’. Huh? If you can’t cook what I order then you need to be closed. Craziest restaurant experience I ever had. I still can’t believe he said that to me.”
Useless Manager…
“Ordered a meal worth $20+ at a fast food restaurant, and once our order came out, another person came and took it. We showed the receipt to the manager proving it was ours and they didn’t do anything about it.”
I DON’T…
“I was dying to eat IHOP one time. Got some friends together and drove to the closest one, 45 minutes away. The place was not too crowded and we were seated within five minutes. Our waitress came to take our order 15 minutes after we sat down. It seemed kind of odd because she spent a lot of time with her other tables and seemed to forget us. Literally waited ONE HOUR AND 23 MINUTES for food and when she brought it out, our orders were wrong. In that whole wait she never visited our table once either. We all stood up and left.”
Didn’t Have To Pay?
“My wife and I went to Outback one night after getting a gift card there. It was pretty empty and we waited like 15 minutes to be seated. Once seated, every server walked right past us. Finally after about 25 minutes we just decided to walk out. As we were a server finally saw us and took our order. After getting our food, I went to cut into my supposedly mid-rare steak, well it was well done. I told the server. I got it back, still well done. I asked to speak to a manager, and he proceeded to tell me ‘I’m not a chef, so I should let the cooks do their job’. I then proceeded to ask for the district manager’s phone, and when he refused I called Outback CORPORATE on the phone. The manager got mad at me saying I was being ‘a wuss, and stop getting upset’. Just so happens the CSR on the phone heard everything. She called the DM, who told her to tell us to ‘walk out and not even pay because Chuck said so’. So we did. Never again!”
Uncalled For Arguments…
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“My dad once passed out in a restaurant (nothing to do with the food, and it was a place we used to go to quite a bit) An ambulance had to be called. As they had my dad on the stretcher, the waitstaff started arguing with my mother about their tip. We did not go back.”
