Bad Service

Isela Reyes
Journalism 131

A recent trip to an Italian restaurant left me baffled as I walked out with my co-workers, wondering how service could have slipped to such a poor standard. On a recent trip to Walnut Creek for a work meeting, my co-workers and I decided to stop off and grab a bite at an Italian eatery. We arrived around one and were quickly seated at a table. Our server showed up and made the usual server chit chat before asking us if we wanted drinks. Once we were situated with our drinks, we began checking the menu for what we wanted. Our server returned minutes later and asked if we were ready to order. He began by telling us the special of the day −or he tried to. “Our special of the day is…ummm…” he began, staring at the ceiling as if it would magically reveal the answer he was looking for. He seemed far too pre-occupied with checking out my co-workers to remember much, as he lingered far too long at our table.
Talking over our salads much later, my co-worker Julie sets her wineglass down rather quickly with an odd expression on her face. “There’s a friend on my glass”, she says. Carolina and I lean over and see her friend, a spider that is sitting on her wine glass quite near to the rim. She motions to the nearest server who comes and takes her wineglass, looking as baffled as Julie and walks away without saying a word. Our original server appears moments later and brings Julie another wineglass with double the amount of wine she had as a sort of apology for the spider. Our food arrives minutes later and we all get down to business putting some serious dents in our food. Our server, who is obviously interested in Julie, interrupts our conversations more than necessary to ask how our meal is.
Later our plates are cleared away and our server asks if we would care for dessert, to which Julie and I pass, but Carolina orders a cappuccino. We are sitting at our table talking and waiting for Carolina’s cappuccino. Fifteen minutes pass and we begin to wonder where her drink is. We scan the restaurant and see our server leaning against the counter up front flirting with the hostess, oblivious and ignoring the tables he is in charge of. We wait five more minutes hoping he will get back on track, but to no avail. Carolina flags down the nearest server and asks them to cancel the cappuccino and just bring us the check. The server, not knowing what’s going on tells our server and he walks over and asks why Carolina wants to cancel her drink. “It’s just taking to long, we need to go”, she replies. “You know what” he answers, “I’m going to put your drink in a to-go cup, because I think you really want it”. His tone of voice is what really annoyed the three of us, he sounded like she was a child who didn’t know what she wanted and he was telling her in a very commanding and final tone that she was taking her drink to go. “That’s fine, can you just bring us our check?” was her frustrated reply. Amazingly we have to wait another five minutes for her drink and our check, making our total wait time for a cappuccino twenty five minutes. He handed us our check with a bag of cookies to make up for our lack of service, I’m assuming, and he didn’t even take the cappuccino off the tab for Carolina, which she later told me, she would have appreciated more than a few cookies.