Tag: fail

Spectacular Service

OK, so I don’t expect much from some restaurants. I certainly didn’t expect anything spectacular from the Molson Brewhouse in the Calgary airport. Turned out it was pretty spectacular though.

We had to wait in line to get a table. This was odd since the restaurant wasn’t that busy, and there were a few empty tables. Weird for sure. Then the hostess, you know the person that is supposed to greet guests, talk to them, be the face for the establishment, motioned for us to follow her, without saying a word. Odd. As she sat us down she mentioned they were a little short on menus, then walked away. We had no menu at all. Not even one for the table.

The waitress came and took our drink order, and again we sat with no menu. I spied one across the way on a table next to a woman who was waiting for her bill. Sue went over and asked her if we could use it. Problem solved.

Our drinks came and they were fine. Sue and I had beer, the kids ordered chocolate milk. Normally, a kids drink isn’t that big, but these milks were in a beer sleeve. Seriously? We are in an airport waiting for a flight, and my kids were just served a huuuuge glass of chocolate milk. Of course their eyes went wide with excitement.

We placed our order. For the kids we only wanted a plain hamburger and fries, but there was no plain burger on the menu . The closest thing they had was a $16 bacon cheddar burger. No deals were offered. Sue then noted that the BBQ burger was $15 and got the waitress to order that instead, and skip everything on it. Wow. Pretty bad service so far.

When the food came, they brought the wrong dishes. My burger had fries, when I had ordered a salad. Sue’s wasn’t right either. The food server (not our waitress) disappeared and shortly came back with the right food. That was a little suspicious.

Now we had three plates of food, but absolutely no cutlery. We had to ask for at least one set to cut the kids’ burger. The waitress came by so we asked for another plate and cutlery/napkins for all of us.

The waitress then disappeared for a while and never checked in on us. Now we weren’t tight on time, but I just wanted to eat and get out of there. Sadly for me, my burger was very “meh”. The patty was barely warm, yet somehow the cheese on top was melted??? The onion rings on it were crispy, but cold??? The BBQ sauce was dribbled on top and lacked any real flavour, and definitely had not been cooked at all. All in all it was bad.

I should have said something to the waitress, but again, I just wanted out. At this point I started thinking about the absurdity of it all. I looked around, and out of the 50+ tables, I only saw two menus. I saw the hostess again motioning for people to follow her, without speaking a word. I saw the lineup of about 8 groups, yet at least 10 tables free. I saw the same hostess seating people at dirty tables, then half cleaning things up after the people were seated.

I saw the wait staff rushing around looking busy, but really not doing anything useful. Someone outside the restaurant wouldn’t make any sense of this, but me being on the inside, experiencing it became quite funny.

I snagged the waitress and asked for the bill. When we got it, we saw it was $65 and change. Holy shit! That is crazy. Three burgers and two beer. Sue and I discussed the quickest, easiest, and least friendly way we could get out of the restaurant. We managed to find enough cash and left $67 on the table. Sorry, no real tip for this place. They definitely got what they deserved.

Next time we will hit the food court for Subway where we will get the same crappy service, semi-ok food, for 1/3 the price. Granted, we couldn’t get a beer at Subway, but really, the beer wasn’t worth the price of admission.

Batteries Squirrely

Last week I needed to buy some batteries for my flash, and for some other things in the house. From years ago I remembered that Radio Shack was the cheapest place. They got renamed a while ago to The Source.

With kids in tow I entered The Source location closest to our house. I found the batteries I needed and waited for my turn to pay. I waited way too long considering there were multiple staffers, multiple tills, and only one person in front of me paying for something.

As the guy was ringing my purchase in, he saw the double packs of 9V batteries I had and mentioned that the single packs were on sale 2 for 1. Would have saved me time if there was a sign saying that.

With the new packs in hand he rang them in then asked for my email address. Uhh, no. I don’t need to be spammed by them. He didn’t even let me know what they would do with it.

Then he asked me who my mobile provider was and what my monthly bill was. WTF? I had 3 packs of batteries to by and you are trying to upsell me to a cellphone? I cut him off and told him just the batteries. If I had been looking at other technology, had a few other items, then maybe I could cut him some slack. Instead I had batteries and two kids who were going a little squirrely in an electronics store. Think for a second next time would you?

Scratch that. There likely won’t be a next time.

Blockbuster Bad

Soon after I got my new cellphone and phone number, I started getting calls from @Blockbuster informing me of overdue movies. These calls were destined for the previous owner of the number since I rarely rent from @Blockbuster any more.

This morning I called to get this fixed up. I called at a few minutes before 10 and the person that answered sounded cheery enough. It sounded like the store was already open. When I started to explain the issue she cut me off saying she couldn’t help me because the store wasn’t open yet.

I was dumbfounded. I was a little speechless.

I verified that she couldn’t help me and she said yes. She needed to get the store ready. I asked if the fact that I am a customer made a difference and she said no. She couldn’t help me because the store wasn’t open yet.

Not being totally coherent I said something to the effect that “That is pretty bad.”, and she actually said no it wasn’t! I hung up after that since I didn’t want to deal with her any more.

After 10am I called another @Blockbuster to get the number removed and the guy that answered took care of it in under 2 minutes, and even let me know that I may get another call within the next couple days since their system updates are a little slow.

The helpful guy spent less time on the phone with me than the argumentative lady. Nice.

I haven’t rented from @Blockbuster in a while, and I think I will continue that trend.

Investigate Broken

I should have ridden to work today. I wanted to ride, but as I was on my way out the back door bike in hand, I decided to investigate a strange metal on metal sound I heard on my last ride.

I found the source. It was another broken spoke. If you recall, this happened pretty recently already.

Frustrating. I had a quick shower, got dressed and jumped in the truck. Disappointing.

Safety Wrapped

Seen a few minutes ago, the least safety conscious thing this week.

One of the maintenance people for the office building I work in is using a leaf blower to clean out the gutters. He is standing on a roof top leaning out. His safety mechanism is a length of rope looped over a railing that he has wrapped around his wrist. The fall would be about 20 feet to a marble covered courtyard.

Gate Behind

Yesterday when we got home from work we discovered that we had forgotten to close the gate at the top of the stairs, and Yoshi had spent most of the day on our bed. This happens occasionally, and the worst part is that we need to change the bed due to all the dog hair/sand/dirt he leaves behind.

Yesterday was a little different. Sox discovered he had pawed at the bed at some point and had torn the duvet cover (not so bad since it was very old and thin and already had holes), and had torn the duvet a little (that is bad). After duct taping the hole closed we decided to leave it like that for a bit, and sew it a little later.

Bad dog!