Check Please!

After school today a group of fellow teachers and I went to Sherlock's to celebrate the coming three day weekend. Sherlock's has become a popular meeting place with my friends, but unfortunately the service we've received hasn't been so great. The first time we went our first waitress took FOREVER to bring us our drinks and would rarely ask if we needed anything else. She took so long in fact that we developed a strategy to help make the wait between drinks shorter. HINT: when you finally get the attention of the waitress go ahead and make two drink orders so by the time you finish drinking the first one the second will be on its way.

Well, low and behold, today we got stuck with the same time challenged waitress. Well, we were impressed that she increased her waiting record from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. You can see that she has really been working on her customer service the last time we were there. After that waitress "abandoned" us Katie finally had to flag down another waitress and inform her of our situation. She responded with little enthusiasm and "wished she had been told" that we were her new table. She brushed it off and began to take our orders starting with Kari and I. We both wanted Miller Lite so she asked us if we would prefer a pitcher instead of order separate glasses. We literally had about 5 seconds to think it over before she, apparently frustrated with how long we were taking to order, asked us "do you want me to come back when you're ready to order" in a not so nice tone. I ordered the pitcher and she moved on to the others, who also received the same question with the same amount of annoyance.

After we were finished and asked for the checks she came back with a mistake. She had charged three pitchers of beer to the others instead of two. After arguing with her about the mistake and explaining that another friend of ours who left early had paid for one pitcher already she simply rolled her eyes and went to fetch the manager as requested by Jessica (first grade teacher). Before the manager returns the waitress comes back with the checks fixed and informs all of us that she fixed the checks for us (as if she was doing us a favor). No apology for her rudeness or mistake on over charging them an extra pitcher. Finally, the manager arrives and hears us out. He responds by saying he doesn't want to make excuses, but here are a bunch of them anyway. He tells us that she is his best waitress and blah blah blah. We all thought that if she was his best he really needed some help, but anyway. He apologized shortly and was about to leave when Jessica stopped him and told him that he would need to remove the charges for the two pitchers, oh and my pitcher as well to make up for the hassle we had just gone through. He agreed and went to the back to fix the checks.

He wasn't even going to give us compensation for the rudeness and poor service we had just experienced. If a customer is displeased with their service then you as the manager should be trying to do everything you can to rectify the situation, but this manager did nothing of the sort. The customer had to actually force him to do what any good manager would do.

After we received our checks I noticed that I got only one copy of the receipt. No copy that I could keep for myself. Okay, you're thinking who cares, you'll just throw out the extra copy anyways. No, not the case. You see the last time I went to Sherlock's I was charged an extra $5.00 for no reason. I found out by looking at my online bank statements. With that history I knew I needed a receipt. I told the waitress I needed my own copy of the receipt and she rolled her eyes as if giving the customer their own receipt was a special request. Hello, isn't it my right as a customer to get a receipt?! Again, after a while the manager came out with a copy of my receipt. I thanked him politely and filled it out. TIP -/-/-/-/-/ NOTHING. I believe very few if any tips were given that night from our table.

So long Sherlock's, it's a pleasure LEAVING you.