holy terror of a manager. holy freaking crap i have never in my life been so insulted at an eating establishment. where to start... well the food was really good, but it was cold. one would think that'd be a big part of a pleasurable dining experience.
1) our waitress was obviously impaired on some sort of upper that caused her to constantly rub her face and she had sores on her face as well. she was also tending to a large group of drunks that were unruly. no one enjoys that, but she was not dealing with it well. she was also all by herself and there were other employees, but they were elsewhere. this girl was solo-tending the bar and 4 tables. she made me nervous and i kept feeling she was going to freak out and begin throwing things.
2) we waited over an hour and a half before we got our food. everything took forever. that was not the waitress's fault. drinks were fair, but took way too long to get. we waited for everything else too - refills on water, bread, etc.
3) we communicated our issues and rather than apologize, they just brought our food to us. thankfully it was pretty good. it was a little cold from sitting out waiting to be delivered but it was there nonetheless. the waitress again struggled to keep up with the demand. despite being inebriated, i am certain she did a better job than i ever could have when i did the same job.
4) when we complained, the manager pulled the best trick in the book in order to absolve herself from any blame. she took the waitress aside and laid into her like she had spit in our food until the waitress was on the verge of tears. we even took the time to explain that the fault was not of the waitresses, but that of the management's for not having adequate staffing.
this is a very popular device i have seen used in my own experience working at a restaurant. later, when the bill was presented and no consolation was provided as a result of their mistakes, we confronted the waitress about possibly getting a discount for the unacceptable service, wait time, and general annoyance of dealing with their terrible atmosphere. the waitress broke down into tears as expected and the manager proceeded to yell as loudly as possible at us for being the sole contributors to her crying. this caught every person in our party by surprise but me, and i am not the confrontational type or i would have called her out on it because i knew exactly what she was doing. as i have experienced, the primary aggressors in my party became fed up with the situation and walked out once she began blaming us for the waitresses obvious malfunction.
she won this round as the entire bill was paid, including gratuity. the lady that owned the place had used her employee as a pawn to get paid at the expense of her customers. this is typically a last resort for difficult customers, and we were vary patient until the manager jumped down our throats with accusations of bullying her employee.
if my bank of america business card were here, i would have used it to pay, then debited the total back to my account. this was an awful experience the likes of which is beyond appalling and unacceptable. if there were enough restaurants on thisislandto serve the tourist population, this would not fly and this lady would have lost her business a long time ago. she is lucky the food was good or else i would not have let them leave, especially with a 320 dollar bill. i still probably shouldn't have. i will not forget being called names and asked to leave while being disrespected like this.