Salt City Girl

Raves and rants about the Salty City's food, film and alcohol.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Learn to fake it until you make it, honey!

Really, is it that hard to fake it?

After Ava, Erin and I went to Blue Plate Diner at 2100 South 2100 East, Ava sent me this link to Bad Service.Reading these stories made me feel an itty-bit better about our experience, but come on.

Blue Plate was so busy this Sunday afternoon we waited for a table. The wait wasn't too long, but it was a little weird to be asked to wait. The hostess (who I believe is the owner's wife) handed me three menus and asked us to follow our waitress to the back booth that had taken ten or so minutes to get cleaned after all we got to watch while we waited.

We followed Jasmine back and sat down. She wandered off then came back a few minutes later to ask what we wanted to drink. Her first words to us were, "What would you like to drink?" All three of us ordered coffee and water.

A few minutes later we all had water, but I had no coffee. Apparently, when I asked for coffee she didn't hear me. Now I pride myself on being a good customer. I've worked in the restaurant business and I always tip well. I really believe that if I treat my server well, they will treat me well. Obviously, Jasmine has a different ideology. I was bugged that I had to ask twice for coffee, but I tried to not make a big deal out of it.

Many minutes later (Erin had time to choose what she wanted even), Jasmine made her way back to take our order. No smiles, no helpful-ness just "What do you want?" Seriously, what happened to piss her off so much that she couldn't even pretend to be cheerful for the five seconds it takes to write down an order?!

Our food came out fairly quickly and was good. But in the hour or so we spent eating Jasmine checked on us once and another waitress refilled our coffee after Erin asked for more. The second waitress also managed to make a hugely inappropriate joke at the same time about not having enough coffee for Ava.

Awesome! Because when you have a table of three unhappy people making a joke about not seeing we need something is golden.

I've eaten at Blue Plate often enough to know that this level of terrible service is most likely a fluke. But I'm upset enough by the experience that next time I want breakfast in the afternoon I'll go to the Park Cafe or try Finn's on 1700 South. Sorry, Blue Plate you gotta earn my love.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't have a lot of sympathy for stuff like that, when I was working in food, even when people were being total assholes I would grit my teeth and force my face into a smile (even though sometimes it looked completely fake and sort of that I was obviously gritting my teeth through it, but it doesn't matter because it WAS a SMILE DAMNIT!!).

So for people who can't even be bothered to fake at least a little happy bug me. Seriously, it sucks, but do it.

June 16, 2009 at 9:49 AM  
Blogger Mica said...

I've been to the Blue Plate Diner a couple of times and don't really have much desire to return and while the service was not terrible, it wasn't anywhere approaching good/nice. There are far too many other diners around to go somewhere with that kind of attitude.

June 16, 2009 at 3:02 PM  
Blogger Erin Carr said...

It breaks my heart

June 16, 2009 at 6:45 PM  
Blogger Krista Smith said...

I'm glad Ava and I agree. Fake your happiness people! How else are we supposed to know you're a good employee? Sheesh!

Thanks for the heads up Mica. Salt Lake offers plenty of diners with happier servers.

It's okay, Erin. We'll find a new Sunday afternoon breakfast place.

June 17, 2009 at 12:18 PM  

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