Today my office informally (read: pay for yourself) went out to lunch to celebrate one of our co-worker's last day. Since it was her lunch, it was her pick of the restaurant we would eat at, she chose Romano's Macaroni Grill. I wasn't too excited about the pick since Natali and I had gone out to dinner there and the service was sub-par at best. But I figured, its not my lunch and maybe the lunch service will be a little better. We got there and the restaurant was practically empty. There were only two other tables of customers and our group of ten easily doubled the number of patrons. We quickly learned why the restaurant was so empty, the lunch service is no better than the dinner. Despite the sparse number of eaters, it still took us over an hour to get our food (which is our entire lunch break), even every person except one ordered salads or sandwiches! I usually judge our service based on the number of times I have to slurp out of the bottom of my water cup. ( Total number of water refills during the 90 minute lunch: 1). Of course because of the size of our group (even though we split the bill in to two halves of the table) the gratuity was added into the bill automatically (at 18%, which is way more than I would have tipped for the ridiculously bad service).
Side note: My method of tipping at a restaurant goes as such: you start off at a 15% tip. You earn "points" for good service and lose "points" for bad service. At the end of the dinner, your tip is 15% +/- the number of points. (everything ends up relating to a game for me)
We quickly divided up the bill and everyone gave their cash so I could put the bill on the card (I forgot to go to the ATM). My original receipt had two totals on it: the first was the bill and tax ($53.70) and the second was with the bill, tax, and 18% tip ($62.65). I stuck my card in the folder and handed it back to the server. When he returned, he had the two receipts (my copy and the original) folded in half on the left side and the "restaurant copy" on the right side facing me. Since we were now 20 minutes past when we should have been back at the office, I quickly added the the $9.00 tip to my "charge amount" and signed it. I set it down grabbed my jacket and headed toward the door... WAIT! I went back and looked at the receipt. The charge amount included my tip! I scratched out the tip amount and wrote a big "0" in both the "tip amount" and "additional tip" (WTF? and why is this one "optional").
I'm still a little pissed about that. The Caesar salad that I didn't order, almost cost me twenty bucks!*
ETA: I don't know how I didn't see this, but on the back of the main receipt is... yep, you guessed it a "Guest Experience Survey". I get to complain AND I have a chance to win $1,000! :)
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3 comments:
Yeah, that place also costs a buck or two more per entrée than it should.
If you have to go to a big, corporate Italian restaurant, go Olive Garden.
I hate that! We had a similar situation with the hockey team one away weekend. The men were sitting at one table, the women at another, and the kids an another. The ding-a-ling waitress spent every waking minute flirting with all the men, and would not come to the women's table for anything. Little did she know that the women were the ones paying the bills! Even though we were all paying on seperate checks, the gratuity was still added in (WTH?!) and her tip was almost the same amount as my appetizer (that and a soda were the only things on the check). I was LIVID.
That sucks you got bad service... the one we used to go to in CO all the time was really great. (But of course we haven't been there in over a year.)
As for the tip, it doesn't matter if everyone is on a seperate ticket, they go off the number of people in the party if it's a place that adds gratuity for more than a certain number of people. However, if you feel that tip wasn't earned, you do not have to pay it. Ask for the manager and they should take it right off. I've seen it done many times when I was in the biz. (But of course they were never my tables! ;) )
Good luck with the survey!
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