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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