blogging from cali
I don't know how regularly I'll be blogging while in San Francisco for the summer, but while I have a couple things to say and plenty of free time I will post. The first is a little story I have to tell. I believe New Haven is generally considered to have good Thai restaurants. One of these (let's call it 'BG') is well regarded for its food and poorly regarded for its service. I've had a few nice dinners there before, and I'm sure I'll go again, but this experience was rather bizarre, and I would like to share it.
I went to BG with a group of people for dinner the night before flying to CA, to have a nice little social evening with some good friends still in town. The service at first was fine - they refilled the water glasses far more promptly than necessary, took our order and brought our food on time, and so forth. And then the bill arrived. We didn't look that closely at it; we just each figured out how much we owed, put it all together, and realized it was about $5 short. So I took the check and stared at it for a while, and realized they charged us for 3 beers when we only had 2. Helpfully, they had attached the original note that the waitress had taken our order on, which clearly indicated that 2 beers had been ordered, as 'Sapporo' was written down with 2 hash marks next to it. I called the waitress over, pointed this out, and she took the check back to 'fix' it.
To my surprise, when she returned, the bill was $1 higher. This was because one of the prices of the entrees had been changed from $9.95 to $10.95. As the prices were not labelled, but were labelled simply with 'Taxable #1' or something similar, I have no idea which one it was, and didn't feel that it was worth it to challenge the increase. What was worth challenging was the persistence of the third beer on the tab. I looked at the original, which had been reattached to this new receipt, and saw that someone had written a third hash mark next to 'Sapporo', clearly using a different writing instrument (the mark was darker and thicker). It's hard to describe my reaction to this. I'll borrow the words of one of my co-diners, who described it as 'comically unprofessional'.
So, I called the waitress over, pointed this all out, and she took the check back. This time, when she brought it back, the beer was gone. But guess what? They decided to include the gratuity this time. Let's hope that they generally have a policy of including the gratuity for parties of 6 or more, and that they honestly forgot it the first two times, as ridiculous as that may seem. Because the alternative is that they figured we would stiff them on the tip, and decided to include a gratuity in the check to forestall this. As the gratuity wasn't exorbitant (I think it was around 17%), and we were all frustrated and ready to go, we let it stand.
I must say, even though the food is good, it will be a while before I want to go back there.
I went to BG with a group of people for dinner the night before flying to CA, to have a nice little social evening with some good friends still in town. The service at first was fine - they refilled the water glasses far more promptly than necessary, took our order and brought our food on time, and so forth. And then the bill arrived. We didn't look that closely at it; we just each figured out how much we owed, put it all together, and realized it was about $5 short. So I took the check and stared at it for a while, and realized they charged us for 3 beers when we only had 2. Helpfully, they had attached the original note that the waitress had taken our order on, which clearly indicated that 2 beers had been ordered, as 'Sapporo' was written down with 2 hash marks next to it. I called the waitress over, pointed this out, and she took the check back to 'fix' it.
To my surprise, when she returned, the bill was $1 higher. This was because one of the prices of the entrees had been changed from $9.95 to $10.95. As the prices were not labelled, but were labelled simply with 'Taxable #1' or something similar, I have no idea which one it was, and didn't feel that it was worth it to challenge the increase. What was worth challenging was the persistence of the third beer on the tab. I looked at the original, which had been reattached to this new receipt, and saw that someone had written a third hash mark next to 'Sapporo', clearly using a different writing instrument (the mark was darker and thicker). It's hard to describe my reaction to this. I'll borrow the words of one of my co-diners, who described it as 'comically unprofessional'.
So, I called the waitress over, pointed this all out, and she took the check back. This time, when she brought it back, the beer was gone. But guess what? They decided to include the gratuity this time. Let's hope that they generally have a policy of including the gratuity for parties of 6 or more, and that they honestly forgot it the first two times, as ridiculous as that may seem. Because the alternative is that they figured we would stiff them on the tip, and decided to include a gratuity in the check to forestall this. As the gratuity wasn't exorbitant (I think it was around 17%), and we were all frustrated and ready to go, we let it stand.
I must say, even though the food is good, it will be a while before I want to go back there.
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