It Only Hurts When I Blog

Greetings, Bloggy Consumers!

Every Monday night, Charlie and I have been going to our local Cracker Barrel restaurant for dinner, sometimes by ourselves, sometimes with another couple.

I like going to Cracker Barrel, I like not cooking on Monday nights, and it's the closest restaurant to our house.

Generally, the food is good. Generally, the waitstaff is adequate, though we have our share of misunderstandings. Example - Charlie gets 'sweet tea' and I get 'unsweet with extra lemons'. How hard is that to get right? A common problem is to give me the sweet and Charlie the unsweet, or to bring us both sweet tea, and to forget the extra lemons.

Last night, we just had one error too many. I really think our waiter had a lot to do with that, though he always had an excuse to imply it was the kitchen's fault. Actually, I agree that some of it was the kitchen's fault, but not all.

I ordered unsweet tea with extra lemons. I got sweet tea with extra lemons. The replacement tea tasted like Kool-aid. I heard the table next to ours complaining that they didn't get their 'raspberry tea'. That's because it was served to ME. Again it went back, this time an unsweet tea with no lemons arrived, and I stole the lemons out of another glass. We had already been served our MEALS by that time, and I still didn't have a drink. By the way - our teas were never refilled by our waiter.

I ordered fat free salad dressing, which comes in a packet. I was served regular dressing, and had to wait for the waiter to replace it. My salad greens were far from fresh, and I picked out some of them that I wouldn't eat and put them on a plate.

Charlie's dinner wasn't piping hot, and his servings of vegetables were skimpy. My dinner was fine. After the meal, the waiter couldn't figure out which ticket was ours, even after we picked it out of the pile for him and he read it.

When we got to the register, the clerk asked how our meal was. I said 'Only marginal'. He asked 'Would you like to speak to a manager about that?'. I paused, took a deep breath, thought about our experience, and said 'Yes'. It was a meal worth complaining over.

Unfortunately, as soon as I mentioned that we go there every Monday night, and mentioned the wilted salad greens, that was enough for the manager and I didn't even get a chance to tell him the long list of other issues.

'Would you allow me to take care of this for you?', he gushed, holding our $22 check. We didn't argue - YES, it is GREAT if you want to take care of it. Our Cracker Barrel satisfaction meter just rose a few points. ;-)

We'll give 'em another try next Monday night, by the way!

Today at work we're having a group birthday lunch at P.F. Changs. Wish me luck!

Breaking news at 7:03 - I was reading the newspaper and the 'Animal Planet' cable tv channel is airing Steve Irwin's (Croc Hunter) memorial tonight at 8pm Central time, which is 9pm Eastern time. Check your local listings.