Every have one of those days where everything, including blogging, has lost it’s appeal? I don’t feel like blogging, I don’t feel like crocheting, I don’t want to cross stitch, I don’t want to watch movies, I don’t want to read. I don’t want to do anything. Maybe it’s because my stomach hurts for no apparent reason. It feels like a gallbladder attack, with one slight problem. I don’t have one. I haven’t had one for 11 years now. So who knows? Maybe I’m just not in the mood for anything and my body is trying to give me a real reason not to do anything. LOL

Last night my friends and I went to a local place called Johnnie Mars. That place is so awesome! It’s “down home” cooking and it’s good prices too. My friends both got the grilled chicken dinner which was chicken, choice of potato, salad bar, cup of soup, and dinner roll. I got the ribeye dinner which was steak, choice of potato, salad bar, cup of soup, and dinner roll. We also got an order of cheddar cheese balls and each got a slice of pie. We walked out of there for about $43, stuffed to the gills. We paid less there than at Perkins the night before, and we were still hungry after we left Perkins.

Perkins pissed us off though. We left Perkins at 11PM. At 5:30AM (yes, 5:30AM) we got a call from Perkins saying that the check we’d written did not have sufficient funds to cover it in our bank. Problem number 1 - they don’t use the same bank we do, and our bank does NOT have 24 hour service, so how could they find that out. Problem number 2 - when we went to the bank at about 1PM, there was more than enough money in the bank to cover the check and no deposits had been made to the account for over a week. So explain to me how it is that Perkins called us, asked for my friend by name, and stated that there wasn’t enough to cover the check in the bank at 5:30AM the same day? We think they changed the amount the check was written for. My friend is going to be checking with the bank in a couple of days to see if the check cleared and for how much. It wasn’t written in a way that it could have been changed on the check, but we think they at least tried to change it.

As a result, we’re not going back there. You see, this is the second time that a member of the wait staff or management has offered to take our payment to the register for us and the second time that something bad has happened as a result of that. Frankly, we’re tired of it. Last time we lost $10 cash to them because they swear we gave them $50, not $60 to pay our bill. We gave them 3 $20 bills. So yeah, we gave them $60 and they gave us $5 change for a $45 bill. So someone got a $10 tip that we weren’t intending to give them. Now this crap with the check. Frankly, I think it’s a bunch of bullshit and I think it’s simply a matter of trying to “force” us to leave tips.

You see, we base what tips we leave on how the service is. If the place isn’t busy and we’re being ignored (needing refills on drinks, waiting forever to just order our food, waiting forever for our check, etc) we won’t leave a tip. We’ll reduce the tip if the wait person comes over 5 minutes after bringing our food and asking about dessert. Here’s a clue - asking about dessert should be left until everyone, and I do mean everyone at the table has finished their main meal. Nine times out of ten, we are getting asked about dessert before we even get half of our dinners down. Not cool. Another no-no - leaving the check before asking about dessert. We shouldn’t have to tell you we want dessert because you’re leaving the check.

A lot of people say that it’s wrong to leave a small tip. Let me tell you something. The way a lot of wait staff treat people is why they don’t get tips. If the waitress is good, she’ll get a decent tip. If she’s ok, she’ll get a smaller tip. If she’s just horrible, no tip. Tips are a reward for properly caring for your customers. They are NOT mandatory and nor should they be. If a restaurant automatically adds the tip to the check, I don’t eat there. Only the patron should have the right to decide what the tip is and if it should be given or not. End of story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.