Hi,
Firstly, I shouldn't even have given a 1 star rating to a restaurant with as bad service, staff and kitchen as this one.
We entered Works around 8.20-8.25pm for dine-in - saw the sign 'Please Wait to be Seated', so just stood around and waited for a bit. There was one girl at a cash register, one taking an order and another one who was taking an order but then proceeded to fill some drinks. We stood there for more than 5-6 minutes with none of them bothering to come towards us (although all 3 had seen us) or welcome us or ask us what we wanted (dine in/take away).Finally, my friend walked towards the cash register himself and asked the girl if they had a table (we saw that nearly 4 tables were empty - one of them big enough to fit our party of 4 adults and 2 kids). The girl answered 'ok but you will have to wait 10-15 minutes' to which my friend asked why (since there was a table available) and she said because it will take us that much time to clean it. Though taken aback he just said ok and we all just continued to stand around with the 2 kids and wait. Another 10-15 mins passed by but none of the 3 girls went to clean the table in question. After 15 mins we asked the same girl again what the deal was. She replied 'Well it will take you an hour to an hour thirty minutes' Flabbergasted we asked why since the table was there. She replied 'Well the kitchen is working to capacity so it will take you at least that much time to get your food'. We could not believe what we heard. Never had we ever gotten a reply like that from a restaurant which WAS NOT even full to capacity (by that time another party had left so they had close to 5 tables empty). Disgusted I just said that we would leave right then. She didn't seem sorry or apologetic.
Needless to say, this has been the worst experience ever for us of going to a restaurant. Never have I ever been to a restaurant where the staff completely chooses to ignore you and then later doesn't even bother to inform you what the situation is. We were just left standing there for all that time with two kids, in the middle of a (not-so-big) restaurant feeling like fools. Seems the kitchen staff is as incompetent as the dining room staff if they can't even cope with a restaurant running at 60-70% capacity. I am sure the owners are happily keeping the restaurant under-staffed and the prices as high as possible. Completely disgusted. Will NOT be returning to the WORKS and will make sure we discourage as many people as we can from going there.