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| - Oh no. Johnny's! I've been trying to review you for at least a year, and haven't been able to figure out if that review would be good, bad, or ambivalent. Tonight's experience pushed it firmly into the bad category, all thanks to one shitty employee.
I went with my husband and mother-in-law for dinner on a Friday night. It's a semi-regular spot in our rotation, because we like the food, usually have good waitresses, and she has been going there for decades. All started out well, we got a round of drinks quick enough, which never hurts. Ordered the delicious arancini, then soup/salad, and entrees. Once the soup course was cleared away, we ran into a long wait. A very, very long wait. Long enough that the waitress came and apologized it had been so long, explaining they had a very large party in the back, and our entrees were backed up while the kitchen worked on their food. Fair enough - but then it was another 15 minutes or so before we stopped a food runner passing by to ask where our food was. She checked and said it would be out shortly, and it arrived about 5 minutes later. The entrees were all delicious.
So from the time we ordered to the time we got entrees, we waited more than 90 minutes. We were asking for a check after being there just under 2 hours. That's a bit rough, especially for an 80 year old Italian girl. So naturally, she asked to talk to a manager. And that is when things went all wrong for Johnny's. The manager was an absolutely miserable, nasty person to deal with, which is the last thing a restaurant should send to a table that's already had a negative experience to start with.
On a Friday night during dinner service, the manager was sitting on her ass talking to a table. There's no excuse for a guest to need to request the manager in the first place - we were there long enough that she was doing a poor job by not having checked in with us already. Also, other tables around us had complained to the wait staff, and if she didn't know that and stop to talk to them too, shame on her. One table got so tired of waiting for food they had it boxed up to go before it ever even got to them. On hearing that a table had requested her, she was visibly uninterested in getting on her feet, but eventually managed to wander over with a dramatic eye roll to see what the problem was.
She should have just refused to do her job at all, she did such a bad job of it. She came to the table, curtly heard my mother-in-law's complaint, said she needed to talk to the wait staff and stomped away. When she eventually returned, she brought a check, and stated that she had taken off the appetizer and a round of drinks, and informed us that when we return she would need to PERSONALLY wait on us because we always complain when we go there.
Wait, do we? Oh right. The last time we were there, the hostess sat us at a table with a good half a plate of French fries on the floor. We asked if we could sit somewhere else, or if the fries could be cleaned up. She just shrugged and asked what she was supposed to do about it. That was so unintentionally funny, we laughed. After we had ordered someone did come over to sweep them up. We then had a very similar experience - drinks, apps, and soup came out, then an hour plus wait for entrees. And then . . . the food came out . . . wrong. So no, we didn't want that entrée, and took the right one home in a box, because that's way too long to wait for the wrong food. That time the waitress handled the mix up beautifully and left us happy enough that we never questioned going back.
We usually go to Johnny's 8-10 times a year, and that's the only time I remember having a serious complaint before. After having 2 bad experiences, and bringing it up each time, the manager let us know that we are the problem. After she dropped the check, she walked away and threw a dish into the bus pan, so hard it may have broken. Wrong answer, honey. Don't be rude to a couple middle aged queens and their favorite girl.
I'm a manager. And I can say, manager to manager, you're doing it all wrong. When a customer has a bad experience, they most likely aren't going to let you know, and aren't going to give you the chance to fix it. Instead they will tell all their friends, and go online to passively aggressively tell the internet all the things you did wrong that they didn't tell you. Every time a customer complains, you need to take that seriously, because there are 20 other people who were mad but just paid and left mad. You need to take that feedback, be grateful, and do the best you can to rectify the situation. There's no reason to get upset with a guest for being honest about how your service failed to meet their expectations, you're just being a really bad manager for acting that way.
It's unfortunate I left tonight so unhappy. The restaurant has only the manager to blame for that. Mistakes happen, that is inevitable. It's how you handle them when they happen that makes them understandable.
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