Bad experience, hoping it was isolated: Came here later in the evening on a weeknight so no long waits.. hold on, it was the opposite of too many people waiting to be seated. We walked in and nobody was up front seating customers. There was a couple waiting to be checked out and pay as well. Finally, I noticed, the employee that was outside who saw us walk in, came inside after about 5 minutes of standing there. If you see customers walk in, the first reaction is to help or have someone else attend to them. Unfortunately, she also became our server after seating us. Maybe their operations is: whomever comes up front and seats the next guests becomes yours to serve. Then we made the mistake of asking her to give us "just one more minute" to order, and it felt like she forgot about us as I had to wave her down nearly 10 minutes later.
The food was fine, but there's no excuse for the level of service we got with hardly many customers inside. Even with so many servers that night, the ratio was like 2 tables to each. Only reason I'll return is that it seems cleaner than other IHOPs I've been to in Charlotte.