| rev:text
| - Went to Rock Bottom on Martin Luther King Day with S to have a late lunch and catch up on my recent vacation. Although a holiday, by close to 3pm the place was not overrun with patrons. We stood in the entry and waited while several wait staff scurried by much to preoccupied to give us a glance; a host or hostess was nowhere to be found. This continued for a good three minutes while we contemplated the other choices in the Desert Ridge area. Finally glancing over from the bar a good 50ft from the podium, the "brew master" came over and offered to seat us.
We asked for a booth and as he began to lead us to the dining area, we passed booth after booth covered with dirty dishes from some "rush" that was not evident at this time in the afternoon...walking across the entire restaurant to place us at a booth on the back wall of the dining room. Menus in hand, we were eventually greeted by our waiter who took our drink order...ice tea for me, diet coke for S. The drinks were quickly brought and we were ready to place an appetizer order. We were told he would be right back. We sat and looked at the menu further while our waiter efficiently refilled the drinks of all of the tables in his charge. After approximately 10 minutes he returned and took our appetizer order...we decided NOT to place our lunch order for fear everything would arrive at the same time as sometimes happens at Rock Bottom.
Joining us at surrounding tables were a man and woman, and another man, woman, and a toddler of about 4 in full ballet tutu with a long strand of beads who spent most of her time on the floor or underneath the table or wandering up and down the aisle completely unsupervised
The waiter then appeared with drink refills and to take our entrée order. Being far from crowded, our Titan Toothpick appetizer came up fairly quickly under the heat lamp. After a couple of minutes, our waiter came over and said in a very authoritative voice..."Your Toothpicks are up I see...be right back with those". Being hungry and also seeing the order of toothpicks sitting there we waited in anticipation as he began once again to refill drink orders, one after the other, then began to clear a table, then two tables. Several times he walked near the kitchen where our Toothpicks sat...but each time he would veer off in another direction. Almost ten minutes passed and I wondered if we were to self-serve our own appetizers. Several of the other wait staff had been up to the counter, picked up their orders and left...Toothpicks still sitting when finally a nice well- meaning waitress took pity on us and brought them over. Magically, our waiter appeared almost immediately to ask how they were.
We figured he was new and had not learned pacing or serving techniques, but still were hoping to salvage the rest of lunch. About halfway through the Toothpicks...I saw our food appear under the heat lamp. Hoping to finish our appetizer I was shot down when the same nice waitress delivered our entrées....our waiter was yes..refilling drinks. The food was decent, no real complaints there...but nothing stellar.
Meanwhile the toddler floorshow had ramped up to include our ballerina now brandishing one of the large knives from the table as she roamed the aisle waving it around and when finally capturing the glance of one of her adult tablemates....she thrust it at them when told to behave with the raising of ones fist in the air. Between wait staff having to dodge the waving knife and the loud singing of our ballerina, it made for a truly surreal rest of our lunch.
After finishing our meal - and being more than ready to make our escape, our waiter brought our bill. Usually S and I split our meals down the middle when we go out and after glancing at our bill I handed it to S and asked if there was something out of the ordinary about it....S indeed also noticed that the first item on our bill was listed as an "Employee Red Bull - $2.99"
After bringing it to his attention, and him bringing a new version of the bill, we asked to split is and gave him two credit cards. His face fell, and he stood for a long time at the credit card machine before enlisting the help of another server. After a brief lesson he forged ahead and then after another failure...wandered off to the back of the restaurant for another few minutes before finally emerging with our bill and credit card slips. By then more than ready to leave, we grabbed our cards and slips to find that he had not included a pen.
It's funny..sometimes a restaurant can get away with an off meal or two...but one always tends to remember when the service was just plain bad. S felt bad about leaving only a 10% tip...but I had no problem. The lunch had become a nuisance due to bad service, and it will certainly keep me from rushing back to Rock Bottom at Desert Ridge anytime soon.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)