Saturday, July 31, 2010

Sending customer satisfaction (and safety) across the table...

The tittle pretty much sums it up, some restaurants have just completely lost all notions of customer satisfaction and social responsibility. I have never before in my life had such an awful experience as the one my friends and I encountered Thursday night in Montreal's Restaurant/club 'Cafeteria'.
The strangest thing about this evening, was that the two separate times we frequented this place yielded two completely opposing results. We first sat down to dinner and had quite a satisfactory meal; tasty, reasonably priced and attentive service. We also noticed that from 10 to 12pm there was going to be an open bar for the ladies. We were quite thrilled, thinking we had found just the spot to return to with a different group of friends later on in the evening.
However, upon our return, things took an unpleasant nose-dive for the worse. Before waltzing into our hot spot, I made sure that the open bar was indeed an open bar and after a little bout of confusion (which apparently should have alerted me to the fact that none of the workers knew what was going on), we were told that the open bar was going on and that we could enjoy its services at a table and that they included the wine list as well as the cocktail menu...Paradise! I should have headed the warning sirens going off distantly in the back of my mind.
But before I get all wrapped up in the woes of this doomed tale, allow me to introduce a character to the plot...this being the obnoxious and intoxicated individual who decided to pay us a couple of visits.
While we were enjoying our first cocktail, he interjected our conversation with some relationship revelations. These were quite entertaining and left us no more than a little abashed in our booth. During our second cocktail (and his one millionth), he returned with some more direct approaches, including attempts to kiss my friend as well as offers to buy us another drink. Instead of succeeding with the latter, he proceeded to knock my friends cocktail clear across the table where it shattered into ten different pieces. By this time the entire restuarant was all in a dither about this scene...meanwhile, the restaurant workers finally step in and bring the individual back to the bar (I say, smart move!) After we settled back in our booth, my other friend realises with pleasant surprise that her leg has been sliced by a stray fragment of glass.
This is when we should have just left, but because we were still under the pretense of getting more open bar service, we decided to stick it out for one more drink once my friend got all patched up. You can imagine the confusion when we told our waitress we were done and she said she would be right back with the check.
Suffice it to say that the open bar, was only at the bar (like I originally thought) and only on certain drinks. Both facts which had conveniently been withheld from our knowledge as we proceeded to order our cocktails. Even more unfortunate was the manner in which this miscommunication was handled by the so-called manager. After I had explained our distress in the whole evening, he said and I quote, 'It is not my responsibility'. Any manager who can say that and mean it, is without a doubt, among the dimmer creatures of this world. I could see I was fighting a loosing battle and settled with the pathetic twenty percent off they gave us.
In retrospect, I should have alerted the police of the public disturbance going on at the Cafeteria restaurant and at least that would have put the fire in the right place.
I now only feel sorry for those who have to work under such a slimy individual, at least we got to walk away from the place with nothing but life experience and a little cut...some of those waitresses looked a little trapped...
For future reference, avoid this spot: 3581 St-Laurent Blvd, Montreal Quebec.

No comments:

Post a Comment