How do you react to bad restaurant service? Are you calm, a complainer or a full-blown Karen? How a recent meal out ended in fireworks
- A busy restaurant can be a disaster if the staff aren’t professional. Most diners will get annoyed if they have to wait too long for their meals
- Recently we ate in a restaurant with overwhelmed staff, and saw the full range of reactions to late food, and mistakes on bills
What do you do when you get really bad restaurant service?
There are self-absorbed jerks who regularly complain over minor matters, like not getting a wedge of lime with their sparkling water or a steak not being the exact shade of pink they want.
That’s not what I’m talking about. Generally, I try to be very forgiving. Hospitality is a thankless task. Most servers work way harder than you think. Oversights and mistakes happen because we’re all human and they’re usually fixed with an abundance of apologies.
However, disasters do occur.
On a recent holiday weekend, my partner and I decided at the last minute to watch the Chinese National Day fireworks over Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. Without a reservation, we resigned ourselves to a quick casual bite in any nondescript eatery.
Naturally, most places were packed, but eventually we did manage to find a table for two. As we manoeuvred through the crowd to our seats, it was obvious the staff were overwhelmed.
‘Cheffy’, ‘chef’s kiss’, ‘stage’ added to the dictionary: did The Bear help?
The servers were clearly struggling to bring food out, take orders, and clean the tables of just departed customers.
It took a while to even get a menu. I decided on a set dinner, thinking it would be the easiest. It was just before 8pm when we ordered. The fireworks show began at 9pm.
The staff said the food should take less than 10 minutes to be served. I thought she would say half an hour. I assumed her guesstimate was optimistic.
The couple at the next table were also waiting for their orders. Over the next 20 minutes, they would accost the waitress three times about their meal.
I felt lucky when our soup and salad arrived in less than 10 minutes. However, the main courses would require another 40 minutes. I hate being pushy, but that is a bit too long. The restaurant had to know guests would want to finish before the light show over the harbour.
Of course, several other tables were also waiting. It got more annoying when another table that arrived after us got their main course before ours.
I suspect the waiting staff and cooks were probably part-time minimum wagers. I wasn’t expecting hotel school graduates or Michelin-star restaurant apprentices, but I just wish they were conscientious enough to empathise with paying customers.
Instead, they were incredibly slow and had a habit of leaning against the bar rather than being proactive about diners’ needs.
In such a situation, should I have thrown a tantrum and started yelling? Another customer was already belligerent, complaining the server made a mistake on her bill. Indeed, she was being a total Karen and continued to harangue them out loud even after the matter was settled.
I wasn’t going to behave this way, but I still wanted my dinner. Calmly, we asked them to look into our food, again, please.
Eventually, it arrived – my pork belly was meh, at best. The fireworks started as we rushed to finish.
It’s hard to find home-grown produce in Hong Kong? I very much disagree
We finished, went outside and caught part of the display from between some buildings, then returned to the restaurant to finish our dessert course.
The night didn’t turn out as we planned and it was a bit of a disaster. But at least we didn’t embarrass ourselves by abusing underpaid people, even if they weren’t very good at their jobs.
Honestly, I’m also thankful I don’t have to serve a horde of people on long holiday weekends.
