I went to Mom’s place last night, because Walgreen’s has decided to ignore my husbands availability for yesterday and today and he is working until 11:30pm, despite the fact that while Friday is an annoyance, the reason he can’t work late on Saturday is because we have church early, he teaches Sunday School, and with school/work during the week, it’s one of the only days he has to prepare his lesson. They are doing this to everyone this month, and this may be the only time they ever do it, or they may decide to do it once or twice a year.
Regardless of my annoyance, that’s why I went to Mom’s. I didn’t want to sit at home all evening by myself, so I went and kept her company. My Aunt Cindy and cousin Crystal came over while I was there, and eventually we decided to go get some food. I said Friendly’s sounded good, because we don’t have them here in Cincinannti. (Woe is me.) Everyone agreed on the choice, and off we went.
We were seated and the girls went off to go play with the claw machines and stuff because they didn’t want to sit with the “adults”. Meanwhile, the three of us started bantering back and forth and kicking up a good old time. We haven’t gotten a chance to get out together in a while and we were goofing off and just having fun, and Cindy was proving she could be the “guy” of the group, belching on command whenever she felt the need, and then went back to the “girl” as she giggled afterwards. 
The waitress we got was inept to say the least. She came to take our drink order, and apparently that was too much for her. Missy and Crystal ordered some blue raspberry nastiness, Mom ordered a diet coke with vanilla syrup added, and Cindy and I both got water with lemon, but Cindy also ordered a cup of coffee. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Apparently the girl not only talked like she had marbles in her mouth, but she had them for brains as well. After several minutes, she finally brought the drinks out and informed Cindy that they making a fresh pot of coffee so it would be a couple minutes yet. Cindy said “Oh, that’s fine” and went back to talking to us. The waitress was sent away as we had no idea what to order, and that happened several times. (It took us a good 15 minutes for me and Mom to decide on our food).
When the waitress finally brought Cindy’s coffee out, she gave it to me. I was sitting across from Cindy, and the dingbat had even spoken to Cindy about the coffee AFTER she ordered it, so there was no excuse for that in my opinion. We finally put our food order in, and that is when we realized we truly got the dumbest waitress any of us had ever ecountered. Cindy ordered her food and Crystals, and told her what Missy wanted, and confused the girl in the process. So Mom spoke up, and ended up having to SHOW THE GIRL THE PICTURE in the menu just to get her to understand what she wanted. After asking 4 times, we thought she finally had it right. Mom and I both ordered sampler platters for our meals, and I ordered an Onion ring/Waffle fries basket as an actual appetizer, with cheddar cheese and bacon added on to them, sour cream on the side. Easy, right? Of course not. I had to tell her 5 times what I wanted, and on the 5th time, she looked at me and said “Oh, you wanted the Onion Rings AND Waffle Fries?” *Groan and grit my teeth* (Me)- “Yes, this one, right here on the menu!” And we had to point to the picture for this one too. *sigh*
She left and we all looked at each other and speculated as to how much of our order was going to be wrong. Oh yes! Please note, she had been to the table to take our drink order, try to get our food order a couple times, and once she got our food order, we did not see her again for 25 minutes. We were just beginning to wonder if they were growing the potatoes when she brought the appetizer out, and were impressed it was correct. She didn’t stick around to get drink refill orders though. She hightailed it back to the kitchen before we could ask. Another 15 minutes came and went, and finally our actual food came out, and Missy’s was wrong, mine was missing one of the sauces it was supposed to come with, and she tried to dart back to the kitchen again, but Cindy was able to get a coffee refil in and Mom and I were able to get another soda and water respectively.
After we got the drinks and my sauce (Missy decided she would live with the fact that they put her sauce on the side instead of ON her chicken strips like they were supposed to), she vanished. She would walk by our table from time to time to help other tables around us, but systematically avoided us. Now, me, Mom and Cindy may have been laughing and joking around, but we weren’t being rude, loud about it, or vulgar. We were always very polite to our waitress when she was actually around, so we really didn’t have any idea what the bloody problem was.
The point is, through our entire meal, she NEVER came back. We were done and needing boxes and finally flagged her down to get boxes, which she brought and left again without asking if we wanted our bill. We were embarassing the girls, so they went out to Cindy’s car while we were still at the table, and Cindy decided she’d had enough of our waitress and went and got the manager. He came and was apologizing all over the place, stumbling over his words and not sure what we wanted. He ended up making some adjustments to our bill, which meant that for me, Mom and Missy, I paid 15 bucks instead of the almost 40 I would have. After he had gone and come back with the adjusted bill, our waitress decided to come back and ask if we were ready for our check and if we wanted our check separated or not. We informed her we had already had it taken care of and gotten our check and she said “Oh, well that explains why someone separated it already” and wandered off. The three of us just looked at each other, bit our toungues and went to pay.
I gave the manager our check, paid for it and was waiting for change when our waitress came to the counter and asked if we’d been helped yet. We told her the manager was taking care of us and she trotted off again. He came back, and we told him that he really needed to talk to her. Waitressing may not be a glamorous job, but if you actually want to earn a tip, you should do your bloody job. He said he would, and we left to go driving around for a couple hours just chatting and goofing off before I had to make the drive home.
Needless to say, the waitress did not get a tip. You know, I know that Kroger will hire the mentally inept to be baggers and stuff, and I admire that. It’s an easy job that they can do while being productive members of society. Wal-Mart occasionally hires them to be greeters at the door, again, easy job while being a productive member of society. Apparently Friendly’s was trying the same concept. I have news for ‘em. They failed. They need to send her back across the parking lot to Krogers. She’ll make more and screw less up.
Okay, that’s my venting for now. Heather keeps telling me I don’t post enough, so I made two posts within a week of each other. 
Don’t tell me I don’t ever give you anything, Heather. xP
Fare thee well till next our paths cross, blog readers. *Waves as she slips back into the silent shadows of cyber space*
