I ate with 3 other friends.
1.23PM orders are placed. Our orders are not repeated back to us.
1.33PM food arrived. I had ordered a pork pad see ew but instead was served a chicken pad see ew. I asked for a pork pad see ew to be served accordingly.
1.40PM I chase on my pad see ew. I get a “it’s coming” and then a swift walk away from the server.
1.45PM I chase again. Again, “it’s coming” with no indication as to when it’d be coming. I explicitly asked “when?” The server said “it’s coming”.
Circa 1.45PM my friends have all finished 85%+ of their food.
1.50PM I chase again. Below exchanges are obviously paraphrased.
I’m told by the server “They’re making it now. It’ll be 3-4 minutes.”
To which I reply “If they’re making it only now what exactly were they doing prior to this conversation?”
Server “Well, what happened is that you told me that it should be pork instead of chicken. So the kitchen only started making it after they were done with the other dishes in the queue.” Tone was that she was doing me a favor. Actually, the tone was that I was at fault for the delay. When actually it was her inability to parse the word “pork” the caused the whole delay. No indication that she was sorry that I would be waiting at least half an hour for a dish.
No indication that she was aware that the sole reason why I had to tell her that it was pork instead of chicken was because she was got the order wrong in the first place (see also above where she didn’t repeat the order back to us).
1.55PM my food finally arrives. I get to enjoy a dish that I ordered 32 minutes previously.
So there are two things wrong here:
1. Kitchen workflow management system doesn’t make sense. If an order was wrong then the re-made order’s priority should be the same as the original order’s priority. So if I ordered A at t=1, and order B and C come at t=2, and I realize that order A is wrong at t=3 and request a remake at t=3, then order A should be made before B and C. Not after B and C. It makes no that I should be punished (by having to wait) by your servers’ incompetence.
2. Your servers lack of a sense of personal responsibility at best, and are dishonest at worst. Dishonesty is filthy, disgusting behavior. Prior to 1.50PM there is no way my food was “coming” if it wasn’t even beginning to be prepared yet. Well, it could’ve been coming in the sense that at any time the restaurant closed for service that day it would’ve come. But any reasonable person would interpret “it’s coming” as “it’s being prepared”.
Otherwise, it’s just a useless holding response when the servers don’t even have information on when it’d come.
In which case wouldn’t it be their responsibility to check up with the kitchen for an ETA?
The server at 1.45PM should’ve checked when it was coming when i asked when it was coming. “It’s coming” is a completely useless answer to the question of “when is it coming?”
The server at 1.50PM exhibited an especially egregiously nasty tone of voice. Zero sense of personal responsibility for something that was her fault. It’s fine to make mistakes but own up to it. Have some integrity.
1/10 awful restaurant, terrible workflow management, terrible servers.