Tuesday, May 20, 2008

You kids get off my lawn!

Grantapalooza aught 8 has come to a successful conclusion, by which I mean I am still (barely) alive. It’s time to buckle-down and act my age, which means I’ll need a lot of naps during which I’ll practice lying on my back with my hands clasped over my chest. Actually, I think I prefer to be cremated. Actually, I think I prefer that my body be stuffed with explosives and then sent to the local post office. Not only do they take an extra day to ship everything (after an Anthrax scare they quit processing mail there – they ship it all to downtown Atlanta to be re-mailed from there), they take pride in finding a reason why they can’t accept a parcel for shipment. I actually spent a Saturday morning there and was the only person who managed to get a package shipped, and that’s because I still pack according to military procedure for overseas shipments. Anyway, I’m sure blogging my request is as good as any notarized document, so now I don’t have to bother with a will.

As usual, the cheapest restaurant had the best food and service (Pattaya is too cheap to even have a website – lunch is usually about $7 there), and the most expensive was something of a letdown. AFM ordinarily has very good service, although they make me nervous by memorizing the orders instead of writing them down, but not this time. I went with three friends, one of whom is my Japanese instructor and has wanted to go for years but couldn’t because it’s out of her price range. They started by forgetting her request for water without ice, then apologized for the mistake without offering to correct it. This time they wrote the orders down, but then delivered most items to the wrong person (I know it’s not impressive to ask who ordered what, but it’s far less impressive to assume your customers will recognize which type of fish is which and can sort it out themselves), plus they kept rearranging sensei’s chopsticks (Japanese don’t line them up like silverware, they place them horizontally in front of them) and they took away her homemade chopstick rest without asking if it was trash. In my case, they delivered my lobster without the drawn butter and when I asked for it they treated the request as an imposition (“Drawn butter with lobster? Weird, but I guess you’re the customer.”). Fortunately the food was fantastic and sensei enjoyed herself because she doesn’t expect Americans to understand the concept of hospitality. Unfortunately, they just reinforced the stereotype.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hate restaurants with waitresses like that. I hope your birthday was a good one. I was too busy being selfish in my own life to remember about yours. (kidding-you know I haven't been here!)

Kira said...

Mostly she enjoyed herself because her company was awesome. That's what I think. Oh, and that the women got to tell the men what they must order for dessert. I think that was a high point as well.

Stacy The Peanut Queen said...

"they treated the request as an imposition"

Not cool. The customer gets what the customer wants...that's what they're in the business for....they're called servers, right???

Grant said...

mm - get back to blogging! :p

kira - that's true, I am totally awesome to be around. I want to take everyone back there again in the hopes I can show her the service is normally very good.

pq - all waitresses should legally be requred to offer sex in addition to the menu items. I would definitely spend more time in J-restaurants if they did.

Monogram Queen said...

I do not like it when they attempt to remember at all. WRITE IT DOWN LOL