Came out thinking: let em burn.
Worse than mediocre rubber for $200 after tip and tax.
My homeless ex wanted RL for her bday last year. All of us and the families took her there for dinner. For me it was comparable to Walmart canned and frozen. She was happy enough with it but then she fixates on things.
I came in to the restaurant and there was no one at the front desk, but the place seemed to be operating normally so I just went on to seat at the nearest table I found. Waiters just started ignoring me; at some point I realized this was on purpose. Wtf.
Anyway, after like 20 mins. I stand up and ask one of the guys "what's going on?". He tells me that they knew I was there (!) but decided to ignore me because no one "seated me at that place". I tell him, well, do that now ... the guy just tells me they don't want to do that anymore because I should've done it when I entered the restaurant, then just like that asks me to leave the place (wtf x2).
I tell him that's ridiculous and he just says "I'm calling security" and walks away. After a few minutes, two huge guys come to my table and ask me what the problem is (they were actually quite polite). I tell them, I just walked into the restaurant, sat here, and just want to order something. They look at each other a bit confused (who knows what the waiter told them), ask me if that's it, "yes", ..., "ok, wait here a bit". After another like 10 mins., a different waiter comes up and starts catering to me.
Everything was normal afterwards, but that was super weird. Imagine getting beat up for walking into a restaurant and wanting to get some food.
Needless to say I never came back as the food turned out to be quite average, definitely not worth fighting for it, lol.
It sounds like you seated yourself at a section that wasn't open. "Sections" are often not obvious to customer, but they're really important to the wait staff. You don't grab tables outside your section; it can be seen as attempting to grab more tips. (A Red Lobster probably has tip pooling, but still, working outside your section is a no-no.) Eventually they got somebody to open your section.
Threatening to call security is also a no-no. He should have called the manager over. But if the host desk was unoccupied for more than a couple of minutes, it sounds like the manager was off fighting some kind of fire.
With the host desk unoccupied, the restaurant would prefer that you ask a passing waiter to find the host.
So I'm not surprised that wait staff were ignoring you. A better waiter would have figured out what was going on and signaled the host to come talk to you, and move you into an open section. But if you're waiting tables at Red Lobster, you're not being hired for your initiative.
Anyway... I hope that helps explain what happened. The upshot: don't seat yourself, but it sounds like they were being mismanaged anyway.
Eg I’ve borrowed an empty booth for 5 or 10 minutes in an empty section when I got paged while out to dinner. I didn’t expect any service.
I’ve also done it when I was out to eat and got bad news. I needed a minute alone, and outside the restaurant is usually very much not “alone”.
It seems like once the bouncer types got involved they thought the reason you were ignoring their system might be because you were crazy or high and they might have to kick you out. Once they determined you weren’t either of those they accommodated you.
Chain restaurants especially seem to be very process oriented and the staff would not be as good at improvising as those at a local place.
Is there no awareness in that industry - at any level - that some rules are an excellent way to lose business?
A local place has (well, had) an outstanding, unusual pizza. We were big fans and went often. Soon they started ignoring the ingredient ratio in their own recipe, then started ignoring the (paying) "extra X" options in the order. We started pointing out the problem, then pointing out the problem at the time of the order, then making sure the staff knew what it was we wanted when we ordered... then obviously gave up. Some places just aren't cut out for staying in business.
Yeah, that's exactly the kind of dining experience I want when I go out. /s
Do you feel the problem (sorry, "norm") contributed to improve or lower the bottom line of that business? Do you feel this improved or hurt the likelyhood these customers will come back? Do you feel they were the only ones to have run into this problem?
I'm from the US, but on the Canadian border, and Timmy's was the dominant coffee shop growing up. Even if you didn't drink coffee, that was the hang out.
We had a Dunkin that was probably less than 100 meters away from it that had a fire and never reopened. I definitely think it was a ploy for insurance money because they never had _any_ business. Tim Horton's dominated.
Then something happened around 2017 and their coffee became awful (it was never incredible, but it got much worse). Then their prices began to rise significantly. Whenever I go home, I get a cup of Timmy's coffee, but it's never good.
Turns out having nostalgia for a large food company doesn't play well in the long run. I'm sure the same applies to Red Lobster, but those kinds of places become part of your memories growing up and you want them to do well, maybe as a way of preserving those memories. Probably half of my friends and I had their first dates at Tim Horton's growing up. As much as I wish I didn't feel the need to drink their swill a few times a year, there's something that still draws me.
Tim Hortons got acquired by Burger King (Restaurant Brands International / QSR) in December 2014, and the quality started to decline over the next year or two
But, it's like the 'default' addiction for Canadians and crappy coffee (especially after they switched their coffee supplier to a much worse grade).
Before that, it was removing their in-house bakeries and supplying flash-frozen donut offerings. (And then after shifting the "overton window" for a couple years - reducing sizes, but keeping prices the same - they sold that as "healthier")
They moved their yearly promotional contest to an "app-only" mechanism - and have had major errors in notifying winners for 2-years in a row. (This year, my wife was notified that she won a $70,000+ boat+trailer... well, apparently so did a quarter-million other Canadians...)
And then there is the ever shifting introduction of nightmare food offerings - they keep shuffling the chairs around like something is going to be a big "hit".
The latest is crappy "cardboard flatbread pizza" - and they seemed to have removed the simple "grilled cheese" to accommodate that.
Their franchise owners blatantly abused the TFW program for obtaining minimum wage workers - and now they are abusing the student visa changes, because the TFW program was tightened.
They need to go. (The conglomerate who owns them, not the franchises - or workers)
(It's not anyone you saw at the restaurant...)
So let em burn!
Also: 9th up from the bottom: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html