Pet Hates At Restaurants

This is an old post from my other blog More Thanh Words which I have decided to group here as it is about food.

I was talking to my friend Justin about a bad lunch I had at Bo Bo's in Pinewood. This brought up the topic of what we hated at restaurants. Well here are of few of my pet hates at restaurants.

* Waiters not bringing you ice water - Even after you ask for it many times, some always seems to "forget". Its not a case of them just forgetting I think. They are probably told by their bosses to sell as many drinks as possible since that is where easy profits lie, but if a customer wants water, they should get it. After asking quite a lot of times at some places, I think its all a conspiracy. Whats worse is when you have ordered drinks and they still don't bring you water.

* Restaurants not giving change - Some places seem to assume that if there is a few dollars extra, its tips for them. NO, this isn't the case. By law, they need to return the change and then its up to the consumer to decide whether they want to tip. I always tip if service is good but don't need to be forced to tip by not getting my change. At one place I had to ask why they didn't give me my change and they just said they made a mistake. Yeah right, when it happened again the next time, I knew this was a dodgy tactic they used since some people may not ask for their change back since its so little.

* Restaurants charging ridiculous amounts for tea and corkage - In regards to tea, I'm mainly talking about Chinese restaurants. Although it is customary at most Chinese restaurants to bring you tea immediately and its free or they charge a small once off fee for the whole table, some places charge by the PERSON. This is utterly ridiculous since they ask you immediately what tea you want and since you haven't had time to look at the menu yet, you don't know they will be charging you by the person. Places that do this without letting you know beforehand won't be getting my patronage again.

With corkage, charging up to $15 per person is too steep. The corkage is probably there to discourage people to bring alcohol but what if the restaurant doesn't have the wine that you want. If you don't want to let people bring their own alcohol, why not just say BYO is unavailable rather than have people bring their own only to discover how much the corkage is. And what exactly are their options, just leave their wine under the table and not open it when they were all ready to drink it.

* Waiters not double checking your order - Which means that after everyone's meal has arrived, one person at the table is left without anything to eat because the waiter forgot their order. This means that if everyone else waited for the missing meal, their own meals would get cold. If everyone else went ahead and ate, that person will be sitting there watching everyone else eat and then vice versa.

* Restaurants that don't let you split the bill - Whats with this. How hard can it be to let each person pay separately. Aren't we in the age of technology now where all places use electronic registers. It can't be that hard to punch out a few separate bills.

* People not washing their hands after going to the toilet - This one isn't about the restaurants but instead the customers. For example, yesterday night I saw a guy go to the toilet and then just walk straight out. UUUgggghhhh. I'm no germ freak but why wouldn't you wash your hands. You're about to go back out into an environment with lots of food, touch lots of places with your dirty hand as well as eating your dinner with those hands. No wonder those lab studies always find urine and faecal germs on people's toothbrushes even.

These are a few of my hates that I can think of now. As usual, please disagree if you like. Leave comments on what some of your pet hates are.