So, I went out to eat solo at a nice sit down restaurant. (Not generally a recommended activity. It’s typically boring and lonely, thus somewhat depressing, as well as expensive). I decide to try an unfamiliar dish, order it, it arrives, and it’s well enough done, but not really to my liking at all. My waitress dropped by and asked how I was liking it, so I said “It’s fine, thank you,” as any midwestern raised gentleman might. I pick out the bits I like and leave half the dish. She comes by and asks if I’d like to have it boxed. I decline. She then asks if I was sure the dish was fine. I said in essence “Well, it was an experiment, and, as experiments sometimes do, this one did not go well.” She was dismayed that I hadn’t said something sooner so that she could have brought me another dish. This flustered me a bit. I said, no, it was quite alright, I wasn’t that hungry, and I just wanted to get on with my evening. She left it at that, took the dishes, and came back (rather quickly to my mind) with the bill, apologizing for taking so long, because she’d had the dish taken off. That was more than half the price of my meal. I thanked her, paid, and left her a tip ($10) that was larger than the bill total ($9.10) for her excellent service.
Is this standard restaurant operating procedure? I mean, the way I see it, I’m paying for food, not for satisfaction with the dish. If I deliberately order something that turns out to be not what I want, I think I should still pay for it, unless there was some sort of deception or the like involved. Weird, but touching.
Well, your server seemed to go beyond what was required to make you happy. I don’t think most restaurants would do that. And my reaction would be the same as yours, really.
The other day I was at the hardware store, getting some wire mesh (sold by the foot, and I had the guy cut off a piece and just as he had cut it, I realized that it was too short, but it was my fault, so I just had another piece cut and paid for both pieces.
Depends on the quality of the restaurant, and often on the server. More often than not, in a pricey place, they’ve taken something -smaller- off the bill or some such. I’ve had more or less what you describe happen, but that’s not the usual. Reducing the bill, in a high quality restaurant, if a customer is dissatisfied (even if there’s nothing wrong with the food per se), is pretty common.
In places where I’ve been a known regular (like places we went in Dubai), if we didn’t like something, they’d bend over backwards to make sure we were happy.
I think in nicer restaurants, it’s the norm. The goal is total satisfaction rather than just to sell food. In DC, this never happened to me, but here in Austin, food is a big deal, and restaurants tend to go out of the way to make you happy. We’ve had more than one meal comp’d because they forogt something or mixed up the order. Not that we complained, (we’re not the type), but they just felt the need to ‘make it right.’
Ask yourself this: Are you more likely to eat there again since they did this for you? 🙂
Yeah, this is pretty much exactly it — they’re selling the experience and the nice evening out, not just the food. If all you wanted was the food, you’d have ordered takeout.
Happy customers tip well, come back, and tell their friends.
More likely, yes, but still not very likely. I wasn’t impressed with the appetizer either, but it wasn’t an active dislike in that case. =)
It’s not standard, but sometimes it happens.
Maybe it’s just something that happens here in Rochester, but whenever I’ve been out and the food wasn’t to the persons’ satisfaction, or something was wrong with it, they’ve always taken it off of the bill or made you something that you wanted or was acceptable. I think they do it as good customer service on their part because they don’t want you to think badly about the restaurant and spread that around. Better to have a happy customer and lose a little $$ on a dish here or there, or lose a lot of customers due to bad word of mouth…
I worked at a restaurant called “Moxies” for about three years. They’re considered “upscale casueal dining” much like Joey Tomatoes or Earls. While I loathe them with the passion of seven suns now, they have probably one of the best guest satisfaction policies I know of. Basically, if you don’t enjoy your meal for any reason, it’s replaced with something that you will like or stricken from the bill. Many people took this to the Nth degree, however, when they figured out the system. It was disgusting…
Did this once as a waitress, but that was in the midwest, where (as you point out) few people complain, so it’s possible that if I’d worked out here, I’d have done it more than that. I’ve also had a similar thing happen to me as the customer once. It was pretty strange.
C. and I have become pretty well-known around the neighborhood as the polite midwesterners. It shook me up once when the waitress at a local restaurant (admittedly not someoplace likely to make the travel guides) was audibly surprised at our manners – as in we had them. Apparantly, she had become inured to a lack of please and thank you to the extent that she was surprised when she heard them.
it’s a grey area, but in general you can return a dish if you don’t like the taste of it. it’s not really any different than if you order a dish you DO like, and they put a different spin on it and you find it very nasty.
As a former waiter, I think this is pretty standard at “nice” restaurants. It is cheaper for them to comp your meal and have you leave satisfied then have you pay, and bad-mouth the meal to others.
I would usually try to observe people, and if I saw somebody eating the way you described, I would not ask if the meal was OK, but invite the person to send the meal back for something else.. .that way, they get to enjoy a meal, they pay for the meal they enjoy, I get a good tip, and the restaurant gets good word of mouth. Just my $.02.