Am I alone in this?

I enjoy reading bad reviews of my favorite restaurants online. Places like Yelp, Citysearch, and now, apparently, Facebook, are ripe with them. They are usually pretty hilarious! When a star rating is available it’s almost invariably one star (though occasionally they give it two stars), with the frequent rider that they would give it zero if they could. (We get it, you want to give it the lowest rating possible. Get over yourself.) They tell angry stories about how horrible the service was, often mentioning how everyone else in the restaurant got better service, which really doesn’t help their case in the least.

The story is generally pretty incomplete-sounding. That is, they never detail the exchanges; they just broadly state that they requested something and got an unfavorable reaction. Given the types of people who leave these reviews, this is pretty significant! Politely asking “excuse me, could we move to another table?” is rather different from snapping, “My friends are freezing at this table. Seat us somewhere else.” Both would be summarized “when I asked the hostess if she would re-seat us . . . .”

Anyway, I just read one of these on Facebook of the Friendly Toast. I am going to go through it, for laughs, after the jump. All errors of spelling and punctuation are hers; I may unconsciously correct some. I may see if I can find some other bad restaurant reviews in the future, so stay tuned, unless you think this sucks in which case tell me to stop!

Our reviewer starts with the standard “infuriated customer” complaint:

I went there yesterday with 2 friends and was hugely disappointed!!

You can tell right away that she’s a class act, with the spelling out her numbers and only using one exclamation point at the end of her sentences. She then proceeds to break down why she was disappointed in a slightly bizarre list:

1. Wait time to be seated (1h):

Ok so the place is hype so you have to wait, I got it! But when I am told I would have to wait 30mins and actually have to wait 1h then I am really upset!.

Not only that but people who arrived after us were seated before us. How unbelievable?!

I can’t decide if I prefer the !., which is just plain wrong, or the ?!, which is not actually a question. In any case, her complaint here is that the wait on a Sunday was longer than she expected. This is, indeed, a frustrating part of the Friendly Toast on a Sunday. The solution is generally to find a better time to go. If you don’t like the wait, don’t go during peak hours. This is also her first instance of complaining that other people got service before her. I suspect this was not an accident.

2. Extreme rudeness of the receptionist:

The term is hostess, sweetheart. Or possibly waitress. Receptionists answer phones at offices.

After being seated under the AC and freezing, I spotted a table for 3 a little further available. I went to the receptionist asking her if we could move to another table as my friends were freezing under the blowing AC. The receptionist made a weird face, looked around briefly and said  that there were no other table available.

Terrible grammar aside. Our reviewer does not appear to recognize that the place is packed and busy, despite the long wait. As every sense-of-entitlement customer knows, you are seated at random by the staff and can feel free to claim any seat you like, especially when it’s busy. I suspect it was just vacated and/or had just been claimed for another group, given that the place was packed.

I went on and told her about the table I had spotted, she then became really upset at my suggestion but “approved” of us moving. She thought I was gone (except I was still just behind her) and complained to one of the waitress that we were complaining about a little AC.

Waitresses. The plural of waitress is waitresses.

3. Wait time for our food (2h):

After seating down, our order was finally taken! Some people came after us, were seated (and by the way they were seated at the same spot we had been placed before and started wearing their jackets).

Yes, this is because these people were originally supposed to sit at your table. Causality: it exists!

Well to cut it short, we waited 1h before our first inquiry, we called the waitress as the people who had been seated way after us had been served their food already. The waitress said that the place was really busy and that our food was coming out. I pointed that the place was not busy enough to prevent them from serving those other people. She apologized for it and went on. 1H LATER the food was not served yet!!!!! So we left.

I’d like to note at this point that everyone who is not this lady appears to be getting reasonable service. Assuming they are one out of twenty tables, this is a five percent failure rate! And I suspect they are deliberately ignoring her at this juncture, though it happens intermittently that a table slips through the cracks when it’s busy.

4. Required attire:

This place is full of fake youngster, people trying really hard to be cool. If you decide to go there, you must wear a pleated shirt ([referable black and red) with skinny jeans and dirty sneakers. PLEASE don’t forget the big ass glasses.

The people going are trying really hard to be cool, so please go with the f

Sadly it cuts off here! I assume it’s “go with the flow.” I’m not really sure what her complaint here is. Or what a fake youngster is, actually! Are they not really youngsters? Are they youngsters who are fake in other ways? She seems to be complaining that there are hipsters at the restaurant. Perhaps she is complaining that she was dressed wrong, and that’s why she received bad service?

I’m not sure why she believes a black and red pleated shirt is the dress code, though. To the best of my knowledge I have never seen such an item at the Friendly Toast.