Fatz Cafe: Where Everyone’s Irregular

Warning, trivial rant ahead.  I know this is minor in the grand scheme of things, and it’s not a really big deal, but sometimes it just all goes wrong…

Dinner.  Supposed to be a simple affair, especially if you’re dining out.  That wasn’t the case this evening.  Our dinner at Fatz Cafe was a comedy of errors, and a good example of how not to get a tip.

Laura jinxed us.  She uttered the fateful words, “We’ll make it simple for you…”, and it went downhill from there.

Actually, it started before that.  When we were ushered to our table, there was a wet tray in Laura’s seat.  The waiter didn’t want to do anything about it, but showed us to the next table up.

It took awhile for our waiter to take our orders for drinks, then even more time for him to come back and actually take our entree’ orders.  Laura had ordered a glass of wine.  Again, it took awhile for it to show up.  The excuse was that the drink ordered didn’t print out right, and so it got lost.  Yeah, right.

Then we wait…and waited…and waited.  We had both ordered popcorn shrimp with baked potatoes.  Laura had ordered a salad and I had ordered soup.  We were hungry.

Laura and I had plenty of time to talk about our days at work.  Even with pleasant conversation, the lack of an order tended to intrude, like an unwanted guest.  Eventually, our entree’s showed.  The soup and salad were nowhere to be found.  Furthermore, the potato order wasn’t right.  We complained.

Not long after, the soup and salad, along with our waiter, showed up.  We complained.

Furthermore, an employee of the place was seated at the table next to us.  Our waiter, half the restaurant staff, and even the manager were hanging out at the table next to us.  I think they finally got wind that we weren’t happy, because the manager finally turn around to talk to us.  We complained.

The food was OK, but not worth this much bother.  Drinks hadn’t been refilled, orders were wrong, and we seemed to be more of an annoyance to the wait staff than a source of income.  It was time to leave.  We paid for our entree’s, and at least the manager took off the soup and salad.  We didn’t leave a tip.

Normally things are much better at Fatz, but this just wasn’t our night.