"Why Do They Always Mess Up?"

The title reflects my son's question as yet again, restaurant employees either (1) ignore what's written on the ticket, or (2) don't write down requests in the first place.

We went to Ruby Tuesday's tonight for dinner, a place we've been to a couple times in the past but don't frequent a whole lot unless we have a coupon (it can be pricy for the portions). With our BOGO coupon in hand, we ordered a seafoood dinner for my husband, a chicken dinner for myself and burger sliders for A. As I told the waiter A's choices, I said, "with no cheese on the burgers."

Our food arrived, and the first thing I always do is check A's burgers to make sure they're safe. Well, these two had little corners of yellow sticking out of them -- yes, cheese slices. I told our waiter "we ordered these without cheese. He can't have it." He apologized and took it back and had the kitchen make new ones.

This seems to happen to us more often than not -- regardless of where we go out to eat. We're constantly returning burgers that someone carelessly slapped on a slice of cheese, even though we specfically say not to. Is is laziness? Is it that they're so accustomed to putting it on anyway that they don't even think about it? It shouldn't matter -- the customer should always recieve the food they order. And I shouldn't have to specify that it's because A has allergies. It should go without saying that restaurant employees should follow their customer's requests.

We won't be going back to Ruby Tuesday's ... the cheese on the burgers was only the tip of the iceburg with that experience. Our waiter was unbelieveably slow, he messed up our drink orders (and all we had were one Diet Coke and two Mr. Pibb's). Then, to top it all off, he spilled an entire glass of soda on my husband's shorts, shirt and food! He did order another plate for him, but it took so long that we finally had to ask him to box it up so we wouldn't be late (we were going to the movies afterwards).

On our drive back home (for a quick change of clothes), A asked "Why do they always mess up my food?" We ask the same question a lot of the time too. How hard is it to accomodate someone's request? Apparently too hard sometimes.