No Service for You

The Chief and I eat out at restaurants probably way to often. We should cook and eat at home but because of the time and convenience factor, we go out to eat.

When we do go to restaurants there are a few unwritten rules that I follow:

• Always be nice to the server
• Don't send the food back 
• Don't be stingy when it comes to the tip especially if the service is good
• If the food is something you don't like, don't go back to the restaurant or don't order it again

The main reason I don't send food back to the kitchen is this:

If you have not seen the gem, it is from Road Trip from 2000. 

I am sure there are many instances of this form or revenge of the server. Here is another example:

I was thinking about this while we were at lunch the other day. We went to a restaurant where the food was good, the order was correct but the service was very poor. We didn't even know where our server was for a good portion of the meal. We were seated at the same time as some friends of ours (it was just a coincidence we were eating at the same place). Our friends sat, ordered, ate their food and left by the time we had our food for 5 minutes. Oh, I didn't mention that our friends have 3 children that were also eating. Plus they had to find a booster seat for the youngest...

What to do... what to do? A food magazine suggests the following:

1. Smile and be nice and the server will be nice to you
2. Not everything is the server's fault, sometimes steak dinners magically fly off the plate and land in the cat litter box. Why is the cat litter box in the kitchen? Why are there cats in the restaurant?
3. Eat at the bar - the bartender never leaves you sight
4. Talk to the manager about the poor service 
5. Write a letter to the restaurant.

Boring.

You could do this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/john-castle_n_1197778.html or maybe not.

What kind of retaliation is there against poor service? There is the obvious lower the tip. This can make the server just think you are an ungrateful canoe and that your next meal, if you have the same server will give you a sneezer... You could also steal the pen. That is pretty obvious. You could also open up the pen and fill the inside with mustard, or ketchup, or wasabi and soy sauce, depending on the type or establishment you are visiting. This is also a potential disaster, you could inadvertently cause a problem with another customer.

So what is needed is a way to impart some payback for the poor service in a way that is not immediately obvious to the server.  Here are some thoughts I had:

• Accidently dump the sweet tea or non-diet soda on the receipt making it a sticky mess. 
• Click the ink pen in my arm pit after signing the receipt
• Stuff the signed credit card receipt down my pants and walk around the restaurant before placing the ticket back in the jacket - basically the same thing as the Road Trip server.

For the record, I did none of the above listed items.

This time.

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Road Trip - Dreamworks 2000
Friends Season 6, Episode 12 (The One with the Joke)
Seinfeld Season 9, Episode 9 (The Apology)