Three Strikes

Believe it or not, I generally like to keep my blog posts positive. There's so much negative crap in life, that I'd rather focus on what's good---in my life, in my community, in my world. So, I'm not negative, just highly self absorbed. But every now and then, there are things that just get under my skin...usually things involving...you guessed it, food. Although I am not the best chef, only a moderate baker, and always find myself devastated when my food is not well received (please don't let this remark keep you from being 100% honest with me though), I do try to provide "service with a smile". If I'm dishing up a helping of pasta for you, I'll do it with love. If I'm placing a cupcake on a plate in front of you, I'll do it with a smile...I won't threaten, laugh at you, or scold you in the process of providing my mediocre food for you. Everyone is not like me.

Here's why I won't be going back to The Creme Pot (a breakfast place in Waikiki that I used to ADORE).

Strike One: The owner continually seated customer after customer after customer before our party...we had arrived first. There was a clear preference and bending over backward for Japanese tourist clientele. We watched table after table of customers receive seats, service, menus, food before us even though they had arrived to the restaurant long after we did.

I remained reserved and quiet and chose to let it go...

Strike Two: We finally got our table, but no menus. No water. No server. We had to grab our own menus. When the owner finally came to take our order (he assumed we had been helped, but we hadn't after waiting at the table about twenty minutes) they were out of pancakes. Really?! He took our order without so much as a "how are you doing, sorry about the wait" (it had been over an hour and a half at this point), and didn't let us get a word in to announce we needed separate checks. We never saw him again until time to take our money.

And still, I remained calm and chose not to let it bother me...

Strike Three:

We get up to pay after finishing our meal (over two hours have now passed) and explain that we would like to pay separately (this has never been a problem, I have eaten here countless times and asked to split the check at the register every time...never an unkind word about it...until yesterday). Immediately the owner became enraged and wanted to refuse to split the check (there were only three of us). He blamed us for not letting him know (well, he wasn't around for us to tell him previously!). He then proceeded to over charge us for parking. This was the insulting part. We waited around in his restaurant for a table, menus, service, food, and then we were over charged. YUCKY. (Parking is validated but you still have to pay $2 per hour...generally not a problem, but when you have to wait three hours to get seated, have your order taken, receive your food, and pay...our parking bill came to $12 for a three hour breakfast that was not our fault and could have easily been one hour long, had we been seated in the order we arrived.) When we tried to point out our frustration with the wrong charge, the fact that we should have been seated before people who arrived after us, he snatched our parking tickets out of our hands muttering something about "this is why I don't do separate checks"...well, poor service has nothing to do with separate checks! When we stood up for ourselves and demanded our parking tickets back, he threatened to call the police! At which point I laughed and said "For what? Yourself? For criminally bad service?!". He didn't like that very much.

In the end, I left feeling very upset. Upset with myself for choosing to dine there. Upset with the owner for treating customers like dirt. Upset that a once wonderful place would now no longer be a "go to" place for breakfast. Just because you have good food and cute decor, does not mean you can expect customers to take whatever kind of half ass service you feel like providing any given day.

My friend Michelle is calling the Better Business Bureau, but sadly, I feel most upset that the owner will probably continue to have a booming business. He will probably never know or care about how offensive his actions were.

The silver lining? I have one less fattening restaurant on my list...maybe I'll lose a couple of pounds.