The worst service happened one evening when I told our four children I'd take them out to dinner if they could agree on a place, and they chose Bob Evans. Not my top 10, but they agreed with a minimum of arguing, and I thought I should encourage this temporary cessation of the sibling rivalry hostilities by being supportive.
The hostess gave us the back room all to ourselves, and our server was prompt with drinks and order taking. The food arrived in a timely fashion. Well, all of the food except for mine.
The kids dug in while I sat. And sat. Our server, who'd been very attentive up to this point, was nowhere to be seen. Finally I walked up to the counter and spoke to the person who turned out to be the assistant manager.
When I asked where my food was, she assured me everything we'd ordered had been delivered to our table. I assured her it hadn't. Then (I'd ordered a salad with fried chicken strips on top, can't recall the name), she'd told me that they'd been unable to prepare my salad because "we had to turn off the deep fryer to clean it."
I told her I couldn't believe they'd turn of their deep fryer in the middle of the dinner hour, when a high percentage of the menu items were deep fried. I also asked how my children were able to get their french fries if the fryer was out of commission.
Finally, I said, "Please don't lie to me. If someone forgot to turn my order in, or forgot to make it, just tell me."
She assured me that wasn't the case. Since my children were done eating by that time, and we were ready to go, I told her just to forget it. "We can make it for you to go right now, at no charge," she said.
"I thought your deep fryer was shut off for cleaning."
"It's working now."
"No thanks, we'll just go."
A year later Bob Evans redeemed itself, sort of, to me. Our son, Adam and I were in Detroit for a long weekend (he was in his car phase at the time, and we went to visit several auto museums as a father-son trip). I let him choose the restaurants, and our first night he picked the Bob Evans near our hotel.
The manager, alerted by our server that with our accents we were probably from out of town, stopped by our table to say hello. He and Adam chatted about the origami figures Adam had made from our placemats while waiting for our food (Adam is an origami expert, which is going to look great on his college applications). Hearing we were from Maryland, he exclaimed, "I have a great gift for you. It's perfect for someone from Maryland. I'll be right back."
Two minutes later he returned, beaming, and gave us his gift: a map pinpointing the locations of every Bob Evans in the continental United States, complete with addresses and phone numbers.
I wa speechless. Though not with delight.
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