Greetings from exotic Toledo, Ohio where the temperature is a bomby 55 degrees (or 12.778 celsius) and sunny 7% of the time. I’m in my hotel room, enjoying the nice aroma of teenage boy as I type this. You ever just get annoyed? Just everything in the whole wide world bothers you? I’m there right now. So I’m going to bitch and whine and ya’ll are coming along for the ride.
Breakfast
We are staying at a Homewood Suites. It’s pretty nice but the breakfast leaves a lot to be desired. I tried corn beef hash for the first time. It looked like hash browns mixed with raw meat. The first bite was good. The second bite left me with an awful taste in my mouth. As I debated whether or not I liked it, I looked over to find a mother still in her pajamas. This wasn’t pajamas that could pass for lounge wear. No, this was a button down night-shirt and matching pajama bottoms. As I followed her to the table I came to realize the entire family was in their pajamas, most even bare foot. I get that this is an extenda-stay hotel but the common area is not your kitchen. For the love of God, throw some clothes on. This isn’t Christmas morning.
Lunch
We ate at BW3’s. For all of my friends across the pond, be thankful you don’t have a B-dubs (this is what we call it). It’s a guys place where their specialty are wings in sauces ranging from bbq to 3rd degree burn. When we came in, the restaurant was only half full. I explained the entire soccer team was invited but I didn’t know how many. I waved my hand to about 10 tables positioned closely with each other and asked if we could just keep those free for a few minutes till everyone arrives.
You would have thought I asked her to kick out all existing customers.
“Um, we can’t do that,” the teenage girl said in a nasily, valley girl meets Northern Ohioan voice. “One group is in one waitress’s area while another group is in another. And you wouldn’t want different waitresses.” Seeing there was only 8 of us there, I ignored her idiocy. When 3 more families arrived, I asked to pull tables together.
“We can’t pull more than 2 tables together, it’s a fire hazard,” another girl challenged me. This is when I became a little more than pissed. In my 41 years, I have never heard of pushing more than 2 tables together as a fire hazard. I wanted to remind her that not too long ago, people actually smoked in restaurants which meant the use of matches and lighters. If I had a nickel for every table I bussed as a kid that had a smoldering cigarette, I’d be rich. Regardless, we ignored her and pulled tables together.
I won’t go into details but just know it took them an hour and a half to get our food out to us (a combined total of 22 people). A third of the meals were cold, a quarter wrong or missing a few meals the parents just gave up, returned the food and had it removed from their bill. As an “I’m sorry” the manager gave us $40 in free gift certificates (because apparently it’s 1985) to be passed out to each family. This is all well and fine till we realized they are only good in BW3’s in Toledo, Ohio, 3 hours from our city. Annoyed, we decided to walk around and give our certificates to the most needy looking families.
Snack
After the games, we headed back to the hotel at 5 and I made a wine/spa night run to the grocery store. After spending way too much money on the items, I headed to my car only to realize my key was missing. My purse is a bottomless pit of shit including makeup, receipts, tampons, tide-stick, medicine, and coupons to name just a few. I cringe just thinking about it. After digging everything out, I headed back into the store to see if anyone had found my key. When they said no, I asked if I could dump out the contents of my purse onto the customer service ledge. Hesitantantly, the clerk agreed. I didn’t care what came out and what people saw, I was desperate. I mean, when a tampon fell out, I quickly covered it with my wallet. Still, no key.
My last attempt was going back to where I checked out to see if I left my key there. Thank God, that’s where it was. I have a knack for leaving my key where ever I check out so really I should have checked there first.
So yeah, this was a whine fest and I’m annoyed. I really just need to curl up and go to bed or something.
Oh, what a time! I’m sorry! Restaurants these days are so annoying, unless they are very high end. Not that I’ve never been in a high end restaurant. Plus, people today don’t really want to work for their paycheck. In my day (I know. I’m old now), we would do whatever we could to accommodate the customer, within reason. Now they look at you like you have two heads and the audacity to ask for something, like hot, properly prepared food. Hope the next day was better!
I think it was better. Thank you Deanna! I couldn’t agree with you more about people not wanting to work for a paycheck. Oh no, God forbid we put together 3 tables. When robots replace them, they’ll regret their attitudes! Fo’ sure!
I’ve had some really bad experiences at BDubs in the past too. I think a large part of the issue is that they only seem to hire teenagers who don’t want to be there and make everyone else miserable just like them.
I had a bad restaurant experience over the weekend too. We went to Winston-Salem, NC with some friends to see Billy Joel and my friend decided, since they were going to be childless for the evening, to book a table at some ‘fancy’ restaurant in downtown. We got there 30 minutes early and decided to prop up at the bar. It literally took all of those 30 minutes for the 4 of us to get our drinks. We ended up taking our drinks with us to our table. Once at the table, we spent another 30 minutes without anyone tending to us. We had to flag down a waiter to get any service. We waited over an hour and twenty minutes for our food which wasn’t even that good. Such a let down… but the concert was amaz-ballz!!
Oh and I bet staff acted as if you were putting them out all that time. 30 minutes for a drink? Now they’re just leaving money on the table. WTF? I am so jealous you went to see Billy Joel! Love, love, love Only the Good Die Young. My husband loves Billy Joel too!
He put on such a great show!! And I found out he’s funny. I love that man!! He’s so stinkin’ talented!
So talented! I’m so jealous of you!
Man, as a hockey mom, I feel your pain. There’s nothing worse than a restaurant unwilling to accommodate the team. Plus, the nastiness is just uncalled for. Our last tournament, the free breakfast was so bad I drove to Dunking every day
Exactly! You feel me! It doesn’t matter what sport it is, if it sucks, it sucks, ya know?! We are at another soccer tournament as we speak so I’ll be interested to see what we eat for lunch today.