There are days when you walk into a restaurant and you know you should walk right out again. On other days, the signs are there, but you choose to ignore them… and so it was for us this evening at Long John Silver’s on Northern near 35th Ave.
We arrived shortly after 7:00PM and our first thought was, “Wow, look how busy they are! We’re going to get fresh fish tonight.†Indeed, there were busy. There are about 14 booths and 3 tables, and at least 1 table and 6 booths were filled, plus there were about 4 people apparently in line. For a Thursday night, that’s busy. At that time of night, I would normally expect to see maybe 2 groups of people in the restaurant.
The first inkling that something was wrong should have come when we noticed that there were about 50 receipts placed on the counter, surrounding the register. Another portent of doom should have been the observation that only one table had any food. The man standing first in line was apparently complaining that he didn’t get the right food. (That’s what I thought, but in fact, he was complaining that he didn’t get any food.) They also couldn’t find his receipt. He demanded his money back and they gave it to him. While they were conducting that bit of unpleasant busy, one of those loud, pushy type came up and asked for some plates. She was from the table that had food and “asked†for the plates like this: “Could we get some plates, please. Our food wasn’t supposed to be ‘to go’.â€
They gave her the plates, but she wasn’t done. She came right back and asked for something else, I couldn’t quite hear what she asked for, but I certainly heard how she explained why she was being insistent. “We waited 35 minutes for our food, so it out to be at least right.â€
One refund, one customer complaining that their food took 35 minutes (probably an exaggeration to help get her way), a room full of people with no food and a fiercely blinking order fulfillment display, angrily displaying that it was out of spaces for more orders.
Did we turn around and leave? No. Were we stupid? Probably.
Funny ho the brain tries to turn this sort of thing to a positive. My thought was: There’s 3 or 4 people in back cooking, they’ve just got to have some really fresh fish coming out any minute now. We’ll get our food quickly and benefit from everyone else’s wait.
David ordered his food first, we ordered ours second. We sat down at the table at exactly 7:15. (My credit card receipt says we paid at 7:15, their cash register receipt says we ordered at 7:25? Some sort of trick perhaps to keep the wait times down on the computer?)
And we waited, and we waited. All the while, the pushy woman was talking to everyone in the store about how she got her food after 35 minutes, and no one else had gotten any. She was obnoxious, but right. We slowly watched over the next 20 minutes as, one by one, the people gave up and demanded their money back. One person actually got their order of food. The obnoxious woman actually scared some customers away as the overheard her talking while waiting in line.
Finally, we began to see something odd. One of the staff brought a tray of food out. Asked the first table if they had “2 #7sâ€? and when they said, “noâ€, she took the tray back and disappeared. Those people gave up and asked for their money back.
A bit later, she came out with another tray, asked another table if they had some particular combination order. When they said, “no†she took that tray back and didn’t return. We heard the manager explaining that all the returns hadn’t been removed from the fulfillment display and he was ordering them to use the food from the returned orders to fill the existing orders.
Now, I’m not 100% certain, but I think using the food that was taken out of the kitchen on someone else’s order is a health code violation, even though I know the food wasn’t touched. Perhaps that’s not what they did – although it is what he told them to do. Finally, through attrition, we got our food.
When I say, “weâ€, I mean Chu-Wan, the kids and myself. David didn’t get his. We got our food 22 minutes after sitting down. The only other people who remained (and came in after we’d sat down) got their food next. David then went and asked about his fish and was told they were cooking more and he had a 2 minute wait. In about 3 minutes, he did indeed get his fish, and burned his mouth on it. (That’s just a funny anecdote I had to relate and really has nothing to do with the service, unless they didn’t let the food cool long enough before serving.)
To be fair, my fish wasn’t hot like I’d expect for such a wait, but it wasn’t bad. It certainly wasn’t bad tasting. Still, Long John Silver’s really screwed up on this visit.
As we left, there’s a bell to ring if you got good service, which didn’t get a lot of rings tonight, and this sign. I’m going to respond to this survey, and, if I win $1,000 I will consider this a trip well worth it. Otherwise… it’s going to be quite some time before I return to that Long John Silver’s.
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