// January 13th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Blog
We ate dinner at Applebees here in Spring Hill last night. I am not overly enamored with Applebees either in their atmosphere or their food. But, Spring Hill is slowly growing and with the recent additions of Home Depot and Lowes, and plans for Target and a few other big box retailers, I’m sure more restaurant chains are on the way. That will be good.
This Applebees restaurant has two things that bother me. I am not one to notice or even mention such things most of the time, but for some reason these things struck me.
First, they do have a bar section which goes along with their company tagline. That is not the issue. The TV’s are the issue. I understand the use of having TV’s in the bar, because folks like to hang out there to have a drink and appetizer and watch sports or what have you. My complaint here is that the main dining section has TV’s scattered all over. I sat and watched a dad completely ignore his family because a game was on. I wouldn’t call what I did staring, but I kept wondering why they even went out to eat. That may not be Applebee’s responsibility, but television sets that are switched on are terribly hard to keep from watching, especially when you have a lot of live action going on and you are confined to a immovable object like a table. Can’t we get a table without the dang TV being on too. I know, I know. Eat somewhere else. Our choices are somewhat limited right now, but when more eateries show up, I’m outta here.
Second… I am not sure if I had a newbie waitress or a veteran because she was either following the upsell playbook to a tee… or she didn’t know any better and was just saying what she had memorized in training. Regardless, she was operating purely as an automaton. I heard the same tactics used on several other tables after we’d been there a bit. Identical responses to similar hesitations on the part of the other customers. First offer to us was for the most expensive beer and margarita on the menu. When I said “no, just water,” she suggested Aquafina. “No, tap is OK.” Then when orders for the main course were taken, my wife ordered a mandarin salad and the waitress says, “You know, that is really a small salad. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather get the large one. It’s only an extra $1.50.” This is a woman she is talking to here and she’s trying to get her to eat more? What gives? Anyway, my wife said no to that. She’d recalled it being a pretty good portion the last time we were at an Applebees. When the salad did come out, it was as we had ordered and it was a good sized plate. As we progressed through the dinner playing the tic-tac-toe games with our girls, she pushed the dessert menu on us and I looked at my wife’s plate which wasn’t even a third of the way done. Dessert already? I was close to being finished, but not quite there yet. The girls got their dessert which was part of the kids meal. I again got a “You sure you don’t want to join them with a dessert?” from our kind waitress. I politely said no again. It wasn’t two minutes later that I had the bill in front of me. The whole thing felt as if we were a commodity. Depending on how much alcohol and dessert we purchase would garner us some recognition as either Applebees “Saints” or just people taking up space that should be filled by someone else as quick as possible.
I’m in sales so my antenna goes up when I sense I’m being treated as a quota to be met. I don’t like to treat others that way and I don’t like to be treated that way. Especially in a family restaurant. The trouble with the whole wait staff community, of which I belonged in a past life, is that the majority of them treat it as merely a stepping stone on the path to something greater, blindly going about the business hoping to get a big tip, not even understanding the art behind great waitering. I am of the mindset that, like everything else in life, if you apply some common sense and look for areas to learn at whatever job you are in, you can take away some amazing experiences and grow along the way. Just my two cents.
One of my favorite books for 2008 was Eat This, Not That!
