While i agree with you, that DD has been suffering in quality decreases over the years, i just wanted to point out something...you say there is "inconsistency" yet also say that you got your drink with no froth for "the 5th time." This would imply consistency, or else you would have had a different result every time. There is consistency at DD...they are consistently horrible. Their donuts are getting smaller, as well. My coworkers bring them in, and they seem smaller every time, except the munchkins, but i'm sure people would notice if those got smaller. Many of the DDs in my area (when i was younger; i don't waste my time there anymore) would be out of every donut except an undesirable flavor by 5 pm. Also recently in a DD near Union Square in NYC, i had a full bladder and (DD being the only food location on the block) promised i'd buy something to use their bathroom, to which the guy laughed and said "not for customers." I then went on as long of a tirade as my bladder would allow me to, as it is NEW YORK STATE LAW to provide a bathroom for customers if you sell food and drinks (especially hot drinks that run right through you). This didn't change the employee's mind, and if i didn't have to go so bad, i would have raised hell for them.
My advice...find a nice, local, independantly-owned coffee shop, and allow your drinks to be made by a barista instead of handed to you by a fast food employee after taking it off of the machine that makes everything.
And yes, I used to LOVE DD. At one point, the one i went to often was employed and staffed and even managed by 6 of my friends and no one else, and i had never seen as good of customer service at a location before or since.
So good luck finding a better coffee shop.
I had a similar experience in lower Manhattan in february. The employee told me "no use of bathroom for customers" even though i explained I would buy something to use it (as I had done earlier that day at a Quiznos). I proceeded to bark at the idiot behind the counter, explaining that NYS law requires usable bathrooms in any venue selling food and drinks. They do have the right to refuse the bathroom to non-customers, but come on. They sell COFFEE and don't let you use their bathroom. Rest assured, if finding a bathroom wasn't top priority at the time, i would have made the employee cry.
I also have no idea if that is a management rule or not, and would like to know. What i do know is i have never had a problem being able to use the (always clean, spacious and nicely decorated) bathroom at my local independant coffee house. Which just makes me hate big corporations even more.
outback charges an 18% gratuity for parties of 8 or more (i'm a former employee), and it is standard practice in almost any restaurant, but there is no additional added gratuity.
And if you're complaining about being charged double, i guarentee your server was complaining about receiving 10 percent as a tip. Just so you know, with outback, as well as with a ton of other restaurants, servers tip out 3% of their daily sales to the bar, bussers and hostesses. Not 3% of their tips, 3% of their sales. Which means even if you get stiffed on tips all day, you still owe X amount based on what your sales were. So [censor] tips at a restaurant like that hurt much worse. I remember a 7 person party with a $320 bill (mostly from booze) who were complete jerks to me and ended up only leaving me 7% BEFORE i paid my tipshare out and i almost went to the parking lot to call them out. Fortunately, that party was one in a million, and realizing what he had done when he sobered up, came back in the next day to give me more cash and apologize.
Yea this is a long rant, but i just wanted to say if you tip 10% for GOOD SERVICE, you shouldn't be complaining, you should headbutt a knife.
And before you argue that you don't have money to tip better, all that says to me is you don't have the money to pay for everything while dining out, and therefore should eat home or go to mcdonalds.
every panera in my area has forgotton the dressing on my dad's (and my dad's only) salad EVERY TIME for months. I've been to the one in my town, the next town over and the one down by where i work and (yes it is my fault for not checking before i left) i've had to face the annoyance of my father at not having the dressing, which is the only reason he gets that salad anyway. What makes me really angry is that everytime i call in the order i always say EXTRA dressing and stress that i want extra, and i always tip well even on take0ut. these kids are getting a tip for messing my order up and as much as i want to, i can't bring myself not to tip people in foodservice. Last time i checked as i was leaving and when they forgot the dressing, i talked to the girl who took my order and the guy who packed my meal about it and both acted like i was an a--h-le for asking for what i already requested during the ordering process. their food is good, but their staff is usually under par.
as well, outback has a company poilicy to "follow the bottom line" on credit card slips, which means, for example, if your bill was $50 and you wanted to leave a $12 tip, you would total that up as $62. However, if you did your math wrong, or forgot to carry the one (happens far too often), you may write down $52 by mistake. This is what the server has to accept as their tip because of the rules. It works conversely, however, albeit extremely rarely. I can remember a table who's check was for $70-something, and the guy wanted to leave me $12 and ended up leaving me 96 or 98, leaving me $22 instead of 12 because of his math mistake, and my boss said "well, that's what he wrote." always keep the duplicate receipt, that way you know if it's your fault or not, and you will also have the server's name on top of the receipt because if they did actually choose to overcharge you, you have a way to identify who it was.
like krispix318 said...make sure your card is activated before you go to the restaurant if you plan on paying with it. after working in a chain restaurant for a long time, i have seen a lot of customers come out with only their gift card, which is not activated yet, or is maxed out, or is for less than what they owe for their bill, and them complaining does not add money to their pockets. if you're taking someone out for their birthday, you should be more prepared than that. also, you should have just sucked it up and used the gift card at another time. like krispix said, wal mart has inactivated gift cards for 100 restaurants/services sitting by the checkout, and these can be stolen (which is dumb, since they don't activate when stolen) and without proof of a receipt and calling the number yourself, you can't expect a business to just trust you. you especially can't expect them to hold the gift card until it is activated and let you off with that as an acceptable form of payment. that's freaking ridiculous. if businesses did that, they would cease to exist.
if you "have been to the restaurant many times before with no issues" you would have had no problem paying for your dinner that night and using the card at a different time.
outback rib racks are done by weight, as a former server and cook and prepper. in fact, i can even remember saying to a manager once years back "hey, this rack only has 7 bones on it, isn't it usually ten?" my manager showed me two racks in the back that were prepped, and yes it was 10 bones on a slimmer rack. if the rack was a bit more spacious, then that accounts for the weight of the missing bones, etc. it says nothing about how many bones are in the rack on the menu (and it does say the amount for other items such as coconut shrimp...there are 6 in an order...by not stating the amount of bones, it means the amount VARIES)
not defending outback, just letting you know. you did not get ripped off.
and to offgrey...i totally agree. i was eligible for vaca for like 3 years and never got it because when i transfered from one locale to a different one i "sacrificed the amount of time placed into the bank that adds up to vacation." and also, any week you request a day off and dont work 32 hours, that week messes the whole thing up and brings your weekly hourly average down in their books. my manager actually wanted me to get a vaca because he thought i worked hard enough and had earned it due to my hourly average being about 34 hours a week, and was shocked to see that my standing in the company's eyes was 24 hours a week. so yes, major [censor], even if you've earned it.
my outback also never offered a break (unless you were a cook who was also a smoker, then you could go outside to smoke while trash was being taken out), but if you were a front-of-house employee (even if you were on an 11 hour shift), or a cook that didn't smoke, you didn't get a break. there were so many idle threats to call the labor board but i'm pretty sure no one ever called, as well one of the girls who worked there also worked at an ob in cali for awhile and said that they had a breaks system that ended up robbing the servers of at least one if not two table turns, which means a substantial amount of the day's earnings. lesson learned - if you want a break, you have to pay for it, whether in money or your lung capacity.
this happened all the time at the ONLY 24 hour DD in my area, not just on sunday, but coincidentially i noticed that sunday afternoons, you had better like the plain Dunkin, cuz that's about all they have.
First, I would like to say that, Irish, I do not wish to start a back-and-forth argument with you, I just feel the need to defend myself. I'm not necessarily a kid. I'm 22 years old, which may seem like a kid to you, but I couldn't say. I'm also a student who spends a good amount of time during my semesters making sure my sentence structure is perfect. However, when I do that, I'm usually being graded on my submissions. This, however, is an internet forum and, as far as I know, you are not one of my future instructors who will be counting this submission toward a final grade of any sort. Yes, my sentence structure was atrocious. I even fully capitalized words. But this is the internet, and I felt like writing casually. So I apologize for that, as it seemed to offend you. All I wanted to do was voice a complaint about the staff at Panera locations in my area. If my disobedience of the rules of grammer does not allow me to voice my complaints, then I will write properly.
That being said, you are correct about Sharon92's original post. She often contradicted herself multiple times within the same sentence. Also, Sharon92, as your entire post was about an "added thing" in the soup, would you mind stating what the ingredient was, and also which soup you were referring to? I'm rather curious, because you referred to it as "the thing" throughout your entire complaint.
I am really 22, and like I said, I don't normally care about my grammar or sentence structure when posting things on the internet (especially since half of people posting comments these days don't even try to get it right), however with some complains I've read on this site, even illogical ones that could have been resolved simply, are written correctly. I do realize that this is a complaint board where you really can't be taken too seriously unless you can show you at least have a comprehensible grasp of the English language (otherwise, there is no way to tell if the person's complaint was truly the company's fault or if it was just the customer's miscomprehension of the situation/lack of communication skills to resolve the situation). Therefore, as I do not wish to look like an idiot, I will quit typing like a ten year old on this board.
