the one in which she rants and raves (this is long, i'm not gonna lie)

so one of my very near and dear friends is getting married in may 2010. she is beyond excited, as am i :) i have never been in a wedding nor have i been asked to help plan one, and here i am with both of those honors for a woman who is truly beautiful inside and out.

today we had an appointment to look at bridesmaids dresses, we made the appointment because there are 7 of us not including the bride and we wanted some individual attention, all shapes and sizes are we. the bride was very liberal in saying she wants a specific color and length but the style is completely up to each of us.

so we get to said place exactly on time and are shown to our consultant.

who shows us half a rack length of dresses that are the length we want and then stands there while we root through. we inquire as to alterations, sizing, etc. and "she doesn't know, she'll have to loook it up" is the answer to every question. we then decide on a few dresses each and request the dressing room. she tells us we will have to double up because there are alot of people in the store and she can't spare more than 2 dressing rooms.

umm.....ok isn't that why we made an appointment? don't we have some precedence over walkins? guess not. so we start trying on only to discover that she was wrong, the sizes do run small. exactly 2 sizes too small for each person. maybe the 7 of us were the only ones in the world that didn't know our sizes.

so she goes and gets us the correct sizes and meanwhile we are milling about in front of our dressing rooms (just the 2) and people are everywhere!

so she comes back and we get the right sizes on and start appraising eachother and turn around to ask her opinion and again inquire about length and alterations and she is with another group. giving them her full attention. add insult to injury and another consultant walks by and says "suck itin ladies there are other people here." um, i'm sorry are we in your way? are we taking up too much room in our two meager dressing rooms while we wait for our double booked consultant?

we decide that they haven't done anything to deserve our business and we have other appointments to try. so we walk to the front to speak with the manager. we inform her of the things going on and tell her at 200 bucks per dress we expected a little more attentiveness.

she lets us know they are always this busy on weekends and for a group as large as ours we should have booked an appointment during the week. she adds to that it would have been a better idea to make the appointment for a "bridal party" instead of "the bridesmaids" because then they would have know we wanted individualized attention.

wtf?

so ok. we go outside and collect ourselves. lets get lunch.

we go to a restaurant between the place we were just at and the next place. we get there at 1:15pm. we are seated and our waiter says hello and leaves. then 5-6 mins later he comes back and takes our drink order. 10 mins later he comes backwith our waters and cosmos and various other drinks. then he leaves. 15 mins later he comes back and takes our appetizer order. i decide in favor of my diet i will skip the appetizer and go with the regular meal, so i order nothing. everyone else gets appetizers. it's now 1:45pm

our appetizers come out about 10 mins later. everyone digs in and i sip my drink feeling so smug for sticking to my diet. (ha!) one girl ordered mini crab cakes and found a flying bug in her tarter sauce. she asked for the manager and the manager (after running back to the kitchen for less than 2 mins) announces that there are no bugs in the kitchen and the bug must have come from the dining area. no sorry, the girl requests them to take it back and replace it which they do.

we site there about 10 more mins and finally it is 2:10pm and he comes and takes our order for our meals. we are starting to feel like um, ok is this taking an abnormally long time? whatever, i'm starving.....

so now it's 2:30 pm and our food isn't here yet. we have to be 30 mins up the road by 4pm and still no food.

so now it's 2:45 pm and the manager comes out with a tray, but we wave her down and let her know we would like our check, forget the entrees, people who came after us have come and gone, we need to leave. she says 'but i have your fish tacos...."

we tell her no thankyou, send it back.

she stomps off without a word.

the kitchen manager comes out and apologizes. he hears our complaint and then tears up our bill and says the whole thing is on him today and please don't hold it against the restaurant.

we leave.

i can't believe we went through all that, and i ate nothing. i was starving! but more than that, why is it that customer service apparently isn't really service at all anymore. the guy didn't have to comp our whole bill, we would have paid for what we ate, but at least someone seemed concerned with pleasing us.

ao anyway very long story a wee bit shorter, the next place had nothing for us either, tho their service was great. then one last place which is actually another location for the first one and jackpot! so alls well that ends well, but my goodness!

so, any horrible customer service stories of your own?