The dining story continued.....
On our times out together, my boyfriend and I have been to both Hooters and a local seafood company, where we had issues at both.
I understand that the Hooters in my area has been losing business to, and lost some employees to, another restaurant nearby (Tilted Kilt). We went in for dinner the other night at Hooters.
All we wanted was some good cold beer and awesome wings. When we walked in, we were told by one of the girls walking by to seat ourselves (this varies day by day, if they have a hostess or not, and if there are any special events going on such as wrestling of football). So we found a clean table and sat down. And sat.... and sat. After 10 minutes, we stopped a server walking by and asked her if she knew who are server was, and if she could please let her know we wanted to order. After another 5 minutes, our server came over, saying that she was busy with a big party and apologized for not seeing us. This wouldn't have been a problem, except the big party was in a whole different part of the restaurant, so she couldn't visualize our area from where she was also handling the big party. No biggie, we just want to order.
So we order our beers, app, and entrees. She dropped off our beers and told us the app would be out soon. Another girl delivered our fried pickles (yes, I know this is how food is run here). Then somebody else delivered our food. When the food runner dropped our food, I asked her for another beer for each of us. She nodded and said she would let our server know. 10 minutes later.... no beer and we haven't seen our server. We flag down another server and ask her if she can either get us another beer each or our server. Our server ends up coming over and asking what we need. Um beer. Our glasses are empty and we are sitting here with food that we don't really want to eat when we have nothing to wash it down. Beers are finally delivered and she walks off. Never asks how our food is, etc.
When it came time for the check, she drops it and says she can take it after we are ready. As I'm pulling out my wallet, she says "oh, just put it on the table. I will be back in a few minutes." and walks off again. *sigh* About 5 minutes later, she walks by the table, picking up the receipt and my card as she went. Drops it off a few minutes later and tells us to have a good night. Um no. We've spent over an hour and a half here. We have talked to you only a handful of times and had to request more drinks repeatedly, then you don't even ask how our food is.
We ended up talking to the manager that night. Turned out it was the General Manager. We didn't realize this until after we were done talking to him. No, we didn't insist on free food or having our dinner comp'ed or anything like that. Just let him know that he had an issue that needed his attention. I fully understand having a big unexpected party come in, but that's no reason to neglect other tables. Maybe they should have split up her previously assigned section so that she could just take care of the big party. I understand now though why a lot of customers that were Hooters fans are now going to Tilted Kilt instead. Apparently a lot of the senior servers at Hooters went over there.

The second place was at a small locally-owned seafood restaurant near us. We went there for a nice dinner out since we would both be working a lot the next couple weeks, so this would be our "date night." We were seated by a hostess at a table that was near the windows, with one other table seated nearby shortly after this. We then proceeded to sit there for over 5 minutes while a server came up to the table beside us, set down a bus tub and proceeded to roll silverware. We noticed that neither our table or the one nearby had been greeted yet and nobody had drinks. Okay.... where is our server? We attempted to ask the server next to us if he knew who our server was. Instead, when we said "excuse me, sir" he turned so his back was to us and started humming. Really?! My boyfriend went to the hostess stand and informed her that neither of our tables had been greeted yet and asked if we were sat in a closed section. Yup, turned out we were. How did we find out? When we then got a pissed off server for the rest of our dinner. Apparently she was supposed to have already been cut but then had to take the two tables that were sat in her section. It was a joyful time for all!