My mother and I stopped into Miller's Ale House near the corner of University Boulevard and 436/Semoran (by Full Sail) around 6:30p tonight for dinner. We were seated right away, in those booths directly the the left (the ones in between the manager's box and trophy case).
Our server, Tabitha, came over and introduced herself. Mom and I were both feeling pretty comfortable with her as our server, she seemed to know her stuff, was friendly and personable, and always had a smile. She took our drink order, and came back within minutes to hand them over.
Not too long after that, Mom's soup came out. A little while after that, our dinner came. Other than Mom's steak being a little more cooked than the medium-rare requested, it was still pretty good.
We asked Tabitha to get us refills of our sweet tea, and that's where the trouble started. We sat there and sat there for what seemed like forever (in realilty, maybe less than 5 minutes - but still - 5 minutes for a refill?) when I see Tabitha walking towards us, with two glasses in her hands, as well as several takeout boxes. Just as she reaches our table, she runs the boxes into the back of my Mom's seat, and the glass of tea in her hand goes flying... Right into the middle of our table - and into mine and my mother's laps.
Luckily, one of the bussers was right near us and ran over to try to help sop up some of the tea, before it got any worse. Tabitha soon disappeared, leaving the busser and another server to clean up the mess. She returned a few minutes later, dropping two more refills, in to-go glasses, then leaving again.
After finishing up our dinner, and trying to clean up as best as possible (how inconspicuous can you be when you look like you've wet your pants in the middle of a restaurant?), Tabitha brought over our check - $28.20... They didn't even take anything off for our tea shower. No offer of 10% discount... No free dessert... NOTHING.
My mother went to find the manager to talk to him about the incident. When she explained what happened - he looked at her with an expression on his face of "... And you want me to do what?". After a few minutes, Tabitha came back and said she'd just be right back with my credit card, that the manager was going to give me a $15 gift certificate towards my next visit. Um... You're assuming I'm going to come back this place.
By this point, we were both pretty upset. I worked in the restaurant business for many years, and I know how these kinds of these should be handled. If that "manager" had been any kind of manager in the first place, he would have automatically comped our entire meal, without having to have been asked in the first place. My old boss wouldn't have hesitated to comp an entire table's dinner if one of his servers had done something like that to a guest in his restaurant.
But no, this manager brings out ONE $15 gift certificate that he says we can both use on our next visit to the Ale House. Didn't think to give us two, since both of us were soaking wet and covered with sticky sweet tea. When we tried to explain to the manager that if we had been business men in suits and dress shoes - the restaurant would have been responsible for our drycleaning... That the least they could do was comp our $28 meal, as now we had to go home and change our clothes before we could continue our evening, the manager had the nerve to tell us that he would take the $15 gift certificate and apply it towards the bill!
Eventually, Tabitha spoke up and said she was going to reverse the charge made to my credit card (done before the manager had brought out the gift certificate). She came back a few minutes later, handed me a receipt that showed the amount due as $0.00 and said my card had been refunded. I've just checked my balance (3 hours later), and it's still showing that my card has been charged and not refunded. I'm hoping that it'll be there tomorrow morning, if not, you can guarantee I'll be calling them bright and early tomorrow!
This isn't the first time we've had trouble in this Ale House. It seems like almost every time we go there, SOMETHING happens. The sad part is, we keep going back, because no matter how rotten the service is - the food really is pretty good. We also keep hoping that we'll eventually get great service along with the great food.
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