[Gemme]

We wound up going to IHOP. I had a coupon! Weeee, right?

Not quite.

When I ordered the Maui shrimp, I was not informed they did not have any of the pineapple sauce and had NO cocktail sauce on the premises, otherwise I would have ordered something else. Shrimp = cocktail sauce, right?

Then, our salads came AFTER the entrees. THEN, the server suggested I put hot sauce on my shrimp instead since they didn't have cocktail sauce or the pineapple sauce it was supposed to come with. Did I mention that the server didn't think it was necessary for me to know this information when I ordered? For those that are fortunate enough to never have ordered this dish, they come wrapped in a quarter inch thick coating of whatever it is that they coated it with and, since I had to wait on the server to get back with us for a while, it was not even warm. Basically, it was in a hard ass cocoon.

I had also asked for ketchup when I asked for the cocktail sauce. Apparently, the ketchup was forgotten when the cocktail sauce debacle began. It took two more tries to flag her down and then it was, "Oh! You want ketchup?"



Anyway, so I'm eating my broccoli and potatoes and cocooned shrimp like a good girl and the manager walks by and asks if everything is okay. Initially, I was like sure, whatever, and then....I brought the sauce issue up. THEN, she says, "Sometimes they are too lazy to look for stuff. Let me go see if I can find it for you." Two minutes later, the sauce is in front of me.

I appreciated the manager but was not thrilled at ALL about the service we received. Organic is kinder than I and was still going to tip more than 20%. I could not let him. My mother, who had been a server for almost 20 years, would have come back from the grave and boxed my ears. She was always very clear on the point that, yes, servers pretty much live off of the tips, but if you get shitty service, they get a shitty tip or certainly not ABOVE the average. You don't reward bad behavior. Okay, that last part was also for pet training, but us humans are a fraction of a chromosome away from them, so it still fits. Some of us are a little more animalistic than others. I am quite likely that of an ornery bear, awakened too early in the season and starving.

Anyway, the Caesar salad was SOAKED in dressing (I forgot to ask for it on the side), the potatoes and broccoli were decent and the shrimp sucked. The Mt. Dew was awesome though as was Organic's tilapia.

If this had taken place at oh, say 3am-ish, I could almost forgive it. We all know the best servers are on the busiest shifts and graveyard isn't one of them, even on the weekends. But this was right around 10pm. Ridiculous!