Lavenjea was the Manager on duty!

On Saturday, October 31st my family and I arrived at Chili’s Willowbrook Location in Houston, Tx. There was no host upfront. I waited patiently for about 10 mins before asking a waiter. The waiter said there was no host and he would go and get the manager to help me.

We had a party of 13 (6 adults 7 children) and was quoted 1 hour and 45 minutes wait by the manager ,Lavenjea. I have photos of the entire restaurant, no one was there ! She never explained why the wait would be so long. I had to look around and ask questions to the other customers myself to come to this conclusion. I truly felt the over quote was a Deterrent being that they were short staffed.

There was a large party before us, but the plan for that party was on the opposite side of the restaurant (according to the hostess who later arrived)

I inquired about the open seating on the opposite side of the restaurant and they said we couldn’t be seated there due to social distancing. There were 5 open tables right next to each other.

About 45 minutes later we were told we would be sat at the exact tables that had been sitting there. I asked the server to ask the manager ,Lavenjea, if we could be compensated for our time being that those tables had been open the entire time , those were the same tables I inquired about, and we had hungry children waiting 45 minutes for no reason at all.

The manager Lavenjea, came upfront , very rude, very indirect, and loudly responded to the waiter by saying “no , I told her 1 hour 45 minutes and she’s being seated in only 45 minutes”. She never addressed me as the customer directly.

Now we are escorted to our table by our server Daniel , who did a very great job by the way, and tables were not put together . The entire area was Empty but the manager had him keep the tables apart. We had 2 different tables and a booth. So basically we waited 45 minutes unnecessarily. My photos show open booths through the entire restaurant. If we were not going to be able to push tables together, we should have been sat at booths from the beginning.

The manager on duty is to blame for this (Lavenjea). Horrible management skills and very poor people skills . She over quoted me from the beginning. Her plan to sit my party was not well planned at all. She never came to the table to make sure we were ok, as a manager should have done when a party is not happy. I did not enjoy this dinning experience at all. Chicken crispers were hard and dry like toothpicks. I have worked in the restaurant business for several years in the past for Darden restaurants. As busy as that chain is, we have never quoted ANYONE over 60 minutes. This was extremely wrong of her. Very careless and her attitude was extremely distasteful.