Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Detroit

To be fair, Applebee's would only take home a 5 star review if the staff happened to pull off a Motown style version of happy birthday while serving me a free dessert following a stellar meal. But 4 stars is definitely possible from America's favorite neighborhood bar and grill, if you were to order the right burger and calibrate your expectations to a lukewarm medium.

In summary, I approached the hostess for a table for 10 and was seated an hour and a half later. The odd thing was that nobody appeared to be leaving the restaurant. The wait list grew and grew but nobody was leaving. Were the customers lingering forever and holding their tables? I'm in town for the NSBE conference of 16,000 young engineers. Maybe these people were basking in their excellence and losing track of time while fellowshipping with their engineering kinfolk.

Nope. After over half of our party bailed to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their hotel rooms, we were finally seated in a half empty restaurant. I guess nobody in the hotel mentioned to the restaurant managers that 16,000 people would be here for 4 days, or that the hotel was fully booked with a large percentage of the conference attendees staying right upstairs and across the street. The hostess was all alone. There appeared to be about 4 total servers, 2 bartenders and no manager to be found. If she/he was around they damn sure didn't show up to the front to lend a hand. The kitchen must have been equally short staffed because the only reason they weren't seating people was because the kitchen couldn't keep...

I work downtown around the corner from this place and when I say the attitudes is AWFUL! Especially amongst the women who work there! You complain one time and now your getting death stares every time you walk in to place a order! They don't speak unless you speak 1st, they always respond in a rude and demeaning tone and they never properly train their staff. How do you have baristas taking phone orders but can never get the order right! And if you think ordering through the app and website will be better IT WON'T!! They ignore your customizations and make it how they want to! They act like fast food workers and this is supposed to be a sit in, dine in restaurant. To be clear the food is never the issue! It's the staff making, prepping and serving your orders that are the issue!! Also be careful complaining about Cassandra the assistant manager! She has a habit of intimidating people afterwards. A few examples are when you go to pick up your order she will stare you up and down with a disgusted look before snapping at you and ask how can she help you. She will also start messing with your already packed order before handing it to you herself with again the same disgusted look. She will also look at you with that same look while whispering to other coworkers, all of which will start to give you the same look when you come in. All of these interactions have led to this review. At this point nothing can resolve these issues unless they plan to fire or retrain the whole staff on...

So I don't typically leave reviews, let alone negative ones but this Applebee's wow. Let me be clear this isn't against the food which I thought was good, or even most of the servers which I thought were fine, this is solely because of the bartender (didn't catch his name because I didn't want to know him after a point) who was inattentive, and not only messed up the orders of my coworkers, but of other people around the bar. He was the bartender on Monday from at least 7 pm, and it took at least 40 minutes for him to even get to us at the bar. From there it took another 20 minutes to get orders for our food (of which he had to confirm multiple times what we ordered) then it took another hour for the food to even get to us. Now normally I'd accept this and keep it pushing cause I just wouldn't come back, but after checking my bank statement I also see that they over charged me on my receipt by manipulating the tip number, so now I leave this 2 star review. Again, most of the people here are fine but if you have a white male bartender here I can imagine is on the later shift,...