IHOP — Restaurant in El Paso

Good afternoon, I will start of by saying that I am a store manager of a high traffic retail store which is not so different from the restaurant service industry, and therefore I understand the difficulties of in these trying times, and am sympathetic to all of the "essential" workers out there trying to hold things together.

However, I have to say that my recent experience at a local IHOP has me very disappointed. Let me explain. Our troubles started this morning when we tried to call this store to place a phone pick up order. We tried for 15 minutes to get through, as we proceeded to drive to the location, and not once did someone answer. We arrived at the location (after not being able to get through by phone) and my husband went in to place the order in person. My husband went in and approached the front desk saying he wanted to put in a to-go order. The server who was manning the desk began to take down his order. The server was interupted in taking his order by the manager on duty who never even acknowledged my husband and sent the server away in the middle of taking the order. After that my husband was ignored as the managers attention turned to customers entering the restaurant. As my husband continued to try and get his attention, he was continuously ignored as the manager continues to address the customers coming in. Once he was done tending to other customers, my husband explained that he was trying to put in a to-go order with the server that he sent away and reiterated that he wanted to do so. Just then, more customers came in and without addressing my husband at all, again, turned his full attention to them. No apologies, no "I will be right back with you", nothing. At this point my husband became understandably frustrated and asked to speak to the manager. The MOD, proceeded to tell him he was the manager, and my husband told him he had been waiting for more than 10 minutes and was not given the attention needed to to place his order, then told him to forget it and he left and. Ame back to the car. Meanwhile, we were waiting in the car thinking our order was placed. My husband came back to the car clearly upset for being ignored and we decided that since we had come so far, we might as well try to place the order online since we had no luck getting through by phone and I stated I would go in since my husband didn't even want to order from there anymore. We placed our order online and our estimated time for pickup was 20 minutes. We drove around the shopping center for about 15. We came back, i went inside to pick up at about the 23 minute mark. Our food was ready 30 minutes after we ordered. I knew our order may not be ready right on time, i know there can be delays depending on how busy a restaurant is (which they werent), so that's no big deal. As he brought out our food (the same manager) I proceeded to ask the manager for 2 fresh jalapeños-since the option wasn't available to add online. The manager proceeded to tell me "Oh, I will have to charge you for those", in which I said "Oh, I understand, but let me explain whats been going on", I proceeded to explain very briefly our troubles in ordering and my husband's frustrations at being ignored for 10 minutes, at which point the manager actually smiled as though he was trying to suppress laughter, and said "I understand, but I still need to charge you for the jalapeños ".

At that point I said, ok, and picked up the bags, he asked me again if I wanted him to charge me for the jalapeños, I said no thank you and left. As I said, I am currently a retail manager and my husband has been a server for the last 10 years. As two people well versed in customer service, I can say with certainty that what should have happened, is: my husband and the server who was first trying to get our to-go order down should have been allowed to proceed until finished. Literally none of this would have happened had they finished and the order been placed. My husband said they were literally on the last item. The manager should have addressed the other...

I give three stars only because IHOP is not known to be gourmet food/sodas in that respect the food is ok.

But for management, let me explain the last two times in:

Wife and I come in the middle of the night (only customers), apparently one cook in back and one server up front. We wait by the front for like two minutes or so while the waiter is engrossed on his laptop and the cook comes from the back and tells him there are customers. He seats us and goes back to his computer. About 5 min later he comes back for drink order, which we are ready to order drinks and food. He takes order, looks like he when to the POS system and said something to the cook, then back to his computer. Approximately 7-10 min later, the cook comes out and tells the waiter the food is ready. He grabs the food and brings to the table, then says he forgot the drinks (maybe because he was on his computer) drinks few minutes after meal arrives. Then out of morbid curiosity, we eat and wait for the bill, we wait over 15 minutes after finishing the meal for the waiter to peel himself off the computer and ask if we needed anything else or the bill. (Granted, we did wait on purpose at this point)

Come in on a weekday approximately 09:00. Customers yes, but not overly busy. Again wait like two minutes for the hostess to greet/seat me. I ask for a booth, and she says there are none available is a table ok. (This is odd because at a quick glance I see 3 booths empty and the row of 1/2 bothers in the back also empty). I get seated near the POS and apparently some type of seating chart on a white board and markers. Sitting there about 5-10 minutes watching almost every waiter/waitress come over to write on the white board. By itself, if that’s them writing their own table assignments, I’d say odd but ok… the problem I saw was when each person wrote on the chart, there was 2-3 people behind them, watching/commenting/and then discussing what was written. Seems like an awful waist of time for so many to constantly gather at the same place that is supposed to be a transition from kitchen to dining room. As I was watching this, I did see my eventual waiter write on the board and talk with others at least twice but even though he passed me to do so, there was no, “I’ll be right with you” or other greeting like I was in his section and he was busy or something. He finally comes and asks for drink order, I say I’m ready to order drinks and food. He tells me he can only get drink order and will be back for food order (no explanation on this, but he was wearing a portable tablet that I believe he eventually took the order, maybe it was dead, I don’t know) when food was delivered, water did a good job of upselling me on a second OJ since I had already finished my first. He charged me for a second OJ but neglected to ever deliver it.

To be honest I don’t know how many cooks were in back but my small one person meal (2x2x2) took just short of an hour, maybe the back was shorthanded.

Either way, based on my experience and reading many of these comments, the crew needs to learn basic customer service and not exist in an establishment to occupy space and collect a paycheck. (I used to be a waiter and trying not to be hyper critical, these were just the glaring problems. There were actually more I...

We were disappointed. Ordered crispy bacon. It was far from crispy. Waiter took my plate back and when he returned, everything was luke warm. The hash browns were as if they had been reheated because they were not fresh. It is as if they had been sitting out cold and they put them on the grill to warm them up. We had ordered a side of the strawberry and banana pancakes. My aunt started eating them and after she was almost done we then realized that there were no bananas in them. On the menu in the description it said "bananas inside and on top". My meal came with pancakes and when he brought my plate out the second time I asked him where my pancakes were he told me it would be a few minutes. I use the pancakes sort of as toast. When I started to eat again I realized there was no salt and pepper on the table which is common now with restaurants because of covid. So I got the waiters attention and asked him for salt and pepper. About 5 minutes went by and he still hadn't brought it so I stood up to look for him and he was at another table across the room talking with people at another table. I waited a few more minutes and finally just went to ask another server for some. By the time I got the salt and pepper, my food was cold. About 15 minutes later our waiter passed by with another table's drinks. He never came by to ask if we wanted a refill on our drinks. We asked him for the check and he never brought it to us so when someone else passed by we asked that person for the check and they brought it to us. When we had our cash out on the table, our server came by and picked it up. I don't think I'll go back to...