Chili's Grill & Bar — Restaurant in Fresno

I am writing this as someone who has worked in the food industry, has dealt with rushes for hours on end in chain restaurant settings, and I have never seen chaos and bad service like this.

It was a Friday night, so I knew we would be waiting, I expected that 100% - I never expected to see such unprofessionalism displayed at the host podium. Hosts and managers actively arguing with each other over seating - and then arguing with guests on who was going to be sat. Absolutely no one knew what was going on, tried to, or apologized for the honestly nauseating environment that was being created.

We were told 10-20 minutes, but looking at the restaurant I figured it’d be like 25 for them to clean up adequately. They had 3 hosts just sitting at the front but no clean tables to seat, so what was the point? We got sat after 45 minutes, in an extremely dirty section that hadn’t been cleaned yet. The tables around us were full of used dishes and trash. The floor was soaked with spilled drinks/ice - no wet floor sign. It wasn’t a fully bussed section, and we should not have been sat there. Or if it was truly that bad, sat with a comment of intention to finish bussing after we were sat.

We decided for our health and to hopefully ease the waitstaff’s load for this evening, to leave the Chili’s. I handed back our menus and calmly let them know we would be heading out, and one of the hosts snapped at me: “Okay goodBYE.”

Again. I understand being stressed about a rush, I understand being overwhelmed and not even delivering the best service - not one person even apologized about the wait, the state of the restaurant, the outbursts. Anything. Would...

The experience which should have been good ended up not being so good after all. The girl who waited on us was extremely short with us. The food was fine except for getting the appetizer after our lunch arrived. The soup and salad was brought and 30 seconds later the food showed up. Ok, didn't complain. I asked about the appetizer and her helper brought it right out. So now we are eating everything at once. The waitress was so rude it was like if we asked for anything we would be scolded. When I did my exact words were. "Excuse me, could I get a refill of iced tea". Before I was finished with my sentence she piped in and under her breath said "please would have been nice". Well had she let finish my sentence I would have. I usually will pass this off as she is having a bad day. Ok, I get that. Don't bring it to work. I know customers can be rude, so I always make sure I am kind to the servers. I'm the guy who tips 25%. With her attitude she is lucky I left her anything, The people in my party said give her at least 15% even though they agreed that she had a bad attitude from the get go. The good news is that she never has to worry about me ever going to Chili's which I've been a faithful diner since the Chili's opened up in Cupertino, California in the mid 70's. There are way too many choices to go spend money only to be berated by my server. Not happening. Just for clarification this Chili's is located in Fresno, California off Herndon Ave and Fresno Street, by Kaiser Hospital. Her name which I can't remember started with a C. Should have...

Employees I've come across are very nice. I tried to speed up my service since I was ordering on my lunch. So I ordered online. First it took a long time to load up , it could have Been my phone that the internet sucks but I could have ordered faster if I had called in. I usually go to the back for pick up, I try to avoid as many people as possible, when i walked in the pick up counter was closed so they sent me to the bar. I walked to the bar and waited like a minute to get someone's attention. Told them I had ordered online. Nice lady but she took off for a bit . I was thinking my order would be ready since it had been about a half an hour and it said 17 minutes would be ready but it did take more time then I would have liked. It did not look like there were many customer being serviced at the time I went in around 130. Other times I have came in the service through the back pick up always seemed very fast and even if I did wait I felt more comfortable since I would be waiting out of sight instead this time I had to wait at the bar where i felt very uncomfortable since I tried to avoid walking through the place by ordering ahead and giving more time to prepare the food. But all in all the food was very good the way I ordered it and the...