O'Charley's Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Knoxville

Food was decent at best and service was terrible. We got a server in training (trainee) which isn't the issue, he was lovely and was doing his absolute best, but the server training him is at fault. Trainee accidentally spilled one of our drinks on us, he was super apologetic, made sure our phones and wallets weren't ruined before dashing off to grab a towel. The server training him (trainer) seemed really annoyed at the fact that he spilled a drink. Me and my friends were super understanding and told him it was alright. Us all having to go through job training we totally understood that mistakes happen when you first start out. The trainer walked off really annoyed after the trainee left and she said something like "I'll get you girls a towel" but in a very pointed tone. The manager then comes over to clean up the drink that fell on the floor and she goes "Sorry he's just nervous with you pretty girls being here and all" which is extremely gross and inappropriate to say to your customers. After everything is cleaned up the trainer goes to grab us another drink, on her way another employee stops her and asks if she'll get the trainee to get us our drink. She says "no, I don't want him spilling it on them again" all annoyed like. I'm sure he heard it because he was right at our table and the trainer was at the kitchen door right behind us. The poor trainee looked like he was gonna burst into tears, I felt so bad for him. For compensation they gave us more bread rolls and only the trainee apologized even though we told him several times that he didn't have to.

We then waited some 40-odd minutes for our food which would have been fine if the people seated most recently hadn't been given their food 20 minutes after they ordered. After that we waited 30 minutes for our server to come back and give us our checks and then our desserts.

My final thoughts are as follows: I hope that one trainee gets a new job because he deserves a place that will treat him with basic human decency, the food was mediocre, and the service was...

For starters, I’m not much of a reviewer, especially a bad one… but Today, after picking my mother up from her hospital stay, we decided to come here to eat, it was around 4:30ish. The place wasn’t very busy at all, plenty of seating. We were seated and waited around 10 mins before anyone came to the table to even greet us and get our drink orders. (Thought nothing of it at this time) our waiter was Santana (I believe was his name). He came and apologized for the wait, didn’t do what a “normal” waiter would have done and introduced himself or really any table side manner. Anyways, we continued to overlook this thinking maybe he was just having a bad day. Because his attitude / demeanor , was not friendly at all, he was very rushed to get away like. We really noticed it when other customers started coming in and he seemed friendly and smiles with them, yet almost as if he was “too good” to serve us or something, maybe because you could tell my mom had just gotten out of the hospital ? . I’m not sure. Our drinks never got refilled until the very end when we had to ask for to go drinks. Today was free pie Wednesday and he seemed so irritated when we asked him about getting ours to go. The only smile he had was when we left I said “I hope you have a better night” and he replied with “you too.” Aside from that, our food was “eh”. The steak ordered had came out not nearly cooked to medium as asked (which he did get fixed after having to ask other staff to please find our server) because he had not came back. The chicken tenders were decent, but the fries were hard like they had been sitting out a while. The rolls were good as per usual but asking for another basket seemed like too much to ask for by the looks of it. Chicken parm was decent. We spent $75 on this meal, along with a $50 to go order. A smile and friendliness goes a very long way, you never know what kind of day...

I hope that Chris Burns will see this post. I have so left a message at his office. It is 2:10pm Thursday my husband and I attempted to have a late lunch. We stood in foyer and looked at Silent Auction Items for 6-8 minutes, without being approached by any Oh Charley's Staff. We walked into dining room and bar area, looked to see if bar tender was possibly on hostess duty; but no bar tender. Two additional servers came out double doors, central to bar, they never acknowledged we were standing there, making eye contact. They went back to re-stocking items, cleaning empty booth seats and tables. We chose the first booth to left. We Sat for 3-4 minutes when two ladies that had finished lunch, and had also Made eye contact with us approached our table and said, they had the same problem when they came in to be seated. We stood to leave at same time a different employee, a 30 something lady, dressed like a manager came from double doors carrying boxes . She did not recognize either. Finally at 2:20 pm we walked out and went o Calhouns where they happily waited on us. We chose Oh Charley's because one of my students father was just employed as a cook at Downtown West location. I wanted to give back a gesture of kindness, like the local franchise had initiated by hiring a head of household father that badly needed a job. Too bad employees are either not intuitive enough or just do not care or realize two live bodies waiting to be seated equated to job security. Did I mention they may have been distracted by their phones that were held securely in left had while they clumsily reset their...