Waffle House — Restaurant in Tennessee

Love Waffle House food! For food alone, I'd rate it 5 stars, easily, hands down! As for this specific location & it's staff, everyone does have "down-to-earth", friendly, southern hospitality...when it comes to their personality/how they speak to their customers, rather regulars or newbies or 1-timers, I've witnessed, on several different occasions, they make you feel like a part of their family, which can be a good thing for sure. But @ the same time, when my fiancée & I are in there (which is about once every week or 2 due to the fact we work literally right down the road from there), it's usually on our lunch break (of only 30 mins from the time we clock out to the time we clock back in), & while I'm not trying to seem like IDC or that their stories aren't worth hearing, some of the staff needs to learn that when a customer is in there with a to go order, that probably means they're in a bit of a hurry cuz they're limited on their time...we have jobs too! Which brings me to my other complaint...not being able to call in our order ahead of time. That alone made it even more of a reason of why we chose to eat at Waffle House....we could call in our order while we were still working & on the clock, then after about 10-15 mins @ most usually, we'd drive down the road to the Waffle House, which @ MOST is a 5 min drive from our work, then when we'd get there, they'd usually have our order ready, along with any requests (from us) of condiments & we'd pay, tip, then be back in our car & to "the shop" & eating all within about 5-8mins tops. Now, since they haven't been answering the phones for to go/call-in orders in the past couple of months or more (@ least not on the days we tried calling), if/when we do get lunch from there, it's a guaranteed 45min to an hour (total) lunch break. I've worked in the restaurant business, just a few years ago, along with retail. I DO understand being short-staffed & only 1 person or 2 doing all the cooking, cleaning, preparing, ordering, cashing customers out, etc. This complaint ISN'T directed personally to the servers & cooks. It's more towards the person who does the scheduling of the staff & the hiring/firing. AND it's directed to anyone who NEEDS a job YESTERDAY, but is begging, borrowing, stealing, wheeling & dealing, &/or ANYTHING (BUT ACTUALLY GETTING A REAL JOB THAT PAYS) to make ends meet, claiming they "can't find a job who will hire them"/can't find the easiest but highest paid job that requires little to no effort, cuz they "refuse to work in the food/customer service industry"...Waffle House on Lovell seems to be needing some servers & maybe some cooks, who are actually willing & wanting to work!

Other than that, Waffle House in general will still continue to get my business. They'd just get more on Lovell if they'd fix a couple of...

My partner and I arrived around 7pm on a Sunday night. This was the weirdest Waffle House experience I’ve ever had. That’s saying something. We ordered a side of bacon extra crispy as well as an order of hashbrowns. Both came wet and floppy. They put my bacon back on the grill and remade the hashbrowns and they were perfect. However, the cook, whose name seemed to be Skip since a woman across the restaurant yelled it to him, acted offended that someone sent back food. He was grumbling to our server that asked him to remake it. If we ordered it well done, it should have been made well done. The cook then went outside to smoke. This left our server, a man with green hair, and another employee inside the restaurant. Our server then conversed loudly with seemingly a friend at the bar - her name was Amy, heard that loudly too - about how grabbing breasts is a stress reducer. To his credit, this female friend was nearly screaming about it throughout the restaurant and it would have been impossible to not reply to her and let her keep going. Having an employee discuss this in front of customers is insane. Then, while we were still eating and had empty drink glasses, our server left, took his friend’s keys, and went to smoke in her car. The only redeeming factor to this visit was the one employee left inside. He was thoughtful and took over our server’s table unasked to make sure we were okay. He refilled our drinks and helped us pay. His name was Jarrett, and he is the only good...

I came in on Saturday night. The place was so busy that customers were having to clean their own table after others left waited an hour, not even a "hi or we'll be right with you." After waiting that long, i just left and tried again Sunday morning. Still a little busy got seated at the bar, the waitress was argumentative and wore a name tag with no name on it. They could not get anything right they were yelling at other waitresses to pick up the food. One lady walked out without paying cause her waitress never brought her ticket after she waited for a while. Another could who was seated right after me ordered, and only the husband got his food, so the waitress ended up comping the whole bill. And now, for the worst part, let's talk about the cook with the eyepatch. His grill was so dirty that he had piles of hashbrowns just burning on the grill, waiting for people to order. When they did, he would pick out the burnt peices and make they food with whats already on the grill. I sat at the bar for over an hour. That same pile of hashbrowns was never scraped off or his grill cleaned. Nobody ever greated anyone. This was the most unprofessional and un sanitary waffle house i have ever been too and i travel all 50 states for work, so i have been to hundreds of waffle houses. This place has a serious lack of leadership. The customers waiting in line joking around was the only good thing...