IHOP — Restaurant in Virginia

We stopped in after the rodeo approx 10:30 when seated. We did get seating prior to most of rush. It took over and hour for our food. When it arrived several orders where incorrect. It was busier than normal as over heard by hostess stating "the staff is not used to this amount of crowd, this is how day shift is they can handle it". The wait staff was trying to keep things going. Our table went most of meal without refills on drinks from waitress having many tables. The hostess how ever when she finished seating people and no others waiting or checking out never took it upon herself to walk around tables ask if needed anything or refills drinks she would go look out the window. Another possible waitress maybe ,she was not wearing a name tag. Was mostly talking with 1 table in sideroom in corner. Once crowd dispersed she came to "help" bus a table after the busboy had already did the most. Prior to then, the hostess was not even helping the bus boy when he was busy elsewhere, she was looking out the window. When people came to sit. She said it will be a wait as tables were dirty. They had been for 10 minutes or longer with ample time to be cleaned by those just standing even though it was not "their" job. I am assuming there was a shift leader of sorts somewhere but where I have no clue. I have worked on restaurants for many years in the past and get when a rush comes in and short staff it takes longer. My problem was watching some just there butts and stress while others just did not. By the time all of our food came out and some still not correct it was 12am. We live local and are very disappointed with our several stops at Ihop. This is not the type of service we were accustomed too from Berkeys. Maybe more training on how to work as a team when...

Unfortunately this is the only restaurant option at this truck stop. I will start with the issues I had. I ordered a house salad and asked for Italian dressing. They don't have Italian, okay I will take balsamic. I wanted the potato soup on the menu. They don't have that soup, they have some sort of tomato. My husband ordered steak (medium rare), eggs, and hashbrowns. The steak came out gray looking and not looking very good. Then he tried to cut into it and that wasn't happening. He literally had to saw it. From our guess, it was probably frozen and they microwaved it to thaw. It was cooked medium rare but was rubber, no steak no matter how cheap should have been that tough. The manager came out, was very condescending, and ultimately asked if there was something else she could get him. They discussed it and settled on a hamburger steak (just a patty) with gravy mushroom & onions. Then the check came. The waitress was sure to tell us she didn't charge us for the hamburger steak but the steak dinner (that he couldn't eat) was what we were charged. So we paid for something he couldn't eat. Then when the waitress brought our receipt back she tells us about the survey that can get us free pancakes. My husband said, we don't like pancakes. The waitress reply with, oh that's quite sad. Really?!?! That's quite sad?!?! We travel through there often and will never...

It was 8pm and I was extremely tired ...having just drove 11 hours...I was tired...I was hungry and I just wanted something besides fried chicken. I had a small window before I had to roll out ...so I ordered pancakes..Tres Leches. The guy next to me ordered after me and received a full breakfast...including bacon and pancakes...and was almost finished eating and I still hadn't gotten my 3 lil pancakes. The young waitress had a smart mouth...so I asked for a Manager. The Middle aged lady came over to me to explain...but instead of just being honest and telling the truth about a minor screw up , that left me without pancakes...she decided to lie. She ( the Manager) told me that there was SOO much they had to do for Tres Leches...mind you...it was 30 minutes after I ordered. I was upset over the neglect because I was just strung out from the road and hungry...totally Excusable. But what is NOT Excusable is the lack of Integrity this Manager showed by lying....and the Bad example she set for her much younger employees...it was only pancakes....until you lied... And I used to work at IHOP...there is NOT a single item on the menu that takes 30 minutes to get out...much less pancakes. Lady, you should be ashamed...not of your younger employees lack of service...but your own inability to be honest and set the tone of integrity and customer relations...