Thursday, October 06, 2005

Comment Card

Letter written to establishment in New Paltz, after horrible service

Hello and good morning.

I would like to take a moment to share with you an experience that I had at your establishment.
My fiancé and I, along with our friend, came in on Sunday afternoon to have a late lunch. We frequent your brewery and we were thinking about having our rehearsal dinner in June upstairs in your restuarant. While we were waiting for an outside table, I asked the hostess for private party information. She shuffled me outside to a table for the information. Yes, shuffled. I go outside and see that there was no information, just a couple 3x8 promo piece about the brewery (which, looks great by the way) and some local tourist info. I go back in, and tell the hostess that there wasn't anything out there. Of course, she goes outside to check, to make sure that I just was looking in the right place. She finds out that indeed there wasn't anything outside, and starts to search for the info for us. And search. She could not find anything to give me. She couldn't even give me some general information. She could have said that its all on the website, as an alternative... I was disappointed, but realized maybe you've had a rush of private party inquires, so I'd wait until another time. Your hostess, then gave us the managers name on the back of a business card.

On to the meal. Now, with the hostess knowing that we are looking at having the Otter host our rehearsal dinner, wouldn't she perhaps give us one of your best waiters? Or, at least make sure that a small bit of extra attention was given to us? Not so much. Our waiter, whose name was Doug, forgot to bring us our appetizer (calamari, which arrived cold), then did not ask to refill the beer on the table or refill my water. We watched 2 tables who arrived after us (with a very attentive waitress) get appetizers, meals, and even desserts before we received our own. We had to ask to have our beer and water refilled, and the waiter brought the check with the refills. Dessert? Hum... no thanks. I could understand that if the restaurant was busy, sure... But there were empty tables around, and we saw him hanging around the bussing station drinking goodness knows. Again, disappointing.

We've never experienced that low level of service at your restaurant. We have always made a habit of having dinner at the Water Mammal" when were passing through town, as well as meeting up with friends at the bar for some of your great beer. We are happy to pay slightly higher prices in order to get quality service, meals and atmosphere. Quite frankly, we could've had better service from Shack of Taco's at closing!

We're going to take a break from the Water Mammal, and give some of the other restaurants a chance. Perhaps I'll contact you about private parties, but.. I'll need to make sure I can find that information...

Thanks for listening.

3 comments:

Paul said...

Dougitude

Gilday said...

I especially liked how he placed his fingers right at the top of the pint glass, so I had no choice but have some doug sweat with my beer.

James Dziezynski said...

Doug= pwned!