The time my MIL made coffee for an entire restaurant was the worst. Turns out the server and the line cooks were doing blow in the kitchen and couldn’t be bothered. That restaurant folded really quickly.

The best tale of bad service, however, had to be when I was pregnant, suffering from morning sickness, and the only thing that appealed to me was O’Charley’s loaded potato soup. Yes, I should have known better. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had bad service at an O’Charleys. Really, at this point they’re going to have to beg me to come back.

Anyhoo, there are 5 of us at the O’Chuckles, including one child under four. We made sure to arrive before 6 o’clock as to minimize any chances of getting into the true supper rush. Our waitress is on something, perhaps stupidity, I don’t know. She finally gets our drinks then waits at least fifteen more minutes to take our orders. Then we waited 30 minutes without so much as a refill. She’s very lucky I was bent over with morning sickness, or I would have pulled a Cracker Barrel of epic proportions–and that’s a whole separate bad service experience.

At one point my father, who never has a cross word for anyone, pulls her aside to ask what’s going on. She disappears again. Shortly thereafter, we can see just enough of the kitchen to see she’s talking with a manager. She comes out and tells us the food will be right out (it wasn’t) and that she was had to attend a ‘meeting’ and that’s why she was running late. Fifteen minutes later, we finally have food, but, despite two requests, we never received any refills. Nor rolls.

Better yet, the manager never came to check on us or apologize to us. In fact, he disappeared so we couldn’t even ask to speak with him. I think my dad did actually leave a tip, but that heifer never so much as even apologized for our delay.