Dear Souper! Salad: You suck.

[corrvin]

From the comments field of the complaint form:

The first tray my boyfriend picked up was coated with bits of paper product, as if someone had tried to wipe a wet tray with a paper napkin or toilet tissue. The first utensils he got were coated with some kind of residue that we assumed was dishwashing detergent.

The salad bar was well stocked as far as the items we normally get and there were no obvious spills or stale/limp items. I set my tray down at a table and gave our drink order to the server. The server returned, setting down our order and pointing out which one was the tea and which one was the diet soda. (It's just personal preference, but I like being asked which one I had, instead of having it set on the far side of the table from me and indicated to me with a finger.)

When I proceeded to the soup area, there were NO CLEAN BOWLS. I looked around and there were several waitstaff circling the dining room not doing anything in particular. I asked one for a bowl and went over to the baked potato area. There were also no baked potatoes so I had to ask another of the staff walking by to place some more out.

I come to Souper! Salad! because I like to have a bowl of soup, baked potato, and some salad. With two of three choices available to me, I was sitting at a table with a couple of spoonsful of food on a plate, looking around while I waited on someone to get a bowl and a baked potato so that I could eat. I think it would have been appropriate for the server to come ask "Is everything okay?" at that point. Obviously if someone is sitting there with a plate a quarter filled with food, looking around, SOMETHING IS NOT OKAY and it's a good time to fix it! (And no, I don't think it was an assumption that all I wanted to eat was three spoonsful of pasta salad.)

However, I don't want to blame just my individual server, because there were several waitstaff wandering aimlessly around the dining room. Now I don't know how staffing works, so it may not be specifically the waitstaff's job to make sure that there is food available and utensils to get it in, but Souper! Salad! is a buffet, not a sit-down restaurant, so we should not have to get up and find a waitperson and PLACE AN ORDER for a clean dish. If the waitstaff are up walking around, they can at least take a glance at the soup bar and see that there are no bowls for a period of ten minutes or more. Then if it's not their job to get that stuff, they can tell someone whose job it is, not make the customers try to figure out who they're supposed to ask for dishes and food.

Finally, the server who was mysteriously unable to see me when I had NO FOOD and was looking around somehow managed to find us again as soon as we started eating. I had two plates (salad, potato) and soup and my boyfriend had two plates of salad, soup, and a dessert bowl. The server tried at least three times to come and remove dishes while we were still eating. Now I appreciate dishes being removed when someone is clearly done and chatting after the meal, but trying to take someone's plate away from them while they're eating the last few bites of dessert is really rushing them out of the restaurant.

If business is that slow that the only thing a server can do is try to bus tables that are still in use, then maybe that's a sign of bad priorities.

To sum up:
*picked up a dirty tray and utensils
*no soup bowls at all
*no baked potatoes
*inattentive waitstaff, had to walk around restaurant to get someone
*waitstaff overattentive once we didn't need anything

I don't expect something stellar for $15, but I do expect a nicer lunch experience than I would get at home (where "nicer" means that I don't have to set the table or wash my own dishes, and someone brings me a drink). I understand that things go wrong, employees quit, equipment breaks, all that. However, in the absence of any apology, I have to assume that this is standard operating procedure at the restaurant now, and I'll take my dining-out budget (and my extended family's) elsewhere.

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Anything I should add before sending this to them tonight?