Terrible Management
My wife and I planned to pick up Thanksgiving dinner and take it to my mother in law who lives at an assisted living center. The Geiser had advertised their meal for weeks. As this was an unorthodox request, we called on two separate occasions, including Thanksgiving morning, to confirm that we could get our meals “to go”. Each time they told us there would be no problem, simply make a reservation, arrive, and order you meals “to go”. Didn’t work that way.
After arriving at our reservation time, we were directed to place our order at the bar. The bartender was swamped so it took quite a while to order our 3 meals. Not a problem. However, the turkey meal was a buffet so we were given two boxes for those orders and told to fill up at the restaurant, while the rest of our order was being filled.
Just as we began to put food in the take out boxes, a young lady stopped us. She told us that we were not allowed to order take out. We explained that we had arranged this for our home-bound mother and had confirmed our plans ahead of time. She couldn’t have cared less and wouldn’t allow us to speak with a manager, whom she alleged had directed her to stop us. I must say, she was very rude, dismissive and condescending. My wife and I both felt as if we were being spoken to like we were second-class citizens. It was quite embarrassing.
As we were leaving, my wife asked a woman at the front desk if she was the owner. (Apparently, the lady fit the physical description that someone had previously given my wife of the owner.) The lady said no, and asked what was the matter. We explained the situation and she made some excuses about how our order hadn’t been placed by the bartender, how they thought we only had one order, there had been some miscommunication, etc. We explained that we had ordered 3 meals, each with salads and desserts. Then, after several minutes of this, she informed us that the same young lady who had been so rude was now going to take care of us.
We were given boxes once again. The server at the buffet apologized for the treatment he had seen and overheard. Eventually, we were given the rest of our order and paid the bill, which was just over $100 for the three meals.
Before leaving, we were informed that the lady at the front desk had lied to my wife. She was indeed the owner, and she had been the one to direct the rude young lady to stop us. Another apologetic employee described the owner in some very unpleasant terms, which I won’t repeat here, and told us that she was behind this entire fiasco. If this is true, she has some pretty poor management skills, and her leadership obviously has not inspired much trust or respect from her employees.
This should never have been an issue. The owner kept saying there had been a “miscommunication”. No. We had clearly communicated our planning arrangements, our intentions to order the meals “to go”, and we had been given boxes and directions to the buffet. There had been no miscommunication. We had been clear and the wait staff had understood. This owner just didn’t like it and chose to intervene and humiliate us in the process.
Thankfully, despite this horrible experience, my 91 year old mother-in-law got to have some turkey dinner and didn’t have to go out in the ice and snow. She can’t walk and transporting her is a huge challenge. Not sure I’ll ever patronize the Geiser again. We have plenty of good restaurants and bars in town who know how to treat customers and staff well.
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