Same with me and TGIF. On three consecutive visits:

-Super gay waiter goes round to all tables asking customers' opinions if he should ask out the (fat, middle aged) host.

-Ten minutes before someone finally notices we sat down and they'll be right with us. Ten minutes after that, finding out that person's shift just ended. Five minutes later we finally get to place our order.

-Waitress takes order. Twenty-five minutes later the salads haven't even showed up. She comes back and tells us she had a brain fart and what was our order again? Not only had she forgotten, she forgot that she forgot!


Finally I just stuck to vetoing the place, but for some reason everyone - including the people who had lived through the above horror stories - kept trying to drag me back.

Now the same thing is happening with Not Your Average Joes, a chain that tries to be a hipper more upscale TGIF and it obsessed with dumping bacon and blue cheese on EVERYTHING.

Well, what do you know, i also knew a gay guy that worked at an applebee's. He always insited in hook me up with the ugliest waitress available.

I've only eaten at Applebee's a couple of times - I wouldn't say they were great experiences but I and the people I was with got our food in a timely fashion, the transaction went without any hitches which is all I ask for from any restraunt of any sort - then again at a TGIF's we did get the prissy waitress (on a day when there was barely anyone in the place) who acted like us ordering food was the most offensive thing ever done to her, for whatever reason. We asked for drink refills at one point and her face screwed up into the tightest scowl I've ever seen, she came back with a tea pitcher and just sort of clumsily plunked it down with a "HERE!"

Of course, I was once at this supposedly somewhat upscale Italian joint with some friends and what had been advertised as a class establishment definitely wasn't, our waiter switched from completely ignoring us to treating us with ill-concealed contempt and the food came out cold and covered in thick layers made up of globs of cheese and we made a polite complaint and the manager came out acting all huffy and acted like we were ingrates who should have been glad to be allowed to crawl into his establshment, much less be allowed to order food.

Applebees food tastes fake. TGIF through insane bro math once charged me for a beer.

My wife worked at an Applebee's as a waitress for about a month. She had plenty of (much) more upscale dining waitressing experience going in, so she was no slouch, but she was regularly stiffed on tips at Applebee's. Her theory was that much of the clientele is more used to the fast-food model of dining, so tipping doesn't even cross their radar when they go to a place like Applebee's or TGIF. So if your waitstaff at one of these places seems particularly grouchy, it's eminently possible it's at least in part because they've been stiffed on half their checks that day.

I went to an IHOP a couple months ago. Never again. Not only was the food terrible, it cost for eggs and pancakes.

Last time I ate at Applebee's, I had some sort of terrifying macaroni concoction that was on the "Couples Dinner" menu. The fact was that my parents were going through a nasty divorce, and my mother was deeply depressed, and I offered to take her out to dinner, anywhere she wanted. So she wanted Applebee's. The resulting dinner was absolute agony on my sensitive liver and obviously didn't cheer her up any. I even splurged on dessert, but I think the waiter was really pissed that we didn't order drinks (my mother is an evangelical teetotaller).

I've never had liver issues as bad as I had that night, yeeeeesh. It was like an angry crab was in my gut.

Yes it is!

i never want to be like that.

Wait, this was you?

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=47119

No, but I did feel a sudden urge to start using my bathtub as a storage closet afterwards.

thats cause they all order from sysco, and everything comes in a bag

I had to go to a small Texas town for an entire month for work. They hadn't sprung to get me a rental car, the nearest grocery store was 10 miles away, and the only real restaurant was a Dennys.

My god they have such a limited menu of blah.

Imagine eating nothing but Dennys.

FOR A MONTH

There is no way you could have survived that. You must be a ghost.

That is way, way suckier than any consulting goatfuck I've been dragooned into. Wait. Maybe Dunn, North Carolina? Hmm. No, not even that.

You're Cleveland area, right? Check out a Winking Lizard some time. I've never gotten a bad meal from there, in the 20+ years I've been frequenting them.

There's one of those like five minutes away from me! Never went there though. I'll have to check it out.