We went to a small regional chain restaurant, very similar to Ponderosa yesterday for supper. I'd asked to go there because we'd never had a bad experience there and I like their salad bar and steaks.

We got there and the experience was poor from the get go. The cashier who takes your order before you are seated couldn't keep her attention on the customers in front of her - she kept interupting to say stuff to another of the employees there. We get to the head of the line after a short wait and the girl is pleasant (not the one with the short attention span) and takes our order.

We are seated and head up to the salad bar. It is almost empty, although a minute or twso into getting a plate an employee came out with replenishments - all very quickly and nicely handled (bonus marks there).

I have that plate and then a second plate of salad. My boyfriend had just ordered salad bar, while I had ordered steak. We realised we had been there 25 minutes and still no steak for me. After 30 minutes we decided that if still no steak we'd just cancel that part of the order and I'd do salad bar too (I was starting to fill up)

At 30 minutes from sitting down, he went and asked them to take the steak off of our menu. The waitress did that with no fuss or muss (very professionally handled and just mentioned they were very backed up).

We go to the cash to pay and the manager asks for our bill. We mention what had happened and he mentions that they had sat us in the wrong place and "lost" our table. Huh? I think we flustered him by not being angry or upset. He ended up taking 20% off of our bill in addition to the steak. This was unexpected and nice of him.

Still, we left there shaking our heads. Different stories are disconcerting. WBest sometimes to not explain and limit explanations to profuse apologies . We'll go back to the chain just not that particular location.