Dear restaurants: Hire enough people, pay them enough money, and charge me more for a reliably pleasant experience

Our Domino’s location has gotten so erratic we’re not going to order from them anymore. Usually the explanation we’ve received is “we’re short-staffed,” although one time they were down an oven.

Lea and I tried to go to Texas de Brazil tonight. We’ve had our location for some years and never tried it, so why not go for our 25th anniversary? I made a reservation for 7:00. When we arrived, I told the hostess my name and that I had a 7:00 reservation, and she said “we’ll seat you as soon as we can.”

(There were a few empty tables that I could see, and I counted five different servers working.)

At 7:20 I’d had enough and asked the hostess if the manager would try to keep me as a customer if I said I was leaving. She said no, so we left.

Now I understand that the COVID-19 pandemic was, and perhaps is, an unprecedented event in modern economic times. For several reasons—some simple, some not so simple—restaurants have had trouble keeping staff. Some folks, like Stan and Tina, have simply closed locations, sometimes temporarily but for an extended time, when lowered customer flow and staffing difficulties have collided. Others have dramatically cut operating hours. Still others have soldiered on, and God bless them.

But dammit, at some point something’s gotta give.

When a reservation is not a reservation, we have a problem.

When a four-mile pizza delivery takes two hours from the telephone call, we have a problem.

You know, eating out is not a thrifty thing to do in the first place. Mentally I’m already turning loose of a fair bit of change when I make the decision. The pizza order that eventually arrived (well, most of it did) on Friday night was $53, including a $5 delivery fee and a $10 tip. Where would I have balked? Certainly not at $58. Probably not at $63. Let’s pay Domino’s employees better and charge me more money. How about that?

We selected Texas de Brazil as a luxury dinner destination. I was thinking $150-200 for the outing. Plenty of room in there for well-paid employees, is there not (if that was indeed the problem)?

I eat out a lot because I enjoy it. But we can’t plod on with mediocre-to-unacceptable experiences in these places. Hire enough people, pay them enough money, and charge me more for a reliably pleasant experience.

Dear restaurants: Hire enough people, pay them enough money, and charge me more for a reliably pleasant experience

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