Service, where have you gone?

On our trip to Pittsburgh I had the opportunity to witness how poor service has become. I don't know why this is a growing trend in our country but I have a few ideas. We don't have people who answer our phone calls, we have automated answering services....or some person 1,000's of miles away in a different country who barely speaks the languages. We have self serve gas stations, buffets, self check out at grocery stores...etc..

Our trip started our right here in our own little town. We stopped to get something to eat. It was small mom & pop drive in type place. We ordered two cheeseburgers, onion rings, french fries and two drinks. Nothing out of the ordinary. Three other groups of people got their food, finished eating and left before we saw our order. There were four people there working. One out front talking to all the customers, one behind the counter listening to the conversations, on going back and forth from the counter to the kitchen and the cook. Now why we had to wait over a half hour to get our food while everyone else was served we never figured out. We think they were so busy chatting it up that they forgot about our order.

Our hotel was extremely nice, everything they promised it would be. We had a nice room, comfortable bed, an awesome view of the city at night.....and trains that came by at 3 a.m. in the morning. Directly under our windows. Let me tell you that that lil bit of info was not on the website. *it was sort of like a moment from "My Cousin Vinny"*

We went out to eat before the concert at Joe's Crabshack. We walked in and no one was at the podium. A girl saw us walk in and made eye contact with us, but never aknowledged we were there. She just stood where she was across the room from us and ignored us. We finally had to wave her dumbass down and then she came over and said. "Do you want a table?" DUH! So then we sat and waited for about 10 minutes or so before anyone ever came to give us a menu or take our drink order. The bartender was the one who finally waited on us...we ate a plate full of crab legs and ordered another. Our first order was out to us in about 5 minutes. The second order...I swear we waited almost a half hour on it. We are talking steamed crablegs at a CRABSHACK... it was ridiculous.

After the concert we went out to a bar to get some food and a drink. Door guy was cool, told us no problem getting something to eat sit anywhere. We sit...no one comes to our table. We see a whole row of booths that are full of people being waited on, one booth is empty so we go and sit at it. There was a couple of empty glasses and a paid check sitting there and the waitress came cleaned the table and took our drink order. ENTER a stupid ass drunk woman....she sits at the booth with us, looks at us, wobbles a bit and asks..."where is my stuff?" We say we don't know there is no stuff here, and get up and move back to our original table where no one was waiting on us....waitress comes to our new table and takes care of us...

Next day: We go shopping... one place the lady completely ignores me and tries to find something for another woman who has told her over and over nevermind take care of this person (me). I swear I waited a good forever on that woman. Another place we buy a shirt..it doesn't come up on the register when they scan it. It is 20 bucks no tax. They are arguing with each other about how to get it in the computer, where it is in the computer..wasting our time. Finally Brad just hands them a 20 and says ring me up somehow and you two figure this out on your own time.

I don't know....we just thought it was bad that every time we seemed to go somewhere something was messed up with the service.