Getting something off my chest

I have had so many things on my mind lately, that its been hard to be creative. A recent disagreement with two of my family members has bothered me to the point that its all I think about. When do you just walk away completely and decide to go it alone? All the other problems then seem magnified and you start to think the whole world is against you. It makes it hard to think about anything else, so in an effort to get at least a little of this off my chest, I decided to blog about one recent event that I'm not happy about.

My birthday was last Tuesday, so on Wednesday, my family took me out to dinner. I got to choose where we would go, which is usually a big hassle, since my husband doesn't like the chain restaurants. He thinks they are too expensive. After our experience, I'd have to agree. I chose T.G.I. Fridays, so that's where we went. The restaurant wasn't very busy, so we were seated right away (one benefit of the economy, I joked to my husband). We gave our order to the server, and 15 minutes later, my husband finally stopped her on one of her many trips past us to ask if his salad was coming soon. She went and got it from the kitchen. My two children and I waited patiently while he ate it, with me telling the kids that ours would be coming soon. I should have checked my watch at that point, but didn't, so I had no idea just how long we had been waiting. It wasn't until the two tables that were seated 20 minutes after us, started having their meals arrive, that it finally occured to me that there was a problem. I walked up to the front counter and demanded to see the manager. He came out from the kitchen and I explained the problem to him. Less than 5 minutes later, our meals arrived. My shrimp was cold, so it was obvious it had been sitting for a little while, but we were so hungry, I didn't complain. Our waitress tried to tell me that the table next to us was served so quickly because they only had burgers. It was not a valid excuse and I told her so. At no point, did the manager come back and check on us or apologize for the problem. We were not compensated in any way, no discount or free dessert to make up for their mistake. Nothing. No response from my complaint to their corporate office. They can't be doing so well in this economy to be able to ignore complaints and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had a bad experience there.

Anyway, at least I've gotten this out of my system and I can try to get back to work on what's really important. And I hope my next post is of a more creative nature!