A Trip to Vegas & Dinner for 2 in the Stern

Okay, now first off, I just want to explain why are we doing a blog about our customer service travails? Well, my wife and I both work very hard, and when we go out to dinner or on a trip and are spending that hard earned money... we actually expect to be treated nicely! But it seems that's often not the case these days. And while it bugs us that lots of people in the service industry act like they may be doing you (the customer!) a favor, we'd like to blog about some of the ridiculous "customer service-related" situations that we get into. Is it because we look really young? Is it because I mainly wears jeans out? (at least they're nice ones from Lucky Brand!) We really can't figure out why, but we tend to get that really crappy table in an empty restaurant more often than not... so let's have a laugh about it! So let's start off with our latest example... we were just out in Vegas this weekend, stayed at the always awesome Venetian Hotel, although a little warning to anyone reading: they now charge a $19/day "resort" fee... hello this is Vegas, not Hawaii, I am going down into your casino to give away my money, why would I pay a $19 fee for that??? Okay, back to my story... On our third night, after being up about $400 for the 3 day trip, we decided not to blow it all away at the now ubiquitous "fancy-pants" steak houses inside of all of the major hotels, but rather go to an old reliable of ours: Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville We had an awesome time one year ago in Orlando, and were looking forward to a pile of nachos taller than our heads and tasty tropical drinks... Here's the process there: you can't make a reservation, but they do have priority seating... so we do that. We're waiting up-front, there are two lines side by side, one "priority" one not. Kinda felt bad for the people who were in the "not" line, because they take everyone from the priority side before getting to them, and it looked to be a 45 minute wait on that side... for a cheeseburger! So we are standing there, and then things get a little hairy... the staff isn't really sure what to do, there seem to be a dozen empty tables out there. So they ask the whole priority line (we are second in line, because some fat drunk guy cut us) to move 3 feet back behind a wooden pirate... god forbid we don't or this whole amazing process will just fall apart! Finally a lady comes up to us and basically asks us, "why are you standing here?, "these people are waiting." (pointing to the "not line.") Me: "Well, miss, we called in a priority seating for 8 (it's probably 8:30 now), and the lady in the front told us our table was ready?!?" The waitress grabs two menus and takes us... finally... into the promised land, Margaritaville! Now we are a young couple, married, together... we aren't straight out of college (too long ago to admit)... and she goes ahead and seats us at this table (out of all of the normal empty ones): Yeah, that's the stern of a boat, two seats, facing out! Just perfect for a couple of two!?!?! Well, we ended up moving to a nice normal table and had a blast... but come on, throw the drunk dude in front of us to the back of the boat, maybe he'll even catch something!