Tag Archives: New York

No Plates for Mr. Classy.

26 Jun

June 26, 2022

The Blog family went out to dinner today. It was Mr. and Mrs. Blog, Mamma Blog, and ne’er-do-well brother Allan Keyes. Just to show how classy we are, we went to Olive Garden. In a city full of good Italian restaurants, we decided to go to the chain place at the mall.

We were immediately seated, and in a restaurant nearly empty, were given a table close, but not too close, to the kitchen, and within direct sight, though not smell, of the bathrooms. Olive Garden knows a classy family when it sees one.

After a perusal of the menu, we ordered, among other things, the spinach and artichoke dip appetizer. The waitress informed us that it wasn’t quite ready and might take a little longer, maybe ten minutes. We were OK with that and ordered some other appetizers as well.

I can probably answer this question for you, CNBC.

The other appetizers came and the waitress brought our drinks. We were ready to begin, except for the small detail that we had no plates. I did the math: 4 people + 2 appetizers = 0 plates just isn’t right.

We flagged down the waitress and explained that we would rather not eat gooey lasagna fritter off the table and just perhaps some plates would be in order. She was very sympathetic and so, nearly six minutes later she brought the plates. And the spinach and artichoke dip? Just a few minutes more.

We finished the appetizers and the entrees arrived, none too quickly. And the spinach dip? Might be another half hour. Yes, that’s right, another half hour, meaning that it would be ready for us right about when we were paying the check. What was the problem, we inquired?

It was still frozen.

We canceled the dip.

After finishing our meal, and I will spare you the details because the food we actually did get was mediocre at best, (I am sure the frozen-in-a-block-of-ice spinach dip would have been utterly delicious), we paid the bill on one of those annoying electronic monitors they stick on your table so you can do the work they pay the waitress for. The screen detailed the order and there was the reason why we did not get any plates.

The bill specified that we were not to get any plates with the appetizers.

What’s up with that? Should I take this personally? Did they look at us and say “this family of apes can eat with their fingers. Maybe we won’t give them napkins either.”? They went out of their way to PUT IN CAPITALS “NO APP PLATES.” Was that a warning to the server? “You better not give them plates or we are going to punish you by making you thaw out the spinach dip with a match.”

Well, I don’t know what was going on, but Allan Keyes gave the waitress an appropriate tip (and luckily he did not give her the finger) and then the electronic annoyance asked him to fill out a survey, which he did in excruciatingly exact detail.

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Zipcar Sucks. Period.

20 Jun

June 20, 2021

Zipcar is a car sharing service in which you rent a car and pick it up at a public location, usually a parking lot. I’ve used them three times and it has been a problem every single time.

TRIP 1. There was no car available in my area so I had to book one a twenty minute ride away. I wasn’t too upset (yet) since Zipcar would reimburse me for the cost of my trip. So to be clear, I was taking an Uber to get to the car I rented. (Problem #1.) But when I got to the public municipal lot the car was parked in, it wasn’t there. So I had to take another, half hour, ride to another Zipcar even further away. And when I retuned the car to that location, I had a now 40 minute Uber ride back home. Convenient? NOT.

TRIP 2. I managed to book a car in a location only a short walk away. Sound good? Yes. Smell good? No. The car was filthy and stunk like someone had eviscerated an antelope in the back seat.

How did it look? Judge for yourself.

So I called Zipcar and they gave me two options. I could get another car, with the very minor caveat that the only other available car was in another borough, or I could run this one through a car wash and they would reimburse me.

Screw that, I am not doing their work for them. I shoved the trash in the trunk (let Zipcar worry about it) and drove around with the windows open. After only three hours it was breathable in there.

TRIP 3. Today is Father’s Day and knowing it would be hard to get a car, I rented one close by three weeks in advance. And two days before the trip, I got notified that due to an issue with the car, I was being switched to a car a half hour trip away. What was wrong with the car? I don’t know. I called customer support to complain and the guy on the other end, who was clearly simply reading from a script, informed me, through a thick internationally outsourced accent, that the car was unavailable due to, well, I don’t know. Unless the car really did have schmegma dripping out of the tailpipe, I couldn’t understand him. And that is not the worst part. That’s when I got to the car and it would not unlock. Since Zipcar has no physical rental locations to get keys they do everything over their app, including sending a signal to unlock the car. Oh, there are keys, they are just locked inside the car until Zipcar sends the unlock signal. And this car would not unlock. So I called customer support and they could not unlock it, and they had no one that could, you know, show up with a key and unlock it, and of course, this being Father’s Day there was not a single car available at all.

Yes, I called customer support and ranted and raved, and yes, I spoke to a “supervisor” (who may have been the same guy, I swear they sounded so much alike) and no, I accomplished nothing except I got to use “ugotz” on a recorded call, which has been a goal of mine for quite some time.

So, no I am not spending this Father’s Day with my family. SCREW YOU, ZIPCAR.

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