Gordaen’s Blog

Sunday night, my girlfriend and I decided we would eat out and enjoy a relaxing evening. We had not been to Boston’s, so we thought we would try it. It looked like a relatively nice place. Inside, I could see through the large glass wall into the bar, which had five large flat screens (the main restaurant had older TV’s, because you have to be drinking to enjoy quality…). We were told it would be a ten minute wait for the main restaurant portion, so we sat down. Although I think they forgot about us, they did call my name after 15-20 minutes (and everyone else had been seated) and led us past the dozen empty tables to our seats.

I worked in a restaurant when I was in high school for 2.5 years, so I tend to be an easy-to-please customer and a generous tipper. We waited patiently at our table and were eventually greeted with “Hi, welcome to our restaurant. Let me take these drinks over to this table and I’ll be right back.” When she came back, she gave us water and asked what we wanted for dinner. We told her, then she left without asking what we wanted to drink. It’s pretty customary to ask the customers what they want to drink within a few minutes of them arriving, and then to give them a few minutes to decide on the menu, so I was a bit surprised to not even be asked if I wanted something to drink besides water. Fine, I could drink water and save a few dollars.

Someone else (presumably a busser) filled our waters again later and eventually someone else brought our food. I ordered the ribs, since that’s as close as I can get to being a real carnivore without having to kill a technologically-impaired animal or eat raw meat. The meal was good, but I don’t think it was quite face-licking good:

All-in-all, the meal was good and the service was mediocre. My general rule is that I tip 15% if the service is satisfactory, 20% if it was excellent, and 10% if it was okay (very rarely do I ever tip less than that). The service was definitely a 10% that day, but at least I saved a few more bucks on top of the drinks…