Places And Restaurants That Confuse Me, Part One

One restaurant that I have mixed feelings about is Mrs. Wick's Pies, in Winchester, Indiana.  While I have eaten Wick's Pies on many occasions (and am rarely disappointed), their restaurant has never really impressed me.  I've eaten there twice (once alone, and once with my wife) and both times, while the food was good, the service was extremely lacking.

It's as if the waitresses were being paid to gossip amongst themselves, instead of serving the customers.

The really confusing part is that I read the reviews for this restaurant on both Facebook and Trip Advisor, and the vast majority have had a great experience, and out of all the ones that had a nasty experience, only one had a response from Mrs. Wick's Pies that offered any recompense, with another person commenting that maybe the waitress was new and/or having a bad day.

I'm sorry, I've worked at Pizza Hut, and even when my day sucked, I tried my best to make the customer's order the way it should have been.  After all, it wasn't the customer's fault that my day sucked.

Being new is also not an excuse.  There is such a thing as training.

The real problem, from my experience working at Pizza Hut, is poor personnel management and poor time management.  Of these two, the personnel management is the most important.

A good floor or shift manager will keep his/her wait staff on the ball, and pay attention to their employees and what they are doing - or not doing.  He or she will also keep an eye on the customers.  If something is amiss, it should be easy to see, address and fix.

A good floor or shift manager will also ensure that their staff - both wait and cook - are properly trained and able to do their jobs.  The best wait staff in the world cannot make up for a cook who cannot follow a customized order or cannot cook.

I've been to slow service restaurants before (hard to believe that they're still around in this age of fast food), but from what I've been told Mrs. Wick's Pies takes the cake in slow service.

Yes, I know that pizza establishments are slow service restaurants, too, but that's the nature of the business, which is why Pizza Hut is really pushing its buffet at certain times.  After all, you cannot make a pizza two hours before it's needed.  The dough, yes, but not the actual pizza.  In fact, one of the major strengths of Pizza Hut is that they make their dough fresh daily.

The only restaurant that, in my opinion, compares to Mrs. Wick's Pies in slow service is Steak and Shake.  The difference is that every time I've eaten at Steak and Shake, the food is excellent, excepting the supposedly fresh made chili (I have had Hormel's before, you know, and can recognize it very quickly.)

I don't know if they still claim to make their own chili, but I don't order it anymore.  Their drive-thru window also cracks me up.  That's another story, anyway.

The time management factor is important, no matter if your restaurant is a fast-food operation or a slow-food place.  You have to get the orders done in their proper order, you have to serve customers in their proper order.

If a customer has to wait ten minutes for their drinks, you're doing it wrong.  If you have carbonized burgers or shrimp or fries going out to your customers, you're doing it wrong.  One review even stated that they sent their food back and the cooks simply refried it and tried to sent it back as fresh.

Guess what?  Just because you or your cooks might've read George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London doesn't mean that you can get away with the same stunts he mentions happened in both Hotel X and Auberge de Jehan Cottard.  In other words, you are doing it wrong.

A good manager, whether or not he/she is a martinet, will keep a restaurant humming along, and try to keep the problems to a bare minimum.  The staff will still have time to chit-chat, but not at the expense of the customers.

A bad manager is usually one who is ruled by his/her staff, or one who ignores both staff and customers.

In the end, I'm inclined to believe that the biggest problem with Mrs. Wick's Pies is that the management ignores both the staff and the customers.  With a strong wait/cook staff, that can overcome the bad management...for the most part.  But there are hiccups, even then, and the biggest sign of management that is apathetic is that they ignore most of the complaints.

When I worked at Pizza Hut - mostly pre-Internet - we were warned that very few people actually verbally complained of a problem.  Most of them simply let it simmer, and then they'd tell their friends and family.  We were told that one unreported bad experience could potentially translate into ten lost customers.

Nowadays, you have such things as Facebook, Trip Advisor and Yelp, which is a tool that management in my time would've loved to have.  Only one attempt to fix a problem on Facebook tells any potential customer of Mrs. Wick's Pies all you need to know about whether you should go to someplace.

For me, I'll avoid the restaurant and get a pie instead.

Though, to be honest, my wife makes a better sugar cream pie.  It goes without saying that she also makes a better chocolate cream pie.

That's all for now.

Peace be unto you.

An Idyllic Home Life, It Was Not

You know, it took me a long enough time to come to the realization and conclusion that my mother never really liked cooking for others.  Yes, she cooked for my Dad, as well as for my sister and I when we were growing up.  I just know for certain now that her heart was never in it.

From the things I've heard her say over the years, my mother preferred to sit back and be served, rather than being the one who served others.  Even as a Christian who is called to served others, she wanted to be the one being served.
 
Don't believe me?  When we would come home from church, she'd get herself a cup of coffee and sit down.  After all, she wasn't hungry.  It didn't take long for Dad to get the hint, and he'd start cooking.

She used to tell me and my sister about the time she went on a drive-in theater triple date, with one of her sisters and a friend.  The boys, out of a sense of duty/obligation, would offer to buy the girls a soft drink and a sandwich.  My aunt and the friend refused the sandwich, but took the soft drink.  My mom would take both.

After the date, my aunt and their friend would chew out my mother.  "You know he couldn't afford both!" they would say.  "Why did you do that to him?"

My mother's proud response was, "If he couldn't afford it, he shouldn't have offered that to me."

A fair response...to an extent.  She knew that he couldn't afford it, but if there's one quality my mom possesses and is willing to use, is that she will exploit any loophole to benefit herself.  She would put Dad on a diet, but have the freezer in the garage loaded with every chocolate candy and ice cream snack she wanted.

Now, I am aware that cooking is not just the woman's purview, and that men do cook.  After all, I do cook sometimes (not as much as I'd like), but do not promote yourself as a provider if you are not willing to live up to it.

Dad worked swing shift for so many years (I do NOT recommend it), so on many nights, at dinner time, he'd be at work.  When we had learned enough to cook the basics, Mom refused to fix us anything and told us to fend for ourselves.  She'd leave my sister and I to our own devices.

When my sister and I grew up and moved out, Dad took over more and more of the cooking duties...until he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, that is.  Then, she tried to feed him, as his appetite and thirst diminished.  Her attempts to keep his weight up became somewhat desperate.

That demise was heartbreaking to watch.  Not only did I lose my Dad, I saw my mother lose her husband and how much it tore her up.

Yes, despite my earlier comments, my parents really loved each other.

But, when Dad died, her cooking experiences dropped down enough to be considered nearly non-existent.  She eats out a lot, and I'm not sure she remembers how to cook a lot of food she used to make.

Hey, if you can afford it, and want it, then eat out.  After, I'm pretty libertarian in many regards.  That is your right, just as it is hers.

But, I could never picture my mother-in-law doing the same.  Yes, my in-laws do get carry out a lot more than they used to, but my wife's mother still cooks a lot of their meals.

When my wife and her brother were growing up, even through their teens, their mother still cooked all their meals for them - without complaint.  Why?  She saw it as her responsibility.

If I were to visit my mother, we would sit in the living room and talk until I left.  Visiting my in-laws would be a whole lot different.  My mother-in-law would offer me something to drink and/or food, and then we'd visit.  She'd even give me a care package to take home for everyone there, including me.

The funny thing is that I pictured myself as having the normal home life when I grew up.  In some respects, we did have one, but not in all of them.

That's sad, when I think back on it.

That's all for now.

Peace be unto you.

I Keep Hoping For Better, But It Isn't Easy

I keep hoping for something to change, something to give me at least a little bit of hope, but so far I've seen nothing improve.

Is it too much to ask that President Donald Trump actually act like the President of the United States, and not like he's in one of these annoying reality shows?  It's as if he's competing with the Kardashians and their hangers-on for attention.

As for those of you who voted for him, I wonder about you.  I wonder about your intelligence, your maturity, and whether or not you're just as misogynistic and nihilistic as he is.

Look the words up.  If you don't have a dictionary in your house, that's your fault.

I'll keep praying for him, but he makes it difficult.

That's all for now.

Peace be unto you.