Service with a smile?

No? Well, how about some service, period?

Swans is great. The atmosphere when all your friends are there, the live music of The Flying Saucers, the incredibly small dance floor... it all adds up to good times. That is, unless you want service. The waitresses are notoriously bad. Most of them are nice, but they're generally sloooow and oblivious. Be prepared to wait. Just last night, I waited half an hour before a waitress even came to our table. She even served tables around me without so much as looking in our direction. Surprisingly, everything after that was quick. Very unusual. I've had times when I've had to wait, literally, over thirty minutes to get my iced tea. It's a fricken glass of iced tea. And when it did finally arrive, there was no lemon wedge. Another ten minutes for that.

I've also had an order completely forgotten once, and another that sat waiting to be brought to the table for a long time. And then the bill. If you ever want to leave Swans, good luck, because it'll take you another forty minutes to get the bill, and more minutes to pay if you're not using cash or need change. The waitresses tend to disappear for eternities on end. I've literally gone for an hour without any waitress getting anywhere near our table. I can on rare occasion spot one from a distance, but they're rarer than flying pink elephants wearing tutus, dancing lindy in midair. Sadly, I'm not exaggerating the hour wait.

Maybe it's not Swans in particular, as I seem to have bad luck with waitstaff. Holly can vouch for that. You can read one misadventure at the Blue Peter in Sidney in an earlier entry. One time at Boston Pizza, my appy salad was given to another person at the far end of our string of tables, with the waitress taking another fifteen or so minutes to make a reappearance.

All that, and there's the expectation of a good tip. How can you expect a good tip (any tip, really) if you offer service like that. Oi, but tipping is a whole other issue I don't feel like bringing up right now. Let's just say the whole system in North America is seriously seriously seriously fubar.

That is all.