"service" news and stories

I made the grave mistake of ordering Pizza Hut online once, about eight months ago. I had a craving, I read about the online ordering, and I went for it.

...Big mistake. First, it was way too expensive. Second, I happen to live in one of those delivery netherworlds - between the boundaries of one delivery area and another - where the delivery dude refuses to visit. This, however, was not made clear to me on the website - I was easily able to enter my address, and the system informed me that my food would arrive shortly.

Two hours later, no pizza. I wearily called up my local Pizza Hut branch, and a pissed-off sounding teen answered. "...Yea? Pizza Hut?"

"Um...I ordered online, and it still hasn't arrived. Do you happen to know...?"

"Oh. Yea," she said, snapping her gum. "We don't deliver there." (This, mind you, was about .75 miles away). "You can come pick it up."

...And then the e-mailing began.

About a year and a half ago, I posted about the work of photographer Michael Harlan Turkell, particularly his Back of the House Project, a great series of 25 very candid black and white photos of restaurants and their staff. Turkell recently dropped Slashfood a line, pointing out his photo blog, as well as what appears to be a new photo series called "mise en place". It had been a while since I checked Turkell's site, so the blog was news to me. It appears he's also been commissioned by New York City restaurant blog Eater to photograph the subjects of their "Gatekeepers" series, which profiles "the very folks that stand between you and some of your favorite impossible-to-get-tables." If you've ever worked in the restaurant industry, or if you're just a lover of food, dining and photography, do yourself a favor and check out Turkell's website as well as his blog.

Pumpkin season is coming up and without getting in to GMO pumpkins and the nutritional value of ice cream, let's get imaginative and make some pumpkin ice cream, served in a creative way.

• You'll need an ice cream maker (there are even ball shaped models that can be kicked around at partie, though I have never tried one) and a good pumpkin grown for its meat, rather than just its appearance.

• This can be a family endeavor-- messy. In this typical ice cream recipe I would add two cups of good and mashed pumpkin meat. Not too stringy. Make the ice cream and then serve it the carved out pumpkin, lid and all.

Source

I posted about McDonald's Talk, a LiveJournal community of McD's employees, back in March, but I hadn't looked at it lately. Fast Food News recently posted an excerpt from a list of "things not to do when visiting a mcdonalds" created by McDonald's employee in Louisiana and recently posted on McDonald's Talk. Perhaps my favorite of the nearly 50 subtle suggestions is: "Does this look like Toys-R-Us? Who cares if your kid's got 10 of the same toy already. That's telling me you don't feed them at home enough!" Some commenters to the original LJ post even included links to their own lists of McDon'ts, like this one.

When we were talking about how much we tip in restaurants last week, some people expressed a bit of consternation over having to do math right after eating to come up with the tip. A Tip Table, which denotes what 15% and 20% are of various dollar amounts, makes tipping easier because it eliminates the need to think about how much to leave.

I will note, however, that the Tip Table is not without problems. For example, though the range it gives will certainly cover many meals and it's not too difficult to combine various amounts to reach higher totals, is it really necessary to say that 20% of $1 is 20¢? And is it even appropriate to leave such a small tip - regardless of the percentage - in all instances?

I agree with the commenters in the previous post who said that tipping rules are not hard and fast - especially when you want to be generous. And the Tip Table, practical as it may seem, cannot take exceptions into account. Leave more than 20% when you sit sipping your $1 coffee for an hour and reward outstanding service in general.