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08/21/2003 Archived Entry: "A BAD NIGHT AT THE MIDLAND"

A BAD NIGHT AT THE MIDLAND

Knowing where to start describing our effort to eat at the Midland tonight will take more energy than I have at the moment. Our expectations for dinner and an enjoyable evening were not within the Midland range. Marion is going to get a call from Russell County tomorrow.

I made reservations Monday, I think it was, for dinner for three of us for tonight in Drummers. I talked with Marion, she knew who I was, we chatted and she asked for my phone number. I notified my group...the other two musketeers...and plans were made to meet there at 7:00.

My friend from Russell arrived early and saw the same sign on the front door that we did..."Drummers is closed tonight because of a private party." She had already gone through all her complaints with the desk clerk and the girl who seats guests. We specifically didn't want to sit upstairs. I asked what happened to our reservations, and why we weren't notified they couldn't be honored. Of course, none of them knew anything about it, it wasn't in any of their books and Marion had just gone home.

Drummers was not an option. We finally decided we'd stay and eat back in the corner of the main restaurant, but by now, we were all pretty irritated. It wasn’t our fault they messed up.

It's so noisy in the main restaurant you can't hear yourself think and the staff needs light years of training. Our waitress was so eager, probably for lack of other diners, she should have just pulled up a chair to our table. We couldn’t talk for all her interruptions. We ordered drinks…standard fair. Mine was absolutely unbelievable when it came and I refused it. And that’s a rarity for me. We still hadn’t been served our drinks when she was back for the 6th time to get our dinner order…and we still had 2 hours before closing time. We were rushed to death.

Our salads came before the drinks…and the second one they brought me wasn’t even close to what I ordered and I sent it back and said to forget it. None of us could tell what it was. I settled for water.

My friend ordered a pepper steak with brandy sauce. I think the price tag on that was $28.00 and although it appeared beautifully prepared when it arrived, it wasn’t all that good. I know how she eats, she enjoys good food and she will make three meals out of a steak like that. Meantime, the waitress had interrupted us repeatedly, thinking she was doing a good job, and was bouncy wanting to talk. Certainly, she was nice, but that wasn’t her role. We were poised with forks in hand and she wanted to clear the table.

It was hopeless so we decided to move on to the parlor to talk. We asked that our food be boxed which means they should have taken it to the kitchen and boxed it. That’s what you do if you eat at a restaurant that advertises fine dining. But no…they brought the box to the table.

Meantime, our waitress got very excited and told us about a man who called and said 35 people were coming for dinner. It was 20 minutes until closing time. They got 35 glasses of water ready. Then she reappeared offering that John thought it was a hoax call.

Then through the front door come a group of women...maybe 30 of them...and it was suggested we all do a 90 degree turn in our chairs. It was a sight I'd never seen before as all of them were wearing red hats, of every size and description imaginable. It's one organization I'll never join, or be invited to join. They had already eaten so the thought of a hoax call became a pretty substantiated hoax. The Opera House was mentioned. Our waitress filled us in on all the unsolicited details. I finally asked why they didn't get the phone number of the hoax caller, like they did me, so they could check. I think getting our phone numbers is a hoax.

The noise was terrible. Every sound in that room echoes and the doors to the kitchen bang each time they close…and they were banging a lot. The wooden floors and high ceilings are conducive to that. There wasn't that kind of noise when we ate there in the 70s so I don’t know what happened.

We looked in the bedrooms downstairs that were opened for inspection and noticed quite a few things that needed fixing. They missed a lot of things in their check-off inspection, it seemed to us.

We sat in the parlor for a few minutes to talk and started to get rigid. They could store bodies in there it's so cold.

The private party had long since left Drummers so we took our stiff, cold bodies downstairs. There were just the three of us in there. We talked about a lot about things we like to talk about...school costs, state problems, political stuff, money stuff and that was nice. No interruptions. There are some interesting business start ups, particularly in Russell County, so we hashed over those as well as those in Colby. I must go see the palm trees!

Finally, it was 10 p.m. and time to head home. We went outside just as some of the help were leaving. They had taken the best parking places smack dab in front of the hotel while our Russell guest had to park at the far end of the block to the west and across the street. I think that bothered us more than anything as it truly shows they have had no real training in customer service. Learning the fine points of how to wait on customers is one thing, but to have no basic consideration of guests and what their role should be in making the visit a comfortable one is quite another thing.

Avoid walking over the lights they have embedded in the sidewalk. You'll go blind. And they were each covered with a mound of elm bugs. They will be the scourge of us this winter. The elm bugs, that is.

I think we’ll wait until they get things better organized before we go back to the Midland. Thursday nights might just be off nights for them. I don't know.

The reports I’ve had from other friends who were there last Sunday for the noon buffet said it was wonderful. It cost almost $30.00 for two, with tax and tip, just so you'll know. We have to try to catch up with the world around us so we can't object to those prices, but the service should compliment it as well. Try going on the weekend instead. Let me know how it is.