I have always enjoyed dining at local restaurants. The service is almost always personable and the food tends to be prepared with an ingredient you can’t buy anywhere — love.
My husband and I don’t often go out to restaurants these days because it tends to be a bit of a hassle with a 4-year-old and an almost 2-year-old. On our days off, if we do want food from a restaurant, we usually order it to go and eat at our dining room table. Then, we usually spend the afternoon watching a movie from the couch in the living room.
Tired of the same humdrum routine, we decided to shake things up a bit this weekend and took our children to their first movie theater experience. We went to the morning showing of “Frozen II” at the Nelco Cineplex.
We had a great time. The kids, who were already fans of the first “Frozen” film, were in awe over watching a movie on a large screen. By the time the movie was over, we were all pretty hungry and decided to continue our outing by going to a restaurant.
In the mood for sushi, we headed to Ichiban Japanese Steakhouse.
All was well the first half of our time there.
We got a table near the front, where the kids had prime viewing of the chef cooking on the grill.
We had a wonderful waitress who was quick to take our order and was sweet while interacting with our son and daughter.
She first brought out our soup and sushi, which was all delicious.
Then, our meals were brought to the table by someone else, a man I hadn’t seen since we arrived. Having waitressed before, I didn’t think much of it because it was common to have another employee take food to the table if you were busy with another task.
I took a few bites and heard the waitress tell him he brought out the wrong food to us. Apparently someone else ordered the dinner-sized portion of the same lunch I ordered.
I just thought, “Oops, just a little mistake, but no big deal. That’s an easy fix.”
But no.
The man returned to our table and grabbed my plate to take it away and give to the customer it was intended for.
I explained I had already taken a few bites, but he continued to try taking the plate.
The waitress then spoke up and told him I had, in fact, taken a few bites and it would be unsanitary to give it to another customer at this point.
The man became angrry and walked over to the cash register. Hearing him arguing back and forth with the waitress, I looked at my husband and said, “What is the big deal?” He shrugged, but we were beginning to feel uncomfortable.
A moment later, the waitress walked to our table and said, “I’m just warning you, he is charging you for the full dinner since you’ve been eating off that plate.”
I asked who this man is and she said he is married to the owner.
Feeling flabbergasted, I told her I was not aware what he brought to me was not the lunch portion because I do not frequent there enough to know the difference. I said I was not going to pay for something I didn’t order.
The waitress was very kind and apologized repeatedly.
Because he had locked our new cost into the computer and walked to the back of the restaurant, the waitress said she could not change the price and would just pay the additional charges herself.
Wanting to talk this out, I asked to speak to this co-owner and she said, “He doesn’t speak good English.” We never saw him again.
Now feeling frustrated, we just wanted to leave and we asked for to-go boxes.
The waitress said this was not an unusual occurrence, but I told her I wasn’t leaving until the ticket charges were changed. It wasn’t fair for us, the paying customers, or our waitress to be blamed for something the co-owner made a simple goof on.
Because the co-owner would not return from the back of the restaurant, I approached a cook instead and asked if he could change the cost. He was kind and did change the ticket back to its original cost.
I don't know what was more appalling, the fact that this man was blaming a paying customer for a simple goof he made, or the fact that he wanted to give the plate of food I had been eating from to someone else. If he was willing to give my partially-eaten meal to someone else, what else would he be willing to do with food?
I began thinking of the places I have waitressed and my bosses would have sooner shot themselves in the foot than behave the way this man did.
Another customer in the restaurant walked over to me and said she used to work at Ichiban and quit for similar instances such as this.
I shared my story with my friends on Facebook and some of the comments I received were disturbing.
One person said she, too, was employed by the same owners and quit because they would frequently cuss and yell at their employees for simple mistakes. Another person said she saw the same owners make a waitress cry for no apparent reason.
There is never an excuse for treating customers and employees the way these people do. Until I’ve heard things have drastically changed, I will no longer patronize at Ichiban. We are all living in this community together, we need to treat each other with dignity and respect. It’s really not so hard.
Catherine Kirk is managing editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. She can be reached at ckirk@ddtonline.com.
