I have GRAND memories of going to Buddy’s of Annapolis, Maryland. About 15 years ago, I was visiting my friends Ruth and Todd in Washington DC, and while they were working, I rented a car on a quest to find the Atlantic Ocean. Little did I know what was meant to be a quick stop for lunch in Annapolis would lead to? I’m not going to get into details. That is not what this blog entry is about. If I were blogging about that trip, it would contain information about King crab legs, the Navy Lacrosse team, a little old lady named Ginny and the Christian Science Reading Room.
But no. This blog entry is about Buddy’s Crab and Ribs of Annapolis, Maryland, and our horrific experience on 5-6-11.
When traveling for work, we have a set amount of money we can spend on food and beverage every day. Most of us tend to find a way to spend all of it on delicious food that we would not ordinarily spend our personal money on. We try new things, go to new places. Dive bars, holes in the walls, bistros and privately owned restaurants are my favorites! So when Doug, a co-worker, told me that he wanted seafood for dinner, the first thing that popped into my mind was Buddy’s. I knew right where it was, it was a privately owned establishment and it was great 15 years ago, when I was there with the Navy Lacrosse team.
When Doug, Rachida and I arrived, we walked up the stairs to find that there was an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. The only thing that scares me more than a regular buffet is a seafood buffet. We asked if they had a menu and the hostess told us they have a full menu.
Walking to our table, we all exchanged glances. We try not to be snobs, but from the get-go, this place seemed just way too casual for what we were looking for on a Friday night. But nobody spoke up, and we were seated at a table by the window. The chairs from the tables on each side of us backed right up to our chairs, so we were basically back-to-back with the guests at our neighboring tables. Doug is a tall guy, and I could tell he was uncomfortable with this, but still, we sat.
It wasn’t a surprise when our waiter came over and casually asked “Whasssss up?” and took our beverage orders. As he walked away, he stopped half way to the bar and yelled out to us “Was that Merlot?” No, I told him… it was Chardonnay.
He returned to our table with the bottle of wine and plopped it right down on the table with passion, and set out two wine glasses that had apparently just came out of the dishwasher. They were dripping wet! Rachida kindly handed us a couple of paper towels from the roll that was strategically placed on our table, and as our waiter unscrewed the cap, we wiped our glasses dry. Mind you, I had just spent time that very day doing bartender training for a different staff, so I had, only an hour or two earlier, showed a bunch of people how to do a proper wine presentation. Our waiter then proceeded to pick up my glass by the bowl of the glass, not the stem (gasp!) and pour the wine. “Tell me when to stop” he said, as if we were at some frat party. “Stop” I told him, when the glass was filled almost to the top.
Our orders were placed, and our waiter didn’t write anything down. This always scares me, but he seemed pretty confident. Rachida ordered a shrimp cocktail, and he didn’t seem to know what a shrimp cocktail was. In a seafood restaurant. So we explained to him that it was simply shrimp with cocktail sauce. “Oh, steamed shrimp” he said… and we explained that no, it isn’t steamed. “Oh oh, Ok.. I gotcha!” he said. Doug ordered a salmon dish with crab on top of it. Rachida ordered some sort of “Seafood Annapolis” dish, and I ordered the fish of the day, blackened.
My salad arrived first. It was wilted and bad, so I munched on a shriveled piece of cucumber and then pushed it aside. At some point, Rachida had to ask when her shrimp cocktail would arrive, and our waiter asked “Oh, you wanted that as an appetizer?” He returned to the table within only a few minutes with her shrimp cocktail, which wasn’t shrimp cocktail at all. It was steamed, unpeeled shrimp in a bowl. Rachida went to work peeling her shrimp and we discussed the possibility of leaving.
Then, our entrée’s arrived. A food-runner named Skippy delivered our food. He brought the first two entrees, and then returned with the third. By the time he returned, we had discovered that Doug’s salmon/crab dish was lukewarm, at best, and that I had a big black spot on the inside of my baked potato. So when Skippy returned to the table with Rachida’s dish, I pointed out the spot in my potato and Doug told him about the temperature of his fish. He was bewildered. He grabbed Doug’s dish, and since he was heading to the kitchen anyway, Rachida tried to hand him a plate with her shrimp casings on it. He said “I can’t... I can’t… I just can’t… I don’t know how to.. I just can’t….” and sort of did this little bounce back and forth thing, as if he couldn’t figure out a way to carry all of the items back to the kitchen. As a trainer, my instinct was to help the guy out, give him a few pointers. But he didn’t give me a chance. Instead, he put Rachida’s plate back on the center on the table, grabbed the baked potato off my plate with his bare hand, and walked away, potato in one hand, Doug’s entrée in the other.
HE GRABBED THE POTATO OFF MY PLATE WITH HIS HAND!
There was a moment of silence at our table, until Doug said “Did that really just happen?” and we were undecided about whether we should laugh or walk out. We found a happy medium and with bewildered awe, told our waiter what had happened. Our waiter, who apparently had never had an upset customer in his life, didn’t seem to know what to do. He said “Well that should be worth somethin’ for free… I’ll send over the manager”.
The manager arrived, a tall lanky guy with a mouth full of chewing gum. He pulls a chair up from another table and plops down, as if he, too, were at a frat party. “So, I hear you've got a potato problem…” says he. I just stared at him, my mouth gaping open. Finally I mustered up some words… and explained to him that no, I don’t have a potato problem; I have a problem with the fact that Skippy had reached onto my plate to take the bad potato away.
All he did was say “Well, what would you like for me to do for you?” And again… speechless on my end. And for those of you who know me, you have got to understand what it takes for me to be speechless. He comped my meal, but that was far from enough. I actually can’t even think about what he could have done at that point to salvage the situation. It was a lost cause. Maybe he knew that, and as he chomped on his gum, he had decided to give up.
So, we sort of picked at our food, polished off our bottle of chardonnay and made a quick escape. The thing that Buddy’s doesn’t realize is that all three of us teach lessons about customer service every single day of our lives. From here forward, this is going to be a story I tell every associate I teach. Buddy’s is going to be an example of “What not to do” as well as an example of “Where not to go.”
