You know that wretched feeling when you’re out enjoying a cocktail or leisurely chatting and noshing with friends and your server abruptly drops the check and runs? “Wait, I’m having more,” you either mutter back or indicate with your pissed-off eyes.
I know I’ve done it to tables. At least, though, when I have it’s been late in the evening and I’ve been so desperate to catch the midnight Metro that I level with the customers and explain that they can stay; I just have to vamoose.
That’s apparently not how they roll at Gordon Biersch. Now don’t take this as a tongue-lashing about another D.C. brewery. To be honest, their seasonal Amber may be better than our standard one, and their second “happy hour” of the night from 10 to closing is, in my mind, a stroke of genius since it gives special treatment to late-night workers. However, I have to say that I am baffled by their practice of constantly slapping a check down on the table whenever a new round of something is ordered.
My friend Kamil and I went to Gordon Biersch last night after our shift. We had each ordered a beer while seated at the bar when the bartender placed a cup in front of us with a paper check.
Uh, ok. We playfully ripped it up. I mean we came for a few drinks, lady, not to be shoved out the door after seven sips of our first beverages. Then it happened again afer we ordered our second beers and food was literally on the way.
“What the?” we both said, practically in unison.
So I asked the bartender why she was constantly trying to close us out more than an hour before closing. Her explanation was that the flow of checks was a policy the waitstaff had to follow. Apparently it was the managers’ way of checking that servers and bartenders were making everyone pay for everything they asked to consume. Oh and then she added this ditty: “Yeah, we try to keep the checks updated so they are the actual right checks at that time, but that’s not always the case.”
Wait, what? First off, what an enormous waste of paper, especially when the checks are possibly only correct! And secondly, how does that ensure that no staff members are hooking up their buddies? Who’s to say that our bartender couldn’t pour three shots of Jack Daniels, chug ‘em down with us, clear away the glasses and keep the shots off the paper trail?
If anyone can explain this twisted logic to me, there’s a Gordon Biersch Amber in it for you…or a Cap City one.
