As explained in the post, the waiter took a long time to get our drinks; he promised us we wouldn’t have to wait for anything, a promise that was not kept; he initially brought only two potatoes to our table, and we had to inform him that we had ordered three; he waited so long to take our plates away that they were overflowing onto the next table; he was obviously inexperienced at balancing a stack of plates, as one stack crashed onto the floor and salad juice from another stack dripped onto my brother’s winter apparel.

If I remember correctly, the waiter did not apologize for the bad food. As detailed in the post, he said, “it’s just one of those nights.”

Since tips are generally intended to reflect the quality of waiter service, our tip was proportionate to that factor.

Although you do have a good idea: next time something like this happens, I’ll just suggest to my parents that we refuse to pay for the meal in full.

As I was writing this, I remembered: something like this did happen, whereby the service was SO bad that we got the meal for free… a long time ago in a Denny’s far, far away…

But remember, all restaurants have bad days. If it’s NORMALLY a good place to eat, I wouldn’t discount the place entirely. However, if something of this magnitude happens AGAIN, well… that’s another matter entirely.