Bad Experience at Moon River Pizza

[JeffreyS]

I related the crux of this story to my wife last night who for a few years was responsible for staffing and training employees at a nice chain restaurant that employed about 225 people at any one time she made two points. First employees can't even wait in line and order if there is a forty minute wait they should eat elsewhere or come back at an off peak time. ( a rule of thumb I guess) Second once the screaming starts you are forced to ask the customer to leave( nothing good is coming out of it at that point) and deal with the employee after the fact.  She later said any decent manager would have been falling all over themselves to apologize even as they are kicking you out.

[Dapperdan]

Let me preface this by saying I have been a big Moon River supporter since they opened.  I have referred many a  person there.Tonight I had an experience that may cause me to never go back. Let me explain.
A group of friends and I watch movies once a month. We always meet at Moon River since it's a central meeting spot. My wife and I got to Moon River late, and as you know at dinner rush, the line can wrap outside the door. We understood this going in. My wife and I get there around 6:20 and by around 7 we are 3 back from the register. As we are standing in line a couple comes in and one of the waiters comes up to them personally and begins taking their order. I asked the waiter why they were serving them ahead of us and he rather nonchalantly said, " They work here," and then he proceeds to walk away to get their order. I just sat there kind of stunned that they would have this policy as the line now was even longer than when we first came in. I finally got to place my order and as I am waiting for it to arrive, I see that the employee is already being served his meal and is at his table. This really starts to irritate me.
Finally a young lady gave us our order and I asked her if I could speak to a manager. She said she was the assistant manager. I explained why we were upset. She said she apologized as it wasn't her that did this. By this time, the original waiter that had allowed the employee to skip the whole line was leaning over asking what this was about. We told him it was about him allowing the other employee to skip. He then says  " what about it?" I asked him if it was policy that they allow employees to skip if the line is out the door. He said it depends and they occasionally do that. No other explanation was offered. Meanwhile the other girl was getting our money back. We didn't ask for that, and she was generally nice. The other waiter is now saying he sees nothing wrong with what was done. My wife point blank asked him if he cared that he allowed the employee to skip over 20 paying customers and he said no. He then started asking us rather loudly to leave. The assistant manager had to hold him back. I got upset, admittedly and called him some names on our way out. I do not like people yelling at my wife.  We both felt intimidated since the assistant manager did not ask him to be quiet or apologize to us or anything. She simply said it was best if we leave.

I have never had an experience where we were just trying to bring up an issue we thought management  should know about and the waiter cops such an attitude that he has to be held back as if he was about to jump us. Needless to say I am not going back. I also had issues with their line management. I did not bring that up. I have never seen a line handled more inefficiently.

I know we have a few restaurant owners on here. First of all, would you have let your employee talk to us like that? Second, don't you think you would know how to better manage a line than having one person take orders, take payment, get your drink, etc? If anyone from Moon River wants to respond to this and explain your self, I welcome that as well. I am talking to our movie group about meeting somewhere else that actually cares about its customers.

Sounds like a beautiful day in a CITY to me....cmon man really? Do you really lack street smarts or are you really that sensitive. If you ask me you were looking for trouble man. Go in a busy pizza joint and you are expecting everything to run smoothly? Then you complain on a busy night??? Call during the week or come in on a slower night and vent your complaint then, not in the heat of the grind dude. If it really upset you, you should have left, you placed your order and then complained after you got your meal? What a great way to get mucus spat in your pizza sauce man. You gotta know when to hold em, when to fold em and when to walk away man. Your complaint was not wrong but your timing was terrible!!

So is yours. This has been discussed in detail many moons ( no pun intended) ago. We already had our food when we complained, so no mucus, and I did call back after the heat of the moment. Did you bother to read any of that?

Yea I got to most of it, I reply as I go. Dan you don't seem as much of a crybaby as I originally thought you were, especially after the 5 or 6 fake posters that came on here, which I did agree with. My opinion is you started it, and Moon River didn't know how to deal with your lack of patience. You lite the match and the house burned. The customer is NOT always right. I will give you credit for having a wife though. You seem like a normal man to me. So peace and good luck with  your agenda.

Pearl Harbor
JFK Assassination
MLK Assassination
Sept  11th 2001
Moon River Pizza Tragedy

Ho do you figure I started it? Does a person not have the right to walk into an establishment and let management know when they see a flagrant breaking of rules? I was calm about it until me and my wife were yelled at. I am guessing youa ren't married as if you were you would understand why i blew up at the end.

What kind of world do we live in where it is looked at as wrong to stand up and let a business know that one of its employees is showing preferential treatment to another employee  when the line is out the door? I was not mean about it but just wanted to point it out. I guess it is just best to let things slide,according to you.

[Springfielder]

Dan, you didn't do anything wrong, and you certainly have every right to complain about lousy service and to explain what happened. There's absolutely no reason why anyone should think it's okay to just take lousy service in stride. That's what's wrong with people today, they don't give a damn and then get pissed off if you say something about their sorry attitude.

Then of course, there's those that want to pipe up and say that there's nothing to be bitching about, that it's not the end of the world...no, it's not....but what the hell is so hard about common decency? Why the hell should anyone put up with anything less than professionalism at a business? And if something happens, why shouldn't we expect the management to have the courtesy to step up to the plate?






*corrected typo

[Johnny]

Dan, I appreciate you sharing your story. I believe several others do as well. Those that complain about it are either hurt b/c they have some kind of "stock" in MRP (friends, employee, favorite picture on the wall, comfortable toilet seat, etc..) or are just wanting to add some controversy.

Bad experiences do not make it to the Better Business Bureau or the health department, so all we have is word of mouth. I know how you are feeling and my suggestion is to not respond to the people whining about you sharing your experience. Lord knows if it happened to them, they'd be on here talking about it and telling everyone they knew. I'm quite sure they've complained about something else that has happened to them and likely their experience wasn't even to this level. So, I say f*** 'em!

[Springfielder]

Couldn't agree with you more!

[Ernest Street]

If this was about shoddy construction practices in Jax it would have died after page one.

[Ocklawaha]

I think the MJ crew found a guy tonight to send over to Moon River. Talk about raising the bar or should I say RAZING THE BAR?

OCKLAWAHA

[Dapperdan]

I ran into Justin, the fellow in the hot seat, at TSI last night (after a surprisingly helpful introduction---almost too eagerly helpful, one might suspect ----by the scandal enthusiast young club owner)

He really is a nice fellow, and its apparent that the situation just got out of hand and was handled badly.

He says that they have had a recent round of discussions about how better to improve service (which is a good thing no matter what the circumstances) and says that the net effect of the first few days of posting were overwhelming emotionally to the owner (I can certainly sympathise).

Im going to check out the place for dinner tonight I think.

I will report later.

Why did the owner not come on here and clear everything up if he was so emotionally distraught? Do you know how much that would have helped everyone out? I am sure your experience will be fine as they know you and all. I really hope that they did have the meetings and it started from the owner on down.
It would speak volumes if the owner came on here and humbly apologized. That is all I ever wanted to begin with.

[77danj7]

It really is amazing what a simple, heartfelt apology can accomplish...
I don't see how the owner can be so overwhelmed emotionally by these posts and not simply make it right by apologizing.

[Springfielder]

That's all it would've taken, and it would've been welcomed....and that would've been the end of it. Guess being distraught has kept the manager from making a good choice and a positive option.

[duvalbill]

It took a sick day for me to finally wade through the 20 plus pages included in this thread.  That being said, I'll use this space to plug Picasso's Pizza as the best pizza in Jacksonville.  The owners are incredibly nice too.

[mtraininjax]

It really is amazing what a simple, heartfelt apology can accomplish...
I don't see how the owner can be so overwhelmed emotionally by these posts and not simply make it right by apologizing.

That is because the owner lives in fantasyland.

[BridgeTroll]

I ran into Justin, the fellow in the hot seat, at TSI last night (after a surprisingly helpful introduction---almost too eagerly helpful, one might suspect ----by the scandal enthusiast young club owner)

He really is a nice fellow, and its apparent that the situation just got out of hand and was handled badly.

He says that they have had a recent round of discussions about how better to improve service (which is a good thing no matter what the circumstances) and says that the net effect of the first few days of posting were overwhelming emotionally to the owner (I can certainly sympathise).

Im going to check out the place for dinner tonight I think.

I will report later.

If this is so then some good has eventually come from a bad situation.  It should help Justin and the rest of the staff deal with sticky situations.  Regular and future MRP customers should see the benefits of what happened.  That said, Dan and others are still not likely to return.  This is too bad as proper training of the people acting as "managers" would have resolved this problem in a manner that would not escalated an issue.

[ChriswUfGator]

Sounds like the owner is upset that people think he's a dick...

Which I find almost comical, since in reality he actually was a complete dick. So WTF? Are we supposed to feel bad?

If he was really bothered by the situation, then the owner and Justin would have offered up a real apology and a kind word to Dan and his wife, instead of crying a river for Stephen about how 'misunderstood' and 'upset' they are.

That's some serious B.S. right there...

[The Compound]

Not everyone sits in front of a computer all day like I do, and most of the rest of us on here.

I could see if the owner was already a participant on this blog, and still refused to comment, but I dont believe that is the case.

Even at this point, IF he did come on here, make a user name, (which you would all frown upon) and make an apology after 23+ pages (which you would all frown upon). It still wouldn't be good enough for this crowd at this point in this thread, and all of its tangents. It has already been proved with Justin and his apologies.