Restaurants I Like and Dislike

I've reviewed three restaurants already and a few people have said to me "Dave you like every restaurant you review!" While I did say I disliked the Noblestown Road Wendy's I did like Wendy's as a whole so there has been a "Like" in every review thus far. So this week I decided I will write about a restaurant I dislike. It took me awhile to figure out what I would write about, I actually didn't figure it out until I started typing this paragraph. However, one restaurant did come to me and today I will be writing about why I dislike... (you can bang your hands on your desk/table/lap here if you wish to make a drum roll)...

RUBY TUESDAY!

Ruby Tuesday is not just an excellent song by The Rolling Stones (pictured right), it is also a restaurant that specializes in burgers, much like Max and Erma's and Red Robin. Now I've only been to Ruby Tuesday on a few occasions, but what I've witnessed there has made me dislike this restaurant. Jim and I even gave the restaurant a nickname "Racist Tuesday." This nickname pretty much explains why I dislike the restaurant; the service there was racist. Now I don't mean a waitress came up to us and said, "What can I get for you cracka's?" Although I may not have been completely surprised if that's how it happened.

James and I visited Ruby Tuesday on a few occasions whilst we lived in Washington D.C. for our semester at American University. When we visited we had both good and bad experiences, and also noticed other patrons of the restaurant having good and bad experiences. After a couple visits we realized a connection between the good experiences and the bad experiences both that we had, and we witnessed others having. The service seemed only to be good when your waiter/waitress had the same skin color as you. When James and I (both being white) had a white waitress the service was good. When we had a black waitress the service was terrible (pictured left is a dissatisfied hungry customer, that I found on Google images, who apparently was not the same race as his server). Now before you start thinking "well Dave you are just saying black people are terrible waitresses" STOP THAT! That isn't what I'm saying, let me finish. At the same time we were having excellent service from our white waitress, a black customer was complaining (and rightfully so) about the terrible service he received from her. We witnessed how she repeatedly came back to our table to check on us, refill our drinks, and update us on our order status. She never went to his table, his drink lay empty, and his food seemed to take twice as long as our meals to be ready.

On the flip side of this argument we had absolutely terrible service when our waitress was black. She took forever to come get our orders, bring our drinks, and bring out our meals. We only got refills once because we asked her specifically for them after she brought out our meals. She ignored our attempts to get her attention. All the while, she was giving excellent service to the black family just a few tables away.

The food at Ruby Tuesday is actually quite good, but because of the racist service roulette you play whenever you enter the restaurant this one has to go into the "Restaurants I Dislike" category. These are probably just a few coincidences about service, but from what we witnessed the restaurant is racist (although an equal opportunity racist). We never saw any Asians or other races dine there, or working as waiters/waitresses, so we could not observe this with any other races. However, after these few experiences we decided not to go back to "Racist Tuesday" because we didn't want to gamble on if we would have a white waitress or not.