Amy’s Bug Company

I originally titled this post “Amy’s Buggery Company” which I thought was a hilarious joke on the subject matter, but after about two seconds of thought, I realized I was making a very different joke from the one I intended. So there you go; enjoy the watered down version.

Speaking of watered down versions, have you heard the latest from the insanity cesspool that is Amy’s Baking Company?  Man, did you see that smooth rhetorical transition I just did there? This is why I get paid fat sacks of cash money absolutely nothing to write on the Internet.

The latest from Amy’s is that when you order a vodka martini, you’ll get dead flies added to your drink at no added cost. This is an incredible value. You have no idea how hard it is to find a restaurant willing to add insects to your drinks. Usually, they’re all “oh god, how did that get there, I’m so sorry, let me fix that for you.” Or worse, they don’t even serve insects with their drinks to begin with! How is that fair? I argue that it is not.

The best part is you also get an example of what really, really great customer service looks like:

When our meal at Pita Jungle was finished, we jokingly asked our waitress if she could go to Amy’s and buy us a slice of the chocolate mousse cake we had heard was so good, (and possibly not baked by Amy, according to several reports). To our surprise and delight, she agreed to walk over there and buy it for us. We gave her the money to do so. The slice of cake was $10.90.

How can you not love that? I hope the servers at Pita Jungle wear identifiable uniforms; it would really add to the punchline of this whole thing.

I Can’t Stop Watching This Trainwreck

My parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid, so I got to hang out there a lot and saw how it all worked. I’ve also heard plenty of “restaurant stories” throughout the years about what that kind of business was like, how things are supposed to be done, etc. The most interesting thing to me was my family’s perspective on the service of other restaurants; it’s amazing how many things I, as a member of the uninitiated, was ignorant towards. There’s this whole metric for how things should run, like how quickly your water should be depending on the size of the restaurant, the number of servers and the number of tables. It’s not just a single hard-and-fast rule. It’s actually really interesting to see how much tactical consideration goes into all the stuff I took for granted in food service, especially since I’m the black sheep of my family who hasn’t had a restaurant job.

Well, there were those two food delivery jobs I had, but that hardly counts.

With that said, I’d like to direct your attention to this little restaurant meltdown that’s making the rounds on the Internet. It’s funny, because I don’t like reality TV shows and I don’t really care about restaurants except for the aforementioned familial connection. And yet, I can’t stop watching this particular train wreck of a restaurant. The icing on this particular schadenfreude cake, if you’ll pardon my expression, is that they’re from Arizona. Of course they’re from Arizona.

Watch the clip. Even after that, it still flips my wig to see the clip where the owners threaten an angry customer and prevent others from trying to leave (link here, it’s the first video about halfway down the page). I think you’ll be impressed. Just don’t watch any it with the sound turned up too high. You’ll thank me in a few minutes.

For me, the best part is the vindication of the server who got fired during the filming of the first clip. True, she did get verbally assaulted to the point of tears which really sucks, but she got the best possible retribution: her asshole bosses made complete and utter fools of themselves for the entire world to see and she didn’t have to do a single thing to help them along. I tried to make a lame pun about revenge being a dish that was better when it’s self-served, but I couldn’t do it.