And I get upset when McD’s can’t put the patty or the cheese on straight. That’s just something else. I guess it indicates the caliber of the cooking staff. Sheesh.
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This was many years ago, probably more than 25. And I have not set foot inside an Applebee’s since. But for all I know, they’ve undergone a sea change over the last quarter century and are now serving spectacular food, and I’m missing out, and the joke’s on me.
We used to live in a smallish town in SW OR and Applebees was one of our few choices. IIRC we used to get a chicken Caesar salad and a glass of some kind of white wine. We stopped going there when a GLASS was the same as we would pay for a BOTTLE in a store.
I wish that were rare in my neck of the woods. I was just perusing the wine list of a very overpriced Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A glass of unnamed Pinot Grigio is $18. This is about 3X what a bottle of Pinot Grigio goes for in, say, Trader Joe’s. (Of course, the restaurant is not an Applebee’s.)
Well, that’s what you get for the UES. Our friends are at CPW and 101st Street so we can walk to TJs 
If they only have a small, thin patty and a square of cheese to deal with you’d think they could at least get both ON the bun! But… NO!!!
One would think.
I am careful to avoid “friends” on Yelp.
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Well, small_h, I can confidently tell you that no “sea change” existed at Applebees as recently as 10 years ago 
My mother was in her 80s when she “discovered” her new favorite place and insisted we stop taking her to our “fancy” places and go with her to Applebees. As my wife and I tried our best to load up on weak fishbowls of Margaritas (great sugar rush though), my mother would gush over “what a great chef they have here”. I didn’t ever want to tell her that the closest they got to a chef there was the guy cutting open the individual serving plastic bags of microwaved food taken from their freezer. She died happy & we haven’t been back since.
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My late MIL was like that also. Applebee’s, Olive Garden, etc. I guess it’s like the old (IIRC) Holiday Inn slogan “The best surprise is no surprise at all.”
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We did drive-thru McD’s this AM and got Sausage McMuffins. Both the sausage and the cheese were ‘askew.’
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The joke may be on you, but similarly to you, I think Bill Clinton was in office the last time I set foot in one. But this reminds me of an equally fantastic chain I was once in with my mother (so fantastic, I don’t recall which one, but likely during Clintonian times) when she asked for just regular bread instead of garlic bread (which came with the meal) and they couldn’t oblige. “How could they not have bread if they have garlic bread?” 
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Starting to sound like “Five Easy Pieces.”
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That is fucking terrifying.
No joke. That’s one intense manager.
Here’s one from a patron of a local Sichuan restaurant. I guess MSG must look a lot like a Sichuan pepper corn. 
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That’s what I would’ve done.
apparently cats are allowed to yelp now
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Except, when you read the other side of the story, you see that that’s actually one intense customer.
The key details she left out of her review were: that she ordered the food via delivery. I mean, she ordered a burger and fried food via delivery. So already I’m thinking she’s foolish for expecting anything less than sogginess. A perfectly respectable burger and zeppoles could be rendered a soggy mess. And second, she didn’t say when she ordered/received the food. If the delivery guy got there at 9:20, the manager showing up to her house at 10:00 (which he knew the address of by, you know, well… NOT by stalking… as she made it seem) wouldn’t be so bad.
Then you hear his side of the story, that he wanted to explain that Grubhub entered her order wrong so her burger wasn’t done the right way, so he brought her a replacement.
Is it intense on his part? I mean, kinda, but to me it shows more of just a tremendous determination to please his customers.
I feel that her rush to victimhood and extremely slanted review with its glaring omissions embarrassed what seems to me to be a perhaps overzealous but well-meaning guy who was only trying to make her happy.
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