A Rant About How Much Red Robin Sucks

I've never been a big fan of Red Robin (as a non-burger eater) but having a child, we go there more often than I'd like. We went there more often when she was little because it's generally loud in there, so if your kid acts up it's no biggie because 80 other kids are acting up too. This makes it an *awesome* place for adults to go! (I hope you sense the sarcasm there).

We hadn't been there in some time (probably close to a year) so when TJK requested it the other night, I couldn't really argue. So off we went. It was a Monday night so the place was pretty empty, which was good for the screaming-kids front. Our waitress came over pretty quickly and took drink orders. Great. She then told us to use the tablet on the table to order our appetizers. Say what, now?

The devil.

I've been to other chain restaurants that have tabletop tablets so you can pay your bill from there (and/or have your kid beg you through the whole meal to pay for games for her to play, despite the fact that she has her own iphone...but I digress). But having to order our own meal from a computer? That just seems to be to be a step too far.

But we went along. We tried ordering some kind of appetizer combo thingee with boneless wings and pretzel bites. It didn't work. So we had to call the waitress over, and rather than just being able to write down our order, she had to order it on the tablet. She had a hard time figuring out what to do to order the combo as well. Ugh. She finally figured it out, and then she took our order herself for our main meal.

I ordered a chicken sandwich. The chicken was rubbery and the bun was stale. Not my idea of a good meal, and I'm pretty easygoing when it comes to fast service places like this.

After the meal, TJK begged for something called Fruffles or something like that. We looked and looked for the waitress but she was nowhere to be found. We decided to take advantage of the tablet and ordered the Fruffles on there. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go by. No Fruffles. Twenty five, thirty minutes, and we are looking for the server like crazy. We finally find her and ask her to just cancel the goddamned Fruffles - we were sick of waiting. Just take them off the check.

She goes to the kitchen and we can hear her yelling, "What happened to the Fruffles!?!?" Now, had we ordered them directly through her, she would have known we ordered something and would have followed up on them. But in this case, we ordered through the tablet and she was unaware that we had any items outstanding from the kitchen.

We go to pay the bill on the tablet, which is fine. I truly don't mind that because when I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go. I don't like waiting for the server to come and give the bill and come back to get the card and come back to drop it off. But then, on the tablet, which has taken our order through most of the meal, it recommends that we give a 20% tip. Seriously? I'm tipping a server 20% when the tablet did most of the work? Makes no sense to me.

I get that the tablet on the table puts the power in the customers' hands, supposedly. But to me, all it did was disengage the server and keep us waiting longer than we should have. Honestly, after this experience, I don't think we will be back to Red Robin. I feel like when I go out to eat, even if it is a "fast sit down" type of restaurant, someone should take my order and make sure it gets to me.

That's my spoiled brat review of my shitty experience at Red Robin.