Bad Experience # 2

As a manager I need to conduct a meeting of my partners every 45 days. Most often than not we would hold our meeting in our company's main office in Makati. But when there are times that there's no available conference room we would hold our meeting in a different place. Post-Christmas season there were a lot of reservations in our main office that is why we need to find another place that would fit at least 15 people, is quiet and affordable. Since our site is in north quezon city we decided to make a reservation at Elyong's Grill and Restaurant located in Commonwealth Avenue, North Fairview. A day before our meeting I personally visited the site to check their function rooms and inquire about the price. The receptionist showed me the videoke lounges that could sit at least 15 people and is priced at P2500 consumable of food and beverages. The package is good for 3 hours and in excess of an hour you have to add P300. I had to make an immediate decision as we don't have much time anymore so I proceeded to give half the amount as deposit. The day of our meeting would also be the birthday celebration of three of our partners, Dennis, Josh and Bevz. They brought a cake which the staff of Elyong's charged for P100 corkage.

Aside from the videoke lounges, Elyong's also have bamboo huts which are scattered all over the vast area. Some of the bamboo huts are small that can sit 6 to 8 people but there are also bigger huts that can accomodate 20-25 people, most of the bigger huts are elevated which also provided a nice view of the posh subdivisions nearby and at night offers the view of the city and its dazzling lights. You might be wondering why I am still giving a description of this place and not go directly to my rants, well, I guess it's just fair to let the people visualize the good things and try to weigh in the end if they still would want to try it out. Now the bad things. Upon getting there we did not ordered food yet since we need to conduct our meeting first and having food in front of you would surely distract people. After about 2 hours we ordered the food and drinks, they arrived in time to feed our hungry stomach. Probably in the minds of the staff after serving the food we don't have much need for them so they kept on ignoring our requests. We requested for water and after 20 minutes of waiting we followed it up. Still no water. They are not even concerned that we might choke and die at that moment, ok so that's a bit overreacting. But my god! Its just water! We are not even ordering perrier or swiss water, just plain nawasa water. I went out of the room to check if there are a lot of customers. Around 10 of the huts were occupied and 4 of the lounges. So there are a bit of a crowd that Sunday night. I don't freakin' care. They are in the customer service business and I am sure that they know that Sundays are family day and they should expect a lot of customers. They should be the one to make adjustments to staffing. After about 40 minutes our water arrived. We also ordered 2 buckets of San Mig Light that we also followed up about 3 times or more. Since we have a cake that we need to eat we also requested for forks and plates. Those requests were also ignored. All in all we waited for the stuff we requested more than an hour to arrive. You might be thinking more than an hour is too much and why didn't we get mad or complained. We are too engrossed in our conversations and catching up of each others' lives that we didn't notice the time, we are also enjoying singing to our hearts and laughing over each ones funny antics. We are not even in a hurry to leave the place. But that doesn't mean that we don't deserve the kind of service we expect. We arrived there around 5 pm and around 11 pm we decided to pack up and leave so we asked for the bill. Which is another story. Another long wait. I am really itching to talk to a higher up to complain but I am about 6 months pregnant that time and I don't need stress to add up to my already tired mind and body. I just went to the cashier area to ask for the bill since I cannot wait anymore for the servers and I badly want to go home already. That's how bad it was. Even getting the bill would cause you precious time. For me no amount of extraordinarily good food can compensate for good service. And take note, their food is just ordinary.