Imagine being with your partner at a restaurant in a large metropolitan city. After your meal, you decide to order a sundae to split with your man.
Sounds nice, huh?
It probably would be – unless you were shamed by your waiter.
The Prime Rib's website boasts that it is one of the top five romantic restaurants in America. But a couple who recently dined at the restaurant's Washington location disagree.
The man and his partner asked to split an ice cream sundae, but their server told them two men eating out of the same bowl “doesn't go with the ambience of the restaurant.”
Ron Gage, 55, and his partner, Henry McKinnon, 58, didn't see it coming. They were properly attired in blazers, which the restaurant requires, for their 8.30pm reservation. They had been joking around with their server, in what Gage said had been a nice evening until dessert.
“When it came time for dessert, we asked for one sundae with two spoons,” Gage said. Their server “said he would bring it in two separate dishes. He said ‘It wouldn't look right with two gentlemen eating out of the same sundae. It doesn't go with the ambience of the restaurant.”
The pair didn't know how to react.
“We were speechless, we nodded,” Gage said. “We weren't expecting it.”
Stunned, they kept their conversation with the server to a minimum for the rest of the meal, and tipped him 15 per cent – they usually tip 20 – and left the restaurant without addressing it with a manager.
“I'm kind of embarrassed to say we didn't say anything,” McKinnon said. “It just took us back to such a shameful place, in a way.”
But after they had slept on it, they were angry about the encounter and posted about it on Facebook and Yelp.
The Prime Rib's general manager, James MacLeod, said he was still trying to piece together the situation and hadn't had a chance to speak to the server in depth yet.
“The waiter in question is Bulgarian, and he does speak four different languages,” said MacLeod, noting that English is not the server's first language. “I am not sure if he got confused as to what he was saying, or how he was saying it.”
He said he planned to reach out to Gage and McKinnon.
“I cannot believe that a waiter would have ever said anything like that,” MacLeod said. “There's no way we would condone anything remotely like this.”
Even if the restaurant tries to make amends, Gage and McKinnon don't think they'll be back.
“It was so humiliating,” McKinnon said. “It was unbelievable how it made us feel.”
h/t: Washington Post
