How forgiving are you of 'problems' in restaurants?

[HangTime]

Just wanted to guage opinions on how you (and family) react to problems encountered at restaurants. By problems I mean things such as these:

-Slow/inattentive service (e.g. making you wait ages before taking drinks orders)
-Bringing the wrong dish out
-Poor quality / cold food
-Contaminated food (e.g. bit of plastic or hair etc)
-Dirty plate/glass/cutlery
-Mistake on the bill
-Poor reaction to issues raised by patrons (rudeness or indifference)
-Failing to notify you of dishes off the menu at or prior to the point of ordering
-Some kind of safety issue e.g. hot liquids spilled on you, protruding nails in furniture etc

Personally I feel I am fairly forgiving of the odd indiscretion, and it usually takes multiple 'offences' to prompt me to complain. Restaurants are staffed by humans often on limited wages so I do not expect perfection every time. When I feel forced to complain I usually do so in a calm and almost apologetic manner. Only a couple of times have I been so annoyed by persistent failures that I have felt the need to ask to speak with a manager.

My wife on the other hand is quite easily riled by what she perceives as poor service and will usually complain in a tone/fashion I can't quite describe, not aggressive per se but very flat and almost personal/condescending toward the staff. At times it makes me cringe if I feel the issue isn't that serious (e.g. I remember once her saying "er hello, I'm still eating?!" when a waitress in a pub cleared my plate away before she'd finished). Amongst our friends she has a reputation now as someone who isn't afraid to complain.

Then when it comes to tipping there is a somewhat awkward situation. Unless I think the service has been genuinely bad I feel compelled to leave a tip of some description even if not entirely satisfied. I don't know why because I don't believe in tipping for the sake of it (only for exceptional service) yet still do it.

 

[HangTime]

I know what you mean about raising issues at the time, however sometimes after a hard day at work the last thing you want to do is get into a debate and hassle about some issue with your meal, you just want to eat what you can and get out rather than have that awkward situation where one of you sends a meal back and is sat waiting while other eat and then has to play catch-up when it comes back out. You'd then perhaps mention the problem at the end on the way out so they are aware of it.

Example would be I once ate at a local 'gastro pub' (table service, reasonably pretentious menu, you know the drill) and cut my hand on the chair (it had like industrial staples or something holding fabric in place, but one was sticking out). It drew blood but not the end of the world, I raised it when we finished our meal as I considered it a safety issue and didn't want a child to injure themselves on it. Bloke seemed totally non-plussed about it "oh, we'll get that looked at", no apology or anything, suffice to say 3 years or so later we still haven't been back