A quick little sniff

Remember not so long ago when some of us had what we thought was a little known secret.

Back when Price-Less Foods on Fairchild first opened. And most people just thought it was a little neighborhood grocery.
The place where you could quickly grab forgotten items from the bigger chain grocery stores.

Those of us the knew the secret would either keep it to ourselves, or shout it from the mountain tops.

The secret.......... Their meat department.

You could always go there and know you were buying freshly cut meat that was safely rotated out of the coolers as soon as the expiration date hit..

High end cuts that were an unexpected surprise from a small convenience type store..

I'm not sure how many owners and a recession later, the secret is dead.

Last week a sad turn of events now has me shouting from the mountain tops.
DO NOT BUY MEAT AT PRICE-LESS FOODS..

Employees were witnessed, not so discretely unwrapping chicken, SMELLING IT, and if it passed their olfactory glands - THEY WERE RE-WRAPPING WITH NEW DATES.. Did you hear me??? They were using only their noses to determine whether or not the raw chicken was still safe to eat..

You really have to hope they didn't have a summer cold.. Or maybe they are smokers (smoking can change the way your sense of smell functions). Or like Andrew, maybe a head trauma has changed their ability to smell things effectively.
Or lets even take a different approach.. Maybe they went home at lunch and got puppy kisses on their nose.. Or snorted some recreational drug that they have now left on your chicken..

I don't expect overly friendly meat cutters/wrappers.. So I'm not sure you can call it poor customer service..
Put I can call it poor business practice..

Dear new Price-Less owners.. If you are going to teach your employees unethical and dangerous work ethic, at least teach them to do it out of customer visibility..

Where is the Corned Beef?

We all remember O'Learys from the 80's, right.
The cool train car dining. The famous Beer Cheese soup.
Fantastic sandwiches, and ice cold beer..
It was an experience to eat there and was at one time, one of Danville's hot spots..
And then................ It moved. And it didn't take it's train car dining room with it. Nor did it take it's fun atmosphere, great service or good food.

Tonight, Scott and I went to O'Leary's with our friends Steven and Jamie.
And it was so bad, we couldn't help but laugh.

For starters we had to wait to be seated because the tables that didn't have people, had dirty dishes..
The hostess "we didn't expect to be busy". Well you'll know why by the time you're finished reading.

It was about 5 minutes before the waitress came to take our drink order..
Scott ordered a Miller light. Steven says he'll have one too. Scott says to him (in front of the waitress) "don't get draft, it's funky here". The waitress nods in agreement.. The last time we were there we had a waitress tell us that the Bud light draft also tasted funny.

So she brings our drinks and we ordered an appetizer. When she brought the appetizer another round of beer was ordered. They were delivered and all was good. She put the appetizer order in and came back for our meal order.
Steven a tenderloin, Jamie a patty melt, and me a Reuben.
Scott orders Italian beef - "We're out of Italian Beef".
Okay fine.. He'll take a French Dip with Swiss cheese.
Damn a restaurant that serves Italian food, French food, and Swiss food..
Multicultural dining.

and then we sat............................
For about 30 minutes.. Listened to the guy at the next table complain about his meal (that should have been our first red flag to leave).

We didn't see our waitress for that entire 30 minutes.

Finally the hostess walked by and Steven asked her about our appetizer.
Her reply went something like "blah blah blah, that table of 13 over there, blah blah blah".
Having been a waitress or many years, in a fine dining establishment, for a boss that was ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE (thanks mom), it really gets my panties in a bunch to hear about how my service, meal quality, and over all dining experience, is effected by a table of more than 4 people that the restaurant was clearly unequipped to handle.
But anyway, she says she'll check.
She comes back and I swear this is what she said "your appetizers are up, your waitress will bring them".
WHAT???? Did you really take our complaint about not getting our food, walk past our food, look at our food, and come out and tell us someone else is going to bring it?
If you know the establishment has bitten off more than they can chew for the night, and your customers our complaining, grab the food on your way out to tell us it's ready..
Oh wait, that's beyond your job duties of stacking menus and rolling silverware.

So we get through our appetizer with no new issues.
Bring on the food... finally.

It's all looking pretty good.. The only thing that got left off was the Swiss cheese on Scott's French Dip.. She takes the sandwich back to have it added (if my mother was running that place, he probably would have gotten a completely new sandwich).
But she comes back to tell us they are "out of Swiss cheese"..
And again we hear "we were expecting this many people tonight" and she adds "we're short staffed".
I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS... You do not run out of food when you are nestled between Walmart and County Market..
Finally he gets his sandwich back with provolone (not sure what country that's from).

I take a couple bites of my Reuben.. blah.
So I open my sandwich to take a peak. What do I find????????
BUDDING BEEF... Okay it was actually that step right above Budding Beef.. But it was definitely prepackaged, pressed LUNCH MEAT..
Everyone else tasted the slices of meat, and we are all pretty sure it was actually ham in disguise.
No corned beef at the Irish Restaurant that serves Italian, French, Swiss and Mexican foods.
It took two hours for me to get my 8 dollar Budding Ham sandwich.

We look around and realize we're the last of the evenings diners. We will finish our drinks and be gone.. and then it happens..
THEY START RUNNING THE VACUUM.. Another pet peeve.
That to me says - Get out, we want to go home..
But it didn't stop there..
THEY STARTED TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS...
Well get this O'Learys.. If that giant table of 15 people hadn't caused you to take 2 hours to serve 4 uncomplicated sandwiches, we would have been well on our way a long time ago..

Get it together O'Learys.. It won't take much more than a Dennys to wipe you out..

They're even rude in small towns

AS POSTED BY MY BROTHER:

For my Pawnee area "Friends"; my new "Do Not Frequent" establishment: the new jewelry shop on the square. Granted, I went in to ask for an underwriting/donation for our annual Ducks Unlimited Banquet. But I was met with the rudest, most unfriendly person in a retail sales establishment I have ever run across. Me: How's Tricks? Him: Huh? Me: How you doin today? Him: What're you selling that I don't want to buy Me: (thinkin he's joking) My name's Kevin, I'm representing Ducks Unlimi... Him: (interupting) Not interestest. Me: Ok... Him: They got more damn money than anybody Me: (as I turn to leave) I aplogize, thank-you Him: They're the largest organization in the country, and I'm not Interested. Me: I said I was sorry for taking up your time, I live here in Pawnee and just wanted to stop in...Him: (interupting for the second time) somebody else can give them money I'm not.