I had an e-mail conversation with my friend, “Wild Bill.” The topic of the morning was letting a restaurant owner know when the meal was less than perfect. He had breakfast at a local diner recently. The pork chop and biscuits were both excellent, but the scrambled eggs were dry and the gravy for the biscuits was a little burned. When he walked up to the counter to pay, the fellow at the register asked if his meal was OK, and Wild Bill told him about the eggs and gravy.

“He had no reaction other than to nod his head that he heard what I said,” Wild Bill said.

What is it with restaurant workers these days? Do they just ask about the meal simply to make conversation? Do they really care? What’s your secret to letting a restaurant know about a less-than-stellar meal? I usually tell the waitress. But that’s only a 50-50 chance that things will be corrected. At the same diner, I told my waitress about a Philly cheesesteak sandwich that was supposed to have onions, peppers and mushrooms. It had a couple of bits of onions and peppers, but that was it. No mushrooms at all. Come to find out, they were out of mushrooms that day. Shouldn’t I have been told this when I ordered the sandwich? And when I mentioned that there were hardly any onions and peppers on the sandwich, shouldn’t she have taken it back?