Malaga Horror Stories: How to run a restaurant like a retard

Many expat friends of mine complain about the terrible customer service or better the say the complete lack of customer service in Malaga. Personally I didn’t have too many bad experience but since the last Sunday evening I totally get them. Here is my latest horror story, which is basically a continuation of the “How to pay your bills separately in Malaga” article.

Since we had a bad experience with a restaurant on the Paseo Maritimo of Misericordia beach, with my friends we decided to look for another place this time. Our choice was the Taxi Angus, which states: “Best Burger In Town” on their website. According to their business listing on Google maps, the restaurant opens at 19:00 and I wanted to make a reservation because we are going to go there seventeen of us and I wanted to make sure we will have free tables. I called them at 19:10 but no one answered. I went there personally at 19:20 to confirm that the restaurant exists and according to the schedule in their window (which is a rare thing to have in Malaga) they indeed should open at 19:00. Well, it was obviously not true. I tried to call them again at 19:30 at 19:50 without any success so we decided to go another place, since this restaurant seemed dead.

As we were walking on the paseo looking for a decent place at 20:10, we spotted  that the restaurant opened! Since it was the original plan to have some burgers, we went in I asked the manager in Spanish that why didn’t they pick up the phone and also why weren’t they open at 19:00? He said that they changed their business hours, they open one hour later. I told him that that is fine, but then please: Change the timetable in your window, on Google maps and on your own website, because it’s misleading and we almost went to another place because of that.

Also, I asked him that we are going to be seventeen of us here and we are going to pay separately, not together. Is that ok? He confirmed that sure, no problem, we can pay separately. We sat down, ordered drinks and burgers, everything was going very well…

When we got the burgers, somehow they felt smaller than on the illustrations in the menu, several people were still hungry after having one. The thing is that many burger places are using kinda big hamburger buns and we all are used to those. There is no problem with that, but when you see an illustrations on the menu like this one…

… you might think it’s a big juicy burger with enough saturated fat and cholesterol to give you an instant cardiac arrest. Well, it’s not, because in Taxi Angus they use a surprisingly small burger bun, which means everything you see on the picture must be scaled down, so at the end instead of having a big-ass quarter pounder bugger that you were expecting, but you a get a… wtf.

I could also mention the terrible acoustics of the place that gives you a headache as the sound of seventeen chatting and laughing people bounces and echoes around, but this article is not about that…

When we got to the point when we wanted to pay, the waitress girl told us that it’s not possible to pay separately. Whaaaat? (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

I told her that it must be some mistake, because when we arrived, I specifically asked the manager about this, so please don’t kid around. She went to ask the manager, but soon she came back, telling me that the manager confirmed: we can’t pay separately. I had no other choice but to ask her to bring the manager, because there were several ear witnesses of this conversation when we entered the restaurant, we would have not stayed if they didn’t agree our terms in the first place.

Shortly the manager arrived, I told him again, that hey… do you remember, when we entered the restaurant, the first thing what I asked was that can we pay separately? You told us that there is no problem with that, we will be able to pay our bills separately. As we are not a family, nor a football club, we are not going to pay together. We are 17 individuals sitting here at the same table, having our individual meals and we want to pay separately as we agreed in the first place.

He went like “blah-blah-blah…Spanish…blah-blah…not possible…blah-blah…Spanish…blah-blah… it would take an hour…blah-blah.” It was obvious that he doesn’t honor his own given word, even if there were several ear witnesses of the initial conversation about the separate payment, who remembered that he said.

As it turned out the issue was not that they could not do it, the problem was simply that they though it would take an hour to let the people pay separately, since everyone has to state what did they eat and pay for that.

This one hour thing was a ridiculous overstatement, especially because a day before on Saturday when six of us went out in Malaga historical center to have a dinner in Tuk Tuk Noodles. We ordered our meals and at the end we paid separately. It was super easy and fast; we just went to the barista pointed at the items of the bill that are ours, for example: A rice with curry and chicken 9.20 euros plus a tinto de verano 1.40 euros, total price of 10.60 euros. The barista entered the total to the POS terminal, I paid by my bank card and it’s done. We finished paying in a couple of minutes without any hassle.

But not at taxi Angus, where I didn’t accept their bullshit reason that it would take an hour to pay. I was keep “fighting” and they eventually agreed that I can pay my bill separately. So I told them that I ordered a governator burger for 9.25 euros and an orange juice for 1.40 euros, the total is 10.65 euros. The waitress entered this amount to the POS terminal and I paid. It was painless and quick, so after this quick demonstration I asked… “Ok then why can’t we do this with everyone else?” Also a fun fact, that if we’ve spent the time on paying instead of arguing, we would have finished already.

What happened at the end? First of all, pretty much everyone got pissed off because of the terrible mentality of the management that they don’t honor their word and then instead of providing a delightful experience, they just push their problem on the customers because they are too lazy to collect the money that we wanted to give them. But fortunately for them, this time we were more prepared and everyone had cash to pay. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are not going to go there any more.

So how to run a restaurant like a retard?

• Change your business hours without updating it anywhere.
• Over-promise and under-deliver.
• Don’t honor your own word.
• Push your problems to the customers.
• Be lazy to do your job.

Disclaimer: I don’t say that the management of Taxi Angus is retarded and I also don’t say that retarded people can’t run restaurants. What I say is that if you want to ruin your own restaurant, then go ahead with these mistakes, the result is guaranteed!