Grazing Rites

I’m a big fan of the Hard Rock Café franchise and I visit them whenever I have the chance and I’ve been to my fair share, about 8 or so, and the Las Vegas location is a unique case. Generally when you go to a Hard Rock you know what to expect and it’s equally good everywhere but when you go to the Las Vegas location it’s a bit of a gamble.

The staff attempts to do more than your run of the mill Hard Rock by dancing along to select songs, the most frequent and obvious being YMCA but the quality of the staff can vary significantly.

Last time I went 2 years ago we got a painfully pushy greeter who took the term ‘aggressively friendly’ to a whole new uncomfortable and obnoxious level, in my most recent visit we had the opposite problem.

Our waitress barely acknowledged our existence, we felt as if we were in some way boring or inconveniencing her just by placing our orders. To have such a dour and unresponsive person in such a lively place seemed rather odd. When we were looking to place our second round of drink orders she was sitting at a nearby table chatting up and hanging off of the guys there. When she eventually got around to checking in with us all the life, energy, and friendliness she lavished upon the other table was gone and the indifference had returned. Frankly her personality towards us seemed more suited to a Denny’s than a Hard Rock. When it came time for the staff to sing and dance she had to be literally pulled into participating by her coworkers and then did less than the bare minimum, glaring all the while, her distain for the whole thing painfully obvious. It seemed we really drew the short straw for service as every other person we saw was friendly, engaging, and eager to serve which is traditionally the hallmark of Hard Rock.

The food and drinks were exceptional as always although again our waitress seemed rather put upon that we would want our souvenir glasses cleaned and boxed – at a normal Hard Rock you don’t even have to ask, they’re almost like ninjas taking care of that thing before you even notice.

Overall the food and atmosphere was fantastic, our server on the other hand did all she could to drag the experience down for us.

This entry was posted on November 20, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.