I went on a date on Sunday, and not with my wife.
I took our 3 1/2 year old daughter for dinner at a local Friendly’s restaurant that I hadn’t eaten at for a couple of years. Either my memory is failing, or this particular Friendly’s has gone seriously downhill. They tried very hard to turn what should have been a pleasant 45 minutes with my wonderful daughter into a 1 1/2 hour assault on the senses.
Hearing: While I appreciated the Christmas music, I did not appreciate the mildly offensive language some of the staff were using in their (many) casual conversations with one another.
Sight: The restaurant was dirty and run-down. Many of the staff were unkempt.
Touch: The sticky table and booth seating had clearly not been wiped thoroughly.
Smell: The section of the restaurant we were in actually had a faint smell of urine!
Taste: The entree I had (soup and sandwich) actually wasn’t bad (for Friendly’s), however, the soda was bordering on flat and the ice cream sundae was obviously thrown together – all of the ice cream on the bottom and all of the brownie on top.
And as a bonus …
Time: The waitress was awful. We waited 25 minutes before ordering, she didn’t stop at all to see if we were okay or needed more drinks, we even had to order our sundaes from another waitress because she went AWOL for so long.
In my opinion, Friendly’s need to do some more quality control and think a little more about their customer experience.
The only redeeming factor of this particular Friendly’s was that my adorable daughter was in it.
Update (12/27/2011): Kudos to Friendly’s for seeing my tweet & blog post and for following up. Today I received a $10 Friendly’s gift card in the mail, should I return to the Pottstown Friendly’s to give them a follow-up report?
A More Mauvy Shade of Pinky Russet 
I won’t even go into the fact that they have a Sundae called the Happy Ending. 😉
It’s amazing to me that with so many people out of work, there are so many people WITH jobs who are incompetent or who just don’t care. I experience this almost everywhere I go these days.
We are sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. That is not the quality of service we pride ourselves on providing. We are always striving to create the best atmosphere and experience for our customers and could not do so without feedback from people like yourself. Please email teamfriendlys@gmail.com to discuss your experience directly with us, so we can take action to ensure that any future experience you have with us is fun and friendly.