Why I’ll Never Eat at Skeeter's Mesquite Grill Again

All regular blogging is temporarily suspended while I spend a few minutes crapping all over someone who really pissed me off this morning.  It’s moments like this when all the work over all these years building a little readership seems worth it.

We’ve been regular customers of Skeeter’s Mesquite Grill at Bissonnet and Weslayan here in Houston for many years.  In fact, it’s not unusual for some of us to have breakfast there twice a weekend.  They have a breakfast bar that we enjoy- or used to.

Lately, over the past month or so, I have noticed- and commented to Raina- that the quality of the food at the breakfast bar seems to be declining.  The eggs aren’t as good.  The omelets are a mess.  Even the dishes and silverware aren’t always clean.  Last week, the first two plates and the first fork I picked up had dried food on them.  Today, both forks I picked up, for me and Luke, had the same problem.  Little things, yes.  But noticeable.

I don’t have a gourmet palate, so I can get past a lot of that, in exchange for a reasonably priced and quick meal.

What I cannot always get past is an attitude.

There’s this one guy who works at this restaurant- he’s at least a manager and may be the owner.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that he has an attitude problem.  I’ve noticed it before.

I’m not a touchy feely sort of guy, so I don’t really care if someone gives a little attitude, as long as they do their job.  It’s not that easy to make me seriously angry- there’s too much else to be done to get hung up on stupid stuff.

But today, this dude managed to get me there.

Luke likes hamburgers for breakfast.  Not typical fare, but so what.  I let him have them.  We’ve ordered breakfast hamburgers many times at Skeeter’s.  It takes a little longer to cook in the morning, but it’s never been a problem before.  This morning, I ordered the breakfast bar for me and a hamburger for him.

20 minutes later, I walked up and asked, nicely, if his order (number 6, per our receipt) was about ready.  The cook didn’t seem to know anything about it.  Then Mr. Attitude comes over and starts telling me how they don’t sell hamburgers in the morning and that he doesn’t know who in the world sold me a hamburger.  It seemed like he was implying that I was making up the hamburger business, so I offered to show him my receipt.  At this point I was irritated, but not yet furious.  He goes on about how they don’t sell hamburgers in the morning, and this and that.  I told him that we’ve done it lots before, and asked how I’m supposed to know that it’s suddenly a problem, given that I had just been allowed to order one and had the receipt to prove it.

I didn’t care all that much about the burger- Luke would be more than OK with doughnuts in lieu of a hamburger.  What was getting in my craw was the simple, indisputable fact that we’d ordered plenty of breakfast hamburgers before, we’d been allowed without question to do it today, someone either lost or blew off our order without even telling us, and this cat was somehow trying to make this my fault.

Either this guy is oblivious or he has to recognize me as the guy who brings large groups of kids to his restaurant once or twice a week, to eat his food and stuff my quarters into his vending machines.  But he seemed not the least bit concerned that my 5-year old didn’t get his food.  He was much more concerned with lecturing me on the sudden unavailability of morning hamburgers.

At this point I was done.  With that dude and with Skeeter’s.  I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I was a regular customer, that all I did was ask about our order, and all I was getting from him was a bunch of attitude.

And I walked out.  Never to return.

Skeeter’s won’t go out of business because I stop trading there, any more than Wall Street will fall because people claim to be occupying it.  But sometimes it’s worth it, just to make a statement.  Just to make a point.

Because sometimes that’s all you can do.