6:30 ... arrive at Charlie's, no acknowledgement from the wait-staff that we're waiting for a table.
6:50 ... Comment to Dave "5-minute warning... in 5 minutes, if I'm not at a table, I'm going back to my room and ordering Papa John's"
6:55 ... steal a table from someone who left. Still dirty
7:00 ... comment to Dave "If I don't see a server in 5 minutes, I'm outta here."
7:07 ... Dave summons a server
7:08 ... we order our drinks and dinner
7:20 ... still no drinks, no sign of server
7:22 ... My drink arrives. Dave's doesn't. They're out of Mountain Dew. He orders a root beer.
7:24 ... food arrives. No drink for Dave, no ranch dressing (they're out)
... this can't be a good sign... we'll see how it goes...
Criminy.
Two years later and they still haven't fixed the service at Charlie's. Of course, they don't _have_ to. I swear, the Town and Country reminded me of The Village from The Prisoner. It's virtually impossible to get out of the place by car or by foot, and even if you do manage to escape, the closest eatery is The Cheesecake Factory. Feh.
I eventually warmed up to the place despite the annoyance value of tejano music leaking through my wall at 6:30am every morning (the is during LISA 2001; sysadmins are not a real tejano crowd...) Room service delivering overpriced breakfast via tricycle, Wal-Mart-style greeters pointing you toward convention rooms, and the creepy ceramic bunny expoxied to every armoire in the place. Freakish, and darkly amusing.
Charlie's holds a special memory for me. In December 2001 I was there with a bunch of friends, fretting about my talk on probabilistic risk assessment and system administration, drinking (I got my drink) when suddenly I got a page from my supervisor back in Austin, advising that I should make some contacts because Excite (my employer) was declaring bankruptcy.
Everyone was at once mortified and highly amused. I thought it was pretty funny but it really set the tone for a messed-up week of highs and lows. FWIW, I took best technical paper at that conference; I think the prize went to pay my mortgage after I was laid off in January. :)