Staff Infection

There are times when the food and ambience are secondary and tertiary in a restaurant experience. And our dinner at Comet Ping Pong was exactly one of those times. Though we enjoyed the pizza and the ambience was funky enough to be interesting, the staff was out of The Twilight Zone.

The erratic behavior, total lack of decorum, and excess of hipster attitude and aesthetic, was profoundly unbecoming. But the weirdness was so pervasive and unwavering, it became amusing in a "Tony and Tina's Wedding" sort of way, like we were about to be dragged into some interactive theater nonsense where misanthropic hipsters attack the general public with their powers of rudeness and insanity.

We actually began to believe that what we saw as shortcomings might have actually been part and parcel of Comet's mission—to alienate and confuse patrons, which would be entirely consistent with owner Carole Greenwood's well-documented abuse of patrons at her other restaurant, Buck's Fishing and Camping. So to illustrate what we believe to be intrinsically bizarro about Comet Ping Pong, we have created a Staff Manual/Code of Conduct that accurately represents what we experienced this past weekend at Comet Ping Pong.

I. Hostess Behavior
A. Arriving Guests
1. Under no circumstances will you greet patrons politely. "Hello, how are you this evening," for example, is unacceptable. Hostesses must ensure all diners feel alien in their environment from the moment they walk in until the moment they leave the establishment.
2. If a patron is waiting on other members of his/her party, take pains to make sure he/she does not take up valuable space in the booth for more than 30 seconds. If he/she is still waiting after 30 seconds, get up in patron's grill and ask several probing and inappropriate questions until said patron feels awkward and uncomfortable. [Our friend, KC, was asked "are your friends really coming?" Check in with KC's blog for her forthcoming relation of the experience.]
If patron seems unfazed by the onslaught, ignore said patron and glare in his/her direction occasionally. If and when the remainder of the party shows up, be sure to treat them like second-class citizens. [Our hostess greeted us not by saying, "Good evening," but rather "Oh, she's been waiting for you for a while." Editor's note: KC was there for eight minutes, and she was early, a fact that she shared with the hostess.]
B. Leaving Guests
1. Servers, the guests are leaving! Under no circumstances will you say "thank you" or "have a good evening" or anything else that suggests that you would like them to return. [Apparently making eye contact with the hostess on your way out doesn't garner you a "thank you" of any sort.]

II. Server Behavior
A. Describing the Menu
1. The average person cannot read a menu, especially one as painfully simple as ours, therefore you must read it to them. But do not rehearse or memorize the menu; your delivery should be slow, dim-witted, and should reflect exactly what the patrons see in front of them. ["We also have salads, two salads, one's a house salad, and one's a Caesar salad."]
2.  Add detail about the pizzas at your peril. The only detail you are authorized to share with diners is that the pizzas are "rich in flavor." We are nothing if not a pizzeria that delivers small, asymmetrical pizzas that are rich in flavor. RICH IN FLAVOR. [Our server's ad libbing included an apologetic monologue about how the pizzas are "not that filling" but that "we have a lot of pizzas, and they're all rich in flavor."]
B. Periodically Checking in on Diners
1. Do not do this.

III. Food & Beverage Preparation and Price
A. All pizzas should be small and delivered on large cookie sheets to underscore their "smallness."
B. Prices of pizzas and salads should far exceed their worth.
C. Wine glasses should actually be small orange juice glasses. Charge at least $3 per fluid ounce for fair to middling wine. [It's also worth noting that the year and vineyard of the wine is presented on the menu in 3-point type, rendering the text almost completely unreadable].

Stay tuned for AC's evaluation of the actual food and ambience.

—AK

Comments

[Melissa]

Great post!. I had been hearing mixed things about Comet's service and pricing, too. I'm glad D.C. is getting better pizza. But if this becomes Comet's M.O. and 2 amy's is the bright, hot, loud, kid fest that it often is, I wonder where we'll be able to go for good pizza that's not an abrasive experience?

[Hickey]

I'm in my "workspace" and I am laughing so hard in a silent, muted kind of way. Chicago bosses are 10 feet away!

[monkeyrotica]

You lost me at the headline.

Seems like this is a place by hipsters, for hipsters, and the hipster 'tude is all part of the service charge, i.e., giving hipsters something trivial to complain about.

But you've really made the case for just walking into the lobby, defecating, and leaving.

[Barbara]

I'm mystified that people continue to go to either of Carol Greenwood's restaurants. And even more mystified by those who are repeat customers. I've never heard anything good about her or her staff in the way they (mis)treat their customers.