Walton's Flaky and Stupid

That title might sound a bit harsh, but after my experience at Walton's Fancy & Staple, it's accurate, if not a bit too kind. Question: What's the most unforgivable mistake that a restaurant can make? It's not bad food. Any kitchen can have an off day or night. The worst mistake, in my opinion, is ignoring your customers.

Walton's is another Sandra Bullock project, a combination cafe/gift shop/florist, which means it does none of those things very well. The FTD flower arrangements are nothing you couldn't buy at HEB at half the cost. The gifts are a hodgepodge of overpriced candles and vintagey things. The counter service cafe offers hot sandwiches and bakery items.

We arrived on a Saturday at 11:15, just before the lunch rush. We ordered a monte cristo and a ham and cheese sandwich, got our number and sat down. After waiting for 30 minutes, we saw a guy bringing soup to another table and asked him to check on our order. After waiting another ten minutes with no word from the guy, we went up to the counter to find him behind the cash register ringing up orders. No eye contact. In fact, no one in the place made eye contact or noticed our empty number 8 table as they walked by.

We finally got someone's attention and asked for a refund, since we had an appointment and had been waiting for 45 minutes. She went to the back to fetch a manager who came out and opened the cash register to retrieve our refund. No one offered us an explanation regarding the delay so we still don't know if they forgot to put in our order or if it's typical for them to take an hour to make two sandwiches. We'll never know. Oh, and they never apologized for wasting our time.  Question 2: What's the most unforgivable thing that anyone can steal from you? The answer? Time. We'll never get those 45 minutes back. Then again, they'll never get our business back, so I guess we're even.