Last week I half-ass sang District Taco's praises - at least for their F Street location. This week I went back to try actual tacos and get more of their queso and I was screwed over like a chump. Here's my story.
It's raining today so there wasn't a line out the door, which was nice. The line still took forever. I blame this on people not knowing how to order or what to order. No matter - it still kind of sucked, but I had high hopes for the food.
I ordered - it was a pretty simple order. I asked for two chicken tacos on flour tortillas with sour cream, cheese and pico de gallo. I also asked for a "large chips and queso." I said "large" because they have a small personal queso that is a quarter of the size and half the price. I wanted the big one because I was going to share with others in my office (bullshit, I was going to eat the whole damn thing by myself, but my story to my wife is that I was sharing). The cashier confirmed I wanted the $5.50 queso and chips, not the personal queso and chips for $2.50. We were set and the price I paid reflected what I ordered. I got my number/object with its name in Spanish. In this case I had the number 40 and a church (la iglesia).
I sat out of the way and watched other piggish customers load up at the salsa bar. There's nothing like free shit to drive DC people wild. One woman must have made 25 little containers of salsa while I watched and put them in her purse. Insanity.
Pretty soon a woman was meekishly (not a real word) calling my number aloud. I thought "that was fast!" Not so. The cashier didn't indicate what "protein" I wanted on my taco and the kitchen needed to know the answer. Look at my receipt - Download Taco rip-off. Sure enough - the genuis taking the order left off the most important part of the equation. I'm pretty sure the cure for cancer isn't rolling around in that asshole's head if can't get that task right. Don't ask him to do anything complicated like count change... Nevermind.
I figured that once the taco protein situation was squared away that things would be alright. I was wrong. I was wrong like 70s vehicle design wrong. And I wouldn't know it until it was too late.
It's a pretty hectic scene in there because the layout sucks and the order delivery system sucks So when my number did get called and my order was delivered, there really was no time to sit and go through the bag to check and make sure they did what they're supposed to do. Besides, I shouldn't have to check their work - it's not my job. I have to believe that they're capable of delivering me what I ordered because that's half the battle in the restaurant business.
I slogged through the rain as fast as I could behind a gaggle of assholes who apparently thought it was a sunny Sunday afternoon in Mobile, Alabama (walking slower than southerners talk is what I'm getting at here). I got to my office just in time to inhale the food and get to my next meeting. I was in a word - "excited." I was trying to clap and open the bag at the same time because I was that excited. Too bad they shit on my picnic.
When I got the bag open the queso container was tiny. So tiny in fact that I laughed out loud. Who would ever want this little dab of queso? I figured it was a joke or they just put my large queso order in a bunch of small containers because they ran out of the big ones. WRONG. That was all the f*cking queso in the f*cking bag. Do you remember at the end of Braveheart when William Wallace is being tortured to death and screams out in pain? I did that, but louder. For at least a minute longer. And things just got worse from there.
I unwrapped the tacos to find that one had sour cream, cheese and chicken - no pico de gallo. The other one just had sour cream and chicken - that's it - no cheese and no pico de gallo. Not only did they f*ck up my tacos - they couldn't even f*ck them up consistently. They literally suck at sucking. They are bad at being bad. They are shitty at being shitty. They are crappy... you get the idea.
At this point I had to make a choice. I could blow-off my meeting with the corner office folks and march over to District Taco and demand they make things right (read: lose my job, but get to have a very public meltdown)... Or I could sit there like a little bitch, eat my tacos and forget about it. It wasn't until one second later that I remembered that I have a blog with literally tens of readers, and you have what you have here now.
I paid exactly $11.00 for this wallet raping, soul crushing lesson in honesty and integrity and how the taco industry obviously has neither (Download Card receipt).
They gave me the $2.25 queso. I paid for the $5.50 queso. I figure not a lot of people get the big queso so the people in the kitchen don't pay much attention to what is written on the order. Maybe they're just confused because the menu doesn't really do a good job of designating between the two sizes of queso. Either way - I got ripped off by lazy staff and shitty management.
The messed up taco order didn't cost me anything because the toppings were included in the price of each $2.25 taco. However, it's just a laziness not to get it right and I'm pissed I paid for their half-assed effort. Had they got the queso order right and the tacos wrong, I would have been okay just dipping the screwed up tacos in the queso as a consolation prize. The thimble sized container of queso they gave me was too small to even contemplate that move. Here's a picture of the offending queso container - View this photo.
I know what you're thinking - "Well, Brad it was only a couple of bucks, less than 25 percent of the bill - what's the big deal?" I'll tell you what the big deal is. My wife hates it when I spend money on lunch. HATES IT! So when I decide to go purchase lunch I'm doing so knowing I'm going to get my ass reamed by that lovely lady who shares a room and a child with me. No sooner than I had left the front door of District Taco with my messed up order I already had a text message from my wife asking me "WTF are u doing buying lunch dipshit?" So it really pisses me off when I put my ass on the line for some queso and District Taco doesn't come through! Can you imagine what she'd do to me if she found out I got ripped off? I have to lie to cover my ass and in turn cover District Taco's ass and I really don't want to do that, but divorces are expensive and I'm not good at dating, so I'll do it.
But District Taco will stand judged by the DC blog lurkers who come upon this post and I hope they feel the pain I have felt today (they won't - they have access to all the queso they could ever want already).
Comments