My family of five and my extended family of 18 plus friends have celebrated many birthdays, homecomings, holidays and gathering at El Chaparral in Helotes. This evening was the worst experience I've had at any restaurant in a decade. We arrived and I told one of the three girls at the hostess center we had a party of FIVE. She asked for a name and I gave her the name of the majority of family members MITCHELL. During this time two more girls came up to the hostess station and started pulling the tickets away from the girl that was writing. I had my reservations but I thought surely they had a system. My sister and I went to the bar for a margarita and the rest of our party stood directly in front of the hostess station waiting. After about 15 minutes, a hostess came through calling for MITCHELL party of two. We didn't move because of course we had a party of five. When no one responded to the call, I went up and asked them to look to see if there were two MITCHELLS because we were a party of FIVE. I told three different girls at the hostess station and got no response until a fourth girl very abrasively told me they would fix it. Her inappropriate behavior would have been overlooked had she actually fixed it but she went back to the list, changed the number to 5 and CROSSED IT OFF THE LIST. All five of our party moved to the banister directly in front of the hostess station and waited for another 25 minutes. Finally, I went back to the girl whose apparent responsibility was writing and maintaining the list and asked her to show me where they'd fixed the list. Very reluctantly she showed the list that contained our name which had been crossed out several times. The initial mistake came from a failure to listen and follow through. Everything that happened after that is beyond disappointing. When my father heard about the hostess tell us that they'd called our name and we hadn't responded after having waited 40 minutes right in front of them, he walked out. He will not be coming back which means you've lost the business of not just five or ten, but almost twenty. All because an inefficient system led to a mistake that led to a complaint that led to a vicious response. Changing the number to 5 and immediately crossing it out was nothing but ugly.
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