On Saturday 01/29/2011 my wife and I decided to go to Applebee's located at 579 Brookwood Village, Birmingham, AL 35029 for a late lunch around 2:30p. The restaurant was not packed neither was it busy. After sitting for approximately 10 minutes waiting for our server to come introduce himself he finally showed up to take our drink orders. When he brought us our drinks my wife and I placed our orders and I ordered a salad with my meal. At that point my wife and I waited for our food and watched 2 other couples that were seated after us get there food before us. In the meantime our server is nowhere to be found and no one came to refill our drinks. Then finally another server comes up saying that there was a shift change and that he would be our server. We finally got our food after 30min of ordering. However, our waiter continued to walk past us and check on other tables and not even checking on us to refill our drinks. When I asked to speak to the manager he went and got him. When the manager came over and I explained to him the situation he actually defended the server and used the excuse that he was new and that the previous server should have informed us that there was a shift change. Its very frustrating to know that your company hires managers that doesn't know the importance of customer service especially in the restaurant business. I've been working customer service all my life and what I saw was far from it. This was a horrible experience and the manager didn't make it any better. I can understand the slow service if the restaurant was jammed pack but it wasn't! After that experience I don't know if I will ever go back to applebee's and I know for a fact I'm not going back to that particular location.