I ended up writing this letter to Applebees after today's disappointing visit:

There have been several occasions where I was very disappointed with the quality of service. My biggest complaint is that the food I order is never the food I get. For example, let's take today, I called and placed the following order: half a shrimp salad with mexi ranch dressing, no bacon in the salad, and a cup of tomato basil soup. After 15 minutes, I go to the Lithonia location to pick up my order and notice that the dressing is of the wrong kind. The bartender quickly replaced that with the mexi ranch dressing. Then, I spoke with one of the managers there commenting on my experience, and how this was clearly not a one time mistake from applebees. I told him that I'd greatly appreciate it if he could pass this message along to his supervisors as well as his staff. He said he would and he apologized. Well, I picked up my order and went to work, ate my soup, opened the salad container, and lo and behold! there was BACON in my salad.

I cannot tell you how many times this kind of thing has happened to me at applebees. This has happened to me whether I place an order To Go or even when I am having a sit-in visit. I have wasted so much of my lunch time waiting for the order to be re-prepared or in today's situation, stuck in my office with only tomato basil soup in my stomach. Do you expect this to last until 5:30pm? How did you feel when had your hopes up high and thought you were getting a quality meal and you were looking forward to eating it, and bam! it's not the meal you ordered...or the chicken wasn't cooked well enough, or you get bacon in your salad when you told the server/bartender you don't eat bacon. I am sorry to say, but I have lost all respect for your company and the kind of service you provide - I mean, customer no-service. Well, that's alright, I'll take my business elsewhere or better yet, just cook my own damn meals. I'm sure you could care less about this feedback, since I'm only one in a million, but I guarantee that if things don't change, there will be no more applebees. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Good Luck!