I walk into Marie Callenders (Encino) with a friend around 1:00 p.m. The hostess takes my name and tells us there will be a short wait. Approximately 5 minutes passes, my name is called and my friend and I are lead to a corner table in a back room. The perimeter tables are full, but the center tables are mostly empty, so it's not incredibly busy.

We peruse our menu's for 3-4 minutes, decide what we want and then wait. Several waitresses walk by us, looking right at us, but nobody stops. Another waitress visits the table behind us twice, but never drops in at our table. We continue to wait, first 5 minutes, then 10 minutes, then 15 minutes. Nothing. Finally, I flag down a passing waitress asking, "Excuse me, do we have a waitress?" She says, "Let me check, " and walks on. Another 5 minutes pass, with no service.

We've now been sitting at a table for over 20 minutes with no service. Not so much as a water. Finally, after another 5 minutes, we got up and walked out, having never received an ounce of service.

As we're leaving, we had to hop over a puddle of newly deposited vomit on the walkway leading us to believe we were better off having never gotten any food.

Congratulations to Marie Callenders for raising the bar on bad service!