Ask at the restaurant: When can I make a complaint as a guest?

«I ordered the roast beef. I get something red, chewy and totally inedible.

Overly salty, hard or half frozen: You must file a complaint immediately. It becomes hard to argue with invincibility when half of it is already cleared. From a legal perspective, you conclude a so-called employment contract with the restaurant. This means: the kitchen owes the promised success and must deliver what is described in the menu. This includes, for example, keeping hot foods hot.

What if the fajitas arrive as promised but I don’t like them? Even then, it’s best to contact immediately. The restaurant’s kitchen is fast and can often whip up a replacement in just a few minutes. It’s not a bad idea to reward this with a nice tip.

“After a quarter of an hour the drinks started arriving.”

Patience brings roses. But unfortunately they don’t really fill you up. The law has a seemingly obvious solution to this problem: If the “entrepreneur”, that is, the restaurant, delays the “production of the work” in violation of the contract, guests can withdraw from the contract without waiting for the delivery date. So exactly what delivery times do you agree to in the contract when you order egg-hazelnut salad and vegetable spaetzle pan? The court was never required to decide on this issue and the law was silent on the issue. Another hurdle: Before the customer can cancel the order, they must first send a reminder and set a grace period. But something like this would be difficult to prove in a restaurant.

So: There’s no use throwing paragraphs around. As always, there’s only one thing left: talking to each other. And ask the waiter for information and look at them with doe eyes. Or agree with him to stop exercising so he can have a cheeseburger on the side.

“Asparagus and arugula salad for 17.50 Fr., exactly 4 asparagus tips and around 20 arugula leaves.”

If the bill is already on the table, it’s too late to complain. Even when choosing the restaurant, you need to control your stomach and wallet. If there is vacancy in both places, a stylish and trendy restaurant is not the right place, but an honest neighborhood restaurant. From a legal perspective, guests accept the price by placing an order. Shaking doesn’t help much.

However, you can intervene if you have to look for food by enlarging the plate. Because the restaurant promises that guests will not have to go home on a completely empty stomach. Everything between a stomach that is no longer empty and a stomach that is full is a matter of interpretation and not very clear from a legal perspective. After all, most restaurateurs will feel like their sense of dignity is being appealed to when you complain about being hungry. Who knows, maybe it has a supplement.

“Bored, arrogant and uninterested; this man should not be allowed to be left in the hands of guests.”

There is definitely a limit. However, this is not achieved that easily. The waiter said, “What do you want again, you glutton?” If he asks, it could be a crime. Also when you say: “Too bad, you.” Both are value judgments that violate the sense of dignity and are therefore punishable. The judiciary is not concerned with anything that is fundamentally less intense. The only thing left for dabbed guests is to recover from the unpleasant experience they had on the rating platforms. But even then, it is important to keep your anger in check and remain neutral; otherwise you may be prosecuted. The example mentioned at the beginning is probably still within scope and is neither punishable nor an insult to character.