IHOP Restaurant, Nacogdoches

The quality and service at the IHOP in Nacogdoches is about the same as I have found in any other IHOP I have been to. IHOP is what it is - a place you can go any hour of the day or night and eat decent food. Tonight was my last visit to this IHOP. I have had minor issues with them in the past for their habit of placing items on the Specials board at the same price as they are on the menu though sometimes the Special price is lower. I only laughed and pointed it out to the waitress on 2 occasions and once to the manager. Twice I have seen an item on the Specials board for 20 or 30 cents more than the menu price. I found this slightly annoying and funny. I was more annoyed than amused the one time I ordered something because I saw it on the board and didn't notice the price. When I was charged the menu price I felt I had been tricked. This is hardly enough to prevent me from patronizing a restaurant though I do pay a little more attention to advertised Specials now. But tonight, while I was eating I was asked by my waitress if I would get up and pay my bill because the manager's shift was ending. I have been asked to do this twice before at this IHOP and I did while hardly believing I was being asked to interrupt my meal to pay. This may be an accepted policy somewhere but as a 40 yr. old male who doesn't like to cook I have been to restaurants a few thousand times and have never heard of this. I admit my experience in the restaurant industry is limited but I do have some and I have worked retail and managed businesses including my own for several years. There are several ways this could have been handled without asking me to interrupt my meal. I would have to say this practice is a choice by management and not an accounting neccessity. Tonight when my waitress asked me to pay I told her I would pay when I was done. When I finished my meal 10 minutes later I went to pay and my waitress told me the manager had the cash drawer. She looked in the cabinets around the register for a minute then said she would have to go get change. I looked at the clock on the wall as she walked away. After seven minutes I walked to the edge of the servers area and found my waitress behind the ice machine holding my ticket and my cash and talking to another waitress. I told her I wasn't waiting any longer and that I would pay with a credit card. It didn't enter my mind to use the credit card earlier because it is a company card and the only time I use it for meals is If I take a customer out to eat. I told the waitress why I wouldn't pay for my meal earlier and she replied that she was just asking me to pay and that I could have gone back to finish my meal. To me there is too big of a disconnect between what the restaurant expects from me as a customer and what I expect from them.