faithful1
in response to wsj,
again I was part of the party of 14. I arrived at 9:00 and everyone was not there yet.( someone HAD arrived early to let them know how many people we would be having, to give the cafe a heads up) we didn’t even get seated for about another 20 minutes. we got our food, and that’s when the owner came up to us and started yelling at us. We had JUST gottten our food…it’s one thing if we had gotten our food, had eaten and were sitting there chatting it up, not caring about others that were waiting, but this was NOT the case. After the owner yelled at us the first time he glared at us the rest of the time that we were eating, trying to make us as uncomfortable as possible. we ate fast and did not linger at the cafe. Many of us wanted to leave right after he started yelling at us but since most of us have small children, we were on a timeline(going to another restaurant at that point whould have been too long a process)…that’s why I KNOW we were not there for more than two hours! that is way over estimating the time schedule.
I suspect your wait was longer than usual because he was taking his focus off other customers to put all his energy into being rude and to make us feel as bad as possible. there was also another large party that was waiting for tables after us, so that’s pobably another reason your wait was long. there were many open tables at the time so I’m not sure why people were not being seated except he was in such a tizzy about us that he couldn’t focus or work on anything else.
As far as being disruptive to their business? we were business…that makes no sense.there are people that have what it takes to work in service and restaurants and people that don’t ( he obviously doesn’t). you have to be able to stay calm in high volume and high stress situations (which we were not trying to create a stressful situation) and be able to multi-task and handle things in a professional manner. because at the end of the day that’s what counts and that makes a sucessful business.
I want to point out that we were never rude to them, we didn’t do anything to provoke this kind of behavior. we were trying to make a good day for Lori. why would we make it a priority to inconvience someone and provoke a rude response? that’s not what we were about.
Also I want people to know that our SERVER was wonderful, she herself said that she didn’t care if she got in trouble, she didn’t want us to worry about the owner.She was very kind.