Today, my friend and I visited, intending to stay for lunch, a hot chocolate, and a cake each. Not long after arrival, having discussed the irony of a snow day given the sunny weather, we overheard another customer complain to a man I presume was...the manager that their food had taken 25 minutes to arrive. Instead of apologising, he became very defensive and listed reasons their food took longer than the 15 minutes the customers were quoted. Our order was taken and food served by two lovely ladies. The food was okay. During our visit, the apparent manager was engaged in a conversation across the cafe with 2 groups of apparent regular customers complaining about teachers. While this felt a little unprofessional, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and it was nice to see how the community has been built in the cafe. However, one of the regular customers then pointed to me and my friend and very loudly (across the cafe) tried to belittle us and suggest that, as teachers, we should have felt embarrassed to be there, given the sunny weather outside and the unexpected closure of several local schools. This comment was unacknowledged by the apparent manager, leaving us feeling humiliated and unwelcome. While we wouldn’t expect the him to risk the business of regular customers, an apology or acknowledgement of his behaviour once the customer left would have been nice. To their credit, we were asked before paying if everything was okay with our meal. We said nothing at the time as we felt like any complaint would be handled in the same way as the one we had overheard. Instead, we paid for our lunch and left. This is made all the more disappointing as we have previously recommended the cafe to friends (who are also teachers) for their cakes. We will assume, in future, that this cafe doesn’t value the custom of teachers and shan’t be returning.More
