Every week for the past couple on months I have been meeting up with my Mum and going for a coffee before I start work.

We always go to a particular cafe in the market (upstairs) and always order "a ordinary coffee and a weak coffee". We never have a problem, 2 small pots of coffee arrive, 1 of them weak.

This morning we went in and asked the waitress for exactly the same as usual, when she brought it there was only 1 pot of coffee but larger than usual, so we presumed the pot was to share and hot water would be brought so Mum could weaken hers.

After a couple of minutes the water hadn't appeared and so she caught the waitress attention and asked for a pot of hot water to weaken her coffee, at which point waitress scowled and walked off.

After another minute or so it was obvious the water wasn't coming, so I went to the counter and asked for some hot water to put in the coffee, only to be told as she flounced past me

" we don't do that, you should have asked for weak coffee"

We then pointed out that we did, only to be told we didn't and couldn't have any water.

My Mum tried to explain that we clearly asked for a weak coffee and she was happy to just add hot water to the coffee she had.

At this point the waitress stormed up to our table and started picking our cups up, when we asked what was happening she said,

" you wanted 2 coffees, 1 weak that's what I'm going to get you"

Mum again said she would be happy with hot water only to be told again "they didn't do that"

By this point Mum was getting quite shaken up, so told the girl not to bother, we would put up with it.

The level of customer service was the worst I had ever come across :mad:

I know we don't spend a lot of money there, but for the sake of a pot of hot water they have now lost 2 customers.

Rant over

Originally posted by valentine
By this point Mum was getting quite shaken up, so told the girl not to bother, we would put up with it.



Not a dig but that very sentence is why people think they can get away with poor customer service. Why should you 'put up' with something??
The more people stand their ground and confront these stupid people the more standards will hopefully improve..or at least the culprits will be highly inconvenienced and hopefully relieved of their jobs.

I think Mum just wanted the whole thing over and done with, because people were beginning to stare, and I must admit the attitude of the staff were so anti social that they made me feel as though I had done something terrible.

I see your point though, perhaps we should have stood up for ourselves at bit more because we hadn't done anything wrong.

I lived in Japan for about 2 years and am now living in sheffield. I get the feeling now living back here that alot of people see 'good service' as some that should be paid for on top of there wage.

They get trained to pour a cup of coffee, but arent told that a smiling face is as, if not more inportant.