To have thought we should have been allowed another cup

[lakia]

Was in a restaurant today with my parents they wanted a cream tea we saw on the notice board that it came with a big pot of tea and two generous sized scones with cream and jam.
My parents seeing the size of it decided to order the one between them it wasn't stated as either been for one or two people.
Anyway so we ordered paid and one cup was put on the tray and of course we asked if we could have another cup and the guy who happened to be the manager refused we was bit taken back by this and thought maybe he had misunderstood so again we said we want another cup to which he refused again.
We asked why and he said this is a cream tea for one person and I said its too much for my parents and they want to share he replied that he is a business and that if we want another cup then we have to buy a separate cup of tea I said that's ridiculous and he said no it isn't and he would not budge. He then said that its like him giving one cream tea to a load of people to share and its not good for his business.
Just interested in your thoughts.

I know I should just move on from this like the OP has but I am belatedly wondering whether everyone saying "oooh I could never manage more than one scone and a thimble of tea" realises that a cream tea is not the same as just a drink and a cake in the afternoon, it is actually a light meal? So of course it will be bigger - more akin to the sandwiches and cakes sort of tea seen everywhere at the moment

'i'd be very happy for all the table hoggers and penny pinchers to bugger off.
Whether it's the elderly couple in this thread or the buggy brigade with their noisy offspring in Costa, they're all a pain in the arse!
I meet a friend once a week for coffe and cake, sometimes lunch if it's later in the day.'

Gawd, YES! LOL @ don't serve cream teas if you don't want tightfisted demanding gits for 'customers'.

I haven't read the whole thread. Could they not have shared the cup, ie one person has cup of tea, then the other, both using one cup? This might have been a workaround which might have satisfied all parties? Failing that I would probably have shrugged and paid for a 2nd cup (depending in thirst level) while thinking he was a bit churlish and that his cafe wouldn't be top of my 'to revisit' list.

This thread has gone all over the place. Discussions on "tight-arsedness", the relative greed of the two-scone-scoffers, the economics of business, (small or otherwise), the validity of "the customer is always right". Brilliant! That's why I love MN.

It might be time to change the way Seaside Cafes charge. Tables rented by the half-hour. (Bigger tables are more expensive even if only one person sitting there). Visits to loo charged at £2 a go - with your own roll of loo-paper to take in with you. Tea and scones charged per item - self service only. and you pay up front before you are allowed in the door!!

Orange - based on another thread about table sharing etiquette, I think the idea of renting a table seems very sensible

"Could they not have shared the cup, ie one person has cup of tea, then the other, both using one cup? "

That's what they did.

Ha I see Diddl, very sensible. I didn't read the whole thread sorry.

And restaurants as the cause of obesity, Orange. Cannot forget that. Want to dictate your portion size? Cook food for yourself at home.

I'm puzzled where all these massive slices of cake and ginormous pots of tea are in cafes all over the land. Also all the people with the appetites of birds, who couldn't possibly manage more than a crumb of cake and a spoonful of hot beverage.

I am starving now after reading this thread!

I am in the YABU camp. As well as the points other mentioned, I do think there is an additional factor in that there were three of you. One (or two?) non-purchasing guests out of three means you are seated at a larger table. A single person or two people together generally occupy a small table, usually set for two. It matters less if one or both are paying. Three people usually occupy a table set for four, so if the third person is not contributing anything, then they are actually much more detrimental to the overall takings particularly as you said it was busy.

I don't for a moment believe you all thought a menu listing not specifying the number of servings was automatically a cream tea for two. You were trying to be a bit cheap and it was a bit embarrassing to be called on it, so you are looking to lash out here and on Trip Advisor. Please don't, it's petty.

I say all this even though I'm naturally a tightwad myself!

The manager was being petty. This wasn't a large group hogging several tables while only ordering a couple of coffees and a slice of cheesecake.
It was a couple ordering an item that consisted of two scones and a pot holding two cups of tea and wishing to share.
He should get a sense of priority and know when to stand his ground, and when to stop being an arse.

He should do all he can to prevent the 'arses' from frequenting his café certainly. TripAdvisor seems to have just become a portal for called-on-Arses to blether on about how unfairly they've been treated when the reality is nothing of the sort. I mean, you don't even have to have set foot in a place to denigrate it... I have a good 'arse' radar and mentally commend the owners for standing up for themselves, they always prevail over the 'arses'.

Orange - the rent-a-table thing IS a thing for people wanting to use a laptop/wifi - there are cafes offering the drinks & food free if you pay to stay at the table & use the wifi for a given time. (Or at the very least top ups of your drink are free I think).

I can see it would be very useful for business people who are between meetings, etc, but it's a tricky business model to pull off - if you were getting the tea/coffee/snacks for 'free' what level of quality would you expect? I'd not expect artisan handmade pastries but I'd want something better than a train station croissant in a plastic bag!

If you are going to run a cafe/restaurant/tea room etc then you will have to deal with the public.
Fact: People do odd things, ask for odd things and say odd things.
If you don't want to deal with the public, then don't run a cafe.

If you are a cafe owner, unless you have a minimum charge per person, you have to accept that some people will spend lots of money and other groups very little. Without a minimum charge, there really is no way of preventing this.

As a business owner, I'd save my outrage and refusal of customer requests for those that no doubt will come, which are genuinely odd and unreasonable.....asking for an extra cup is not one of those kind of requests. Owner should just smile and give them the cup.

And for all those business owners on here are would like to see all the tight arse customers bugger off, and who get so furious about customers asking for things like the heating on (the absolute cheek of it) I wonder if it is time to leave the hospitality business. Sure, business life is tough and turning a profit might not always be easy, but when you start to see the customer who sits a bit too long at the cafe table, or who wants extra milk, or an extra cup as the enemy, then it really sounds like there has been a lack of perspective.

Since walking is a free activity, I guess it attracts tightwads...

Same goes for some corners of what I'll broadly call 'the folk scene'.

Like the local group who used a pub function room entirely free of charge. The publican didn't expect them to drink their own weight in ale and pies but didn't expect them to wander in, clutching clinking carrier bags and boxes of their own crisps either. The last straw was someone coming up to the bar and asking for a jug of water so he could dilute his own bottle of orange squash.

I realise that refusing one cup of shared tea may seem insignificant and miserly. But actually, you never know whether this was the last straw in years of piss-taking tightwaddery.

Another dsis experience (she moves in tightwad circles!): two teachers from her school barred from various local pubs for roaming the quiz machines and just asking for a tap water - ie buying nothing. And she went to a pub quiz with them and they didn't buy any drink at all all evening (and pub quizzes last a long time!). To add insult to the publican's injury - they won.

Brenda I used to do a pub quiz with friends & we had 1 team member who never ever buys a round or goes near the bar unless someone else offers to go first.

One time my friend and I decided to test this out - we arrived a bit early and had food and a bottle of wine to share between us, so when he arrived we had plenty of drink to keep going and neither of us offered to go to the bar. He sat down and joined the quiz and didn't go to the bar and waited and waited and eventually at the end of the quiz, when he realised neither of us were going to buy him a drink, went off to get his own.

Also if you came runner up in the quiz you got a fairly nasty bottle of house wine, which we used to joke about not taking home as it looked so unpleasant. One time, he took the bottle of wine - only to bring it to a friends' house party a few months later.

I couldn't believe he'd be so stingy as to take nasty freebie wine to a party so I couldn't resist asking 'hey isn't that the wine they serve at X pub?' but I felt a bit mean about doing it. It was water off a ducks back though, as he didn't seem to ever change his ways or show any embarrassment!