To be a bit annoyed at this cafe's treatment of us

[womenspeakout]

So, there's a local cafe we go to. Sometimes we'll eat there but a lot of the time we'll have some drinks as a stop. (The food isn't very nice, it's basic catering sausages/burgers, but they charge quite a lot for the food).

Also, if we have drinks, we never have one drink and stay for hours and use the wifi or anything, if w only have one lot of drinks we won't be long in there.

Anyway, we go in a lot and have for years. Yesterday it was me my mother and grandmother, and we needed a drink and a sit dow.

We go into the cafe and there are a lot of empty tables, over 12. So we go in and the waitress asks us if we are going to eat, it was early so we said no we just wanted some coffees. She said if we weren't going to eat we couldn't sit inside and had to sit outside.
I have severe asthma triggered by cigarettes, and the people sitting outside were all pretty much smoking. I said this to her, but she said no, so we walked out and went to Costa.

We was a little put out really, AIBU to not bother going back to them?

No doubt the owner will be in the local rag soon complaining about being chased out by Costa.

The cafe was pretty much empty and they are making it difficult for people to buy things from them = shit business model. Why are so many local businesses like this?

Surely they know you very well if you have been going there for years ??
Was this a new member of staff ?

CalamityJune that's interesting, I suspect that's fairly accurate.

I was taught while working for another large company that service with a smile - even if it doesn't completely match customer expectations - is perceived as good customer service, whereas good customer service delivered by someone with even a neutral face is perceived less favourably.

I think also bad customer service is remembered for longer. There's a couple of high street shops I still won't use despite the fact the poor service incidents I associate with them occurred over a decade ago. Once you've been put off a company/business you tend not to return.

It’s expensive and the food isn’t great, yet you keep going? Why?

There's a local cafe we were using a lot that got funny with us - but it was last 45 minutes before closing - we'd have finished the drinks well before closing time - did put us of going more generally but we still occaionally go as it's really only option.

If there's somewhere else to go I'd go there instead.

But I wonder if the cafe could have have changed hands, if it hasn't happened before?

They have kind of been like it before, a few months back when two of us went in and said we had to sit in one corner only even though there was a lot of seats and we would rather be at the back as they had the windows open and you could smell the smoke. They said only if you had food could you sit there.

To answer why we went there, one to support local and two we did like the coffees. I suppose also we have been going there for so many years, since it used to be another place. I went there as a little girl, it's habit I suppose.

£12 for 3 hot drinks in a standard cafe with shit food, where you can't sit inside even if it's almost empty? Ridiculous. Yanbu.