Who was in the wrong - bakery or me?

[Doijb]

I take my kids to a bakery after swimming. Most of the time they choose sausage rolls or similar. There is a tiny table with two chairs. I plop one of my kids on my lap and we eat our treat. I prefer this as otherwise the flakes would go everywhere.

Anyway, after going every week to this place for a year one of the staff members tells me we’re not really a sit down food place. I inquire about the chairs and she said it’s more for people who wait.

I just found this odd. My kids are brilliantly behaved and I make sure not loud. My oldest will wipe down the table with a serviette.

Who is being weird?

So if you were sat at a restaurant eating a meal and a disabled person walked in to pick up a takeaway.

You would stop eating and let them sit down whilst they were waiting?

And then what sit back down and carry on eating after they had gone?

There’s being polite but that’s pretty extreme.

LTB - Leave the Bakery @😂

What on earth do you mean? She didn’t know she shouldn’t sit there so she sat there. Now she knows she shouldn’t sit there, so she shouldn’t sit there anymore. If she continues to sit there she’s KNOWINGLY doing something she is aware she shouldn’t be doing.

Of course I’m not going to sit there now. I will take my kids to the chain bakery down the street where you are allowed to eat in.

Yes, it is a bit odd. All of the bakeries I've ever been to with tables and chairs, or sometimes stools at a counter in the window, are for customers to sit and eat their purchase. Tables and chairs in a place selling food is an indication that you are welcome to sit and eat it, although the usual expectation is that you'll be fairly quick doing so. We have 4 independent bakeries in my vicinity, all with a few tables and chairs in the corner and they are always used by customers to eat their purchases. How many customers really have to sit down at a table to wait their turn to buy a loaf of bread or sausage roll? How long does it take! You don't have tables and chairs in other shops for disabled or pregnant customers (not normally anyway), so tables and chairs in a food shop only suggests one thing.

@theilltemperedqueenofspacetime yeah, there's some Hella regulatory stuff going on. I think takeaway business is charged differently by the council than sit down etc? Kind of like an off license can't have you sit and drink there.

But she hasn’t suggested she’s going to do this!! And no one else has suggested she do it!!!

I don't think it's that odd, the tills are likely manned by minimum waged staff who may not know about VAT laws, perhaps one day the owner happened to be in there when the OP was sitting down and reminded the staff of the rules.

Why are you taking VAT laws so
Personally?

OP just wants to be able to sit and eat some bakery goods with her kids, the bakery she's been frequenting won't allow that, so she's going somewhere else. How is that taking VAT laws so personally?

An entire year??

Where it applies, the cafe's till will be programmed with "eat in" and "eat out" buttons which will work out the VAT automatically. No need for counter staff to know nor understand the VAT laws at all. They just press one or the other button and the VAT numbers are all automatically calculated in the background and "pinged" through to populate the accounts and VAT return in turn.

Same happens with the likes of convenience stores - those using bar codes the till will be pre-programmed with the different VAT rates for different categories of sale. Those without bar codes, the till will have different buttons for different categories of sale, so, say a newspaper will be entered by manually entering the price and then pressing the "news" button, whereas a Mars bar will be manually entered by entering the price and then the "confectionary" button, a pack of logs will be entered by entering the price and then the "fuel" button, etc.

No need at all for the counter staff to know as it's all pre-programmed to work it out in the background. Staff only need to know to press the right button which is pretty simple/basic training.

Eh? How is she taking VAT laws personally?

OP wants somewhere she and her kids can eat in rather than getting something to take out. So she’s going somewhere else where it’s not an issue. She’s not trying to organise a boycott 🙄

My 18 yo daughter works at Greggs and she has to ask customers whether they're eating in or taking out as there's a price difference. So I'd assume if you aren't asked that question, there's no option to eat in. That said, it's odd that there's a table at all if eating in isn't an option (chairs would suffice for waiting customers), and the fact that it's taken them a year to raise it with OP is frankly bizarre.

Greggs deliberately don't keep their bakes hot so they don't incur the 'pasty tax' for takeaway, only for eat-in.

Shops that serve hot bakes pay the tax irrespective of location of consumption.

Hello OP, you probably had no idea how intellectually stimulating this thread would turn out to be but:

How big is this bakery?
Is it a small family business?
Can you in any way describe the set up, personalities involved etc?

I, personally, do not buy the argument that they are living in fear of the VAT. Mind you, I realise that I live in a different culture or cultures where the 'Family table' is a given in any business.

Probably sick of clearing up pastry flakes

Possibly, but a bakery must be full of gluten related dandruff.

There's some people making a very simple situation very complicated. The bakery is takeaway only, they've put an table and chairs in the shop with the intention of being for waiting customers.
Some customers (I doubt OP is the only one) has used that table and chairs to eat their purchase at, reasonable assumption by the OP, other customers and staff that there's no problem doing this. It becomes apparent, through whatever means, that it is a problem which the staff are made aware of and now OP has been made aware of.

That's literally it.

Omg…. No one said she is going to do this! Where are you even getting that? I said in my original post in answer to her that given the whole situation she shouldn’t sit there anymore. A comment. No suggestion, no accusation. Just a comment on her post that ultimately it doesn’t matter who is in the right in this situation. She’s been told not to sit there and that’s that.

If it's warmed there's VAT on it whether it's in or out. Not sure if hers is warm or not tho

My festive bake was scalding hot the other day, had just come out of the oven though.

That is their cunning ruse - to keep a constant trickle of freshly baked stuff. That's why they sometimes run out or the bakes are cold. Perverse incentive.

Haha, totally not weird at all to have a table and chairs in a place that sells food and have a problem with a person sitting there to eat the food they bought in said place. And then to wait a year to say something, they are absolutely definitely not the weird ones here, oh no! 😂

I’ve had this crazy idea that they could either get rid of the table, or put a small sign on it. I mean, the sign would look a bit passive aggressive, but then telling a customer after a year was pretty shit too.