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?

Not really 'pretty shit' though is it? A minor inconvenience, perhaps, for most people.

I don’t know how I can explain this to you any more simply.

Why are you still telling OP she shouldn’t do something she has never said she has any intention of doing again?!

You know what's pretty shit? Showering a bakery floor with you and your offspring's sausage roll flakes every week for a year, and then when you are informed finally that it is not an eat-in place, getting on MN all indignant and asking who is in the wrong here and who is being weird.

“Showering” the floor? How fucking big are these sausage rolls?!

What, one table and chairs?? Surely it it was an eat in place it would have more.

She should have said something the first time, not waited a year. I wouldn’t go back.

I was at a chemist that had shelves so close it’s like a rabbits house. I had a full trolley and kids with me I waited at the side as there wasn’t room to stand without blocking a walkway. When it was technically my turn I went to the counter. The person serving said sorry I think the person behind you was next. It was so embarrassing, I just apologised put my stuff on the counter and left. I have not been back. Unfortunately sometimes this stuff happens. Hopefully you have other options to get a snack.

Seats are for waiting, tables are for eating.

The bakery are being weird, especially as they took a year to tell you.

Surely anyone with half a brain would question ONE table being in a bakery? If they wanted people to eat in they would have provided more.

Yes why not - the OP is there once a week at the same time for I guess around half an hour; If the owner isn’t normally at the bakery at that time or day they could easily have gone 10 years without encountering her 🤷🏻‍♀️

Pretty shit is pretty mild unless we’re being extremely pedantic. Are we?

😂😂😂😂😂😂

How will the bakery cope with pastry flakes?! Will they need to buy special pastry flake cleaning equipment?!

I can’t work out if it’s a symptom of younger posters or some other form of different demographic here these days but it’s.. kind of wild. Good god.

I knew as soon as I saw the title this thread would be completely batshit 😂

You’re not wrong. At least it wasn’t whether sitting down before ordering the sausage roll was ok. We’d really be in trouble with that one, especially if there’s a mother and baby parking space too.

They will have to get out a broom and a brush and pan, and wipe down the table and probably the seats after she's gone. OP sits there with her children, one young enough to sit on her lap. If you think there are not pastry flakes all over the joint afterwards, you have never eaten a pastry.

Maybe you think it's cool to provide extra work for people working in a bakery, but most people are more considerate.

I certainly don’t think there aren’t pastry flakes in a bakery. And I’m so considerate I’m usually the one asking why people are so rude and callous to posters on here, these days. But you know…

If it’s waiting only then the chairs make sense, but the table suggests you can eat there?

So much hyperbole.

"Showering a bakery floor with you and your offspring's sausage roll flakes"
Showering? Are you sure?
Offspring? Do you mean the OP's children?

"getting on MN all indignant"
She only asked...there is no indignance to be found in her posts. People can ask MN whatever they like. It is a chat forum.

Tell you what I think is pretty shit. Getting on MN to embellish non-events so you can be rude and stick the boot in to a stranger.

I'm not sticking the boot in. Talk about hyperbole, yourself!

The OP herself brought up the mess of flakes:

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.

If someone told me I had been sitting in an area not meant for customers every week for year, I would be embarrassed, not trying to make out the bakery were in the wrong and/or weird for pointing it out to me. They are a business and allowed to have their own policies.

My town has at least a couple of cafe/deli type places that only have one table, and they do get used. They don't have toilets either. I'm unable to report on their arrangements vis-a-vis VAT regulations.

Bakery is technically in the right if they're informing you of the correct use and I'd have apologised.

I'd have then asked why they didn't stop me a year ago and why their "waiting area" isn't suitably sign posted as such. I get that one table in a bakery doesn't suggest an "eat in" facility as it's only one table so hardly for the masses- but it's still up to the bakery to suitably communicate the purpose. It wasn't communicated to you. I wouldn't be back, either.

I walked out of a shop before when I walked up to a seemingly queueless, ready to serve till and the girl behind it smirked and loudly told me - and everyone else in the small shop- that she couldn't serve me. I must've missed someone stepping away or something. It wasn't what she- obviously rightly if she wasn't free to serve- told me, it was the loudness and talking to a toddler tone that she seemed to relish that made me say "I see", put down my items and leave. Then again I'm notably touchy.

If they have a table then I can't see you as being in the wrong for sitting at it! This would probably irk me too tbh.
If they don't want customers to sit and eat, maybe don't have a table.
I'd probably take my kids elsewhere so they could sit and eat without being made to feel like an inconvenience to staff.
It's weird in this country how we are made to feel like businesses are doing us a massive favour, by letting us spend our money there!

I wouldn't be mortified at all. It's completely understandable for the OP to have assumed that the table was for customers to sit at and eat their purchases. Plenty of other bakeries, including well-known chains like Greggs, provide tables and chairs for customers to eat at. Often there are only one or two tables. I'm aware that eating in has implications for VAT and places demands on staff (wiping the table etc) but this is for the business to manage.

I don't think the individual member of staff is unreasonable to mention politely that the table isn't meant for eating at, if that is the bakery's policy.

The bakery itself (i.e., the owner/manager) is also being reasonable in providing chairs for waiting customers. This will likely be much appreciated by some for whom walking and standing is difficult. For some, it might even be the difference between being able to walk to the shop and home again, and having to drive/use a mobility scooter/get food delivered.

The unreasonable behaviour was that of the bakery in providing a table, if it's not for eating at. They could probably have fitted three chairs in the space taken up by two chairs and a table, and misunderstandings as to their purpose would be much less likely. If there was no table, staff would likely be saved from needing to choose between cleaning up after customers and having awkward conversations.

No one is being unreasonable, they probably said nothing at first but as it's become a regular thing they've politely pointed it out. Yanbu not to have known, they are not bu in politely letting you know. It's a takeaway service so just take it away

This is bonkers. I have never heard of tables in a food place that can't be sat at. All the posters responding as if this is a thing?