They refused us service?

[Whsys]

Went out for breakfast/brunch today, had no reservation so told they wouldn’t seat us. Fine. Makes sense.

I walked out, checked their online booking tool and saw there was a free table - booked it. And they said it’s not how it works and they would not be serving us.

Aibu?

They must have had a reason for making that decision - obviously if they are a business selling food they want customers to buy food, so I suspect that something about your group or behaviour suggested to them that you would be difficult customers. You can be annoyed or offended about it but nothing else you can do really, they don’t have to serve you. Only grounds for complaint against them would be if you think they refused to serve you because of a protected characteristic (eg race, sexual orientation, disability, religion)

They were obviously making excuses. Is there anything about you which might lead to you being discriminated against?

I’m with you they should cut off new bookings if they don’t want people to book last minute. Most places are in need of guests so am surprised they turned you away unless you were really rude about it.

How completely bizarre, I’d be leaving them a factual low scoring review.

I swear I've just seen this exact story on tiktok.

Are you just uploading this to every social media platform?

Was this actual brunch or a 'bottomless brunch'?

Agree, are you a minority? xx

And are you following this exact story on every social media platform? 😉

Were you wearing a Grinch /snowman /santa outfit and likely to lower the tone? Or do you genuinely think they were being discriminative?

Agreed. Do you think you were being discriminated against? That is clearly unacceptable.

If not, was there something you did?

🤣 I only have tiktok and MN but I'm just about to sign up for the rest, see if I can't track this story down everywhere.

Why would that matter? 🤣

Little point us second guessing what happened. Leave a review on their Google page and move on.

What sort of place?

As (mostly) students we tried to go for a meal at quite a posh place. They looked at us, and their gaze went to one person and they told us they didn't have space. They were empty. They were still empty when we walked back past having had a lovely meal round the corner.

Apparently it was because one of the party was wearing jeans we discovered later.

Irony was that was the one non-student - we were celebrating him getting through his Actuary exams. He was definitely the richest one of us!

If it was a bottomless brunch, they might have suspected some of your party of being underage.

Were you being noisy and shrieky on arrival? 🤣

Yes it's weird, but none of us can tell you why, we were not there to see what your party looked like?

weird.
the only thing I can think of is the person who refused to seat you got narked you booked, and so found a workround even though they'd said no.

which is completely illogical because what business turns down money?
but, some people are like that. if they feel the other person has somehow 'won', they can't stand it.

They must have thought you were either already drunk or you acted rude or something. It's their prerogative to refuse people for no reason or a reason they'll never disclose.

Just boycott it and tell others but don't dwell on it too much.

It could be that they didn't have enough prosecco or whatever drinks are included, or maybe not enough of whatever food was on the menu and forgot to switch off the online booking function.

Did they think you might 'dine and dash'?

Me too think it was Beefeater

Write to head office or owner. Staff are lazy. Turn people away. Owner can see online bookings.

I would have called back into the first restaurant and informed them that you just had a delicious meal and it was much cheaper than your crap. That's probably why you're empty 🤣🤣🤣

Maybe they need to know numbers in advance so they can buy/prepare a certain amount of food. But then they shouldn’t allow people to book last minute as they can’t just go cancelling reservations for no reason.

I was in a restaurant earlier this year with only one other couple in there, not fancy but the type of food was expensive. We got a table without a reservation but a small group of 4 students came in and were turned away for having no reservation. So perhaps they just didn’t like the look of you/thought you might see the prices and walk out