Dear Sainsbury's Customer Service,
Looking back on it, it was NOT a good idea to take my 3 year old daughter and myself to the cafe at the Aberdeen berryden store this morning. We've been there before, and frankly we should know how bad it is.
At 9:20am there wasn't a clean table in the place. The cafe was staffed by the world's most bored looking young man, and a lady whose main responsibility was wandering around holding large pans of water. The previous customers HAD tried, and had in the main put all their dirty dishes back on their trays, but every table was either dirty, or had a tray on it waiting to be picked up. Frankly given one of those wheely tray holders, my daughter and I could have cleared the place in about 2 minutes.
There was a 15 minute queue in an empty cafe (15 minutes equating to 3 people being served) whilst our young man wandered aimlessly staring around him, trying to serve at the counter but not really managing. (Apologies, I can't give you any names as none of the staff were wearing name badges).
Finally we were able to order. I requested a decaff, skinny vanilla latte. Amazingly I saw bored-young-man squirting the vanilla syrup in it but as if by magic there was absolutely no evidence in the finished article - I suspect more than half a squirt is needed (and at 30p for the syrup I think I'm entitled to more than half a squirt). I can also tell that when I was given was not decaff - I'm very heavily pregnant and avoiding strong caffeine so decaff was important to me - I can tell by the affect on myself and my baby that I was not given decaff coffee. I would have brought up the issue with the vanilla syrup but the 20 minute wait to get to the front of the queue was more than I could have coped with - also by that time bored-boy had wandered off...
We treated ourselves to cakes - the most insipid pale, stale pancakes for my daughter and a danish for me. (I turned down the pineapple tart that was on display as it appeared to be accompanied by a HUGE fly that was resident on it the entire time I was there - it takes a lot of talent to still have flies somewhere as cold as Aberdeen in December so I suspect somewhere there is a happily breeding community). I had to practically beg for some frozen butter for my daughter's pancakes which then wouldn't spread and the pancakes were stale enough to crumble under the pressure of attempted spreading.
All in all it was NOT a treat - it was punishment that I appeared to be charged £6+ for. Again, there is absolutely no point in complaining as the manager is impossible to locate and the other staff are bored, ineffectual and aimless. Unfortunately this is an ongoing problem at Berryden and every time I think of giving the cafe another try, my disappointment is just further reinforced..
.........
Bit too strong..?? (yep, before anyone says it, I've got nothing else in my life to worry about this morning...)