Haaseltons just lost a customer forever.
I will never again set foot inside that place for the rest of my days, which is saying something, as I’ve been a loyal customer for over a decade. I’m aware the place has been getting dingy in recent years, and they’ve instituted a strange, petrol-station-like policy of making you request a bathroom key on a stick before using the loo, but the place has nostalgia for me, embodying many fond memories from my long ago days at Trent University.
That Asian guy, whom I can only assume is either the manager or the owner, committed what I consider to be one of the service industry's unforgivable sins.
The story: I was meeting some friends for coffee and snacks and went to Natas (another coffee shop nearby) by mistake. I didn’t realize I was in the wrong place until after I’d ordered something to eat, sat down and checked my cell phone. So I gulped my chai and asked for my cake to go and then ran over to Haaseltons to join the rest of the group. Upon arriving and seating myself, the owner promptly informed me that I was not welcome to eat my Natas dessert in his establishment. I told him I understood, but that I’d gone to the wrong place by mistake, blah, blah, and that if I could (please and thank you) eat my one little piece of cake I’d be in Haaseltons for at least the next two hours during which not only would I be buying multiple drinks and another dessert, about a half dozen of my acquaintances (who had not yet arrived) would be showing up to do the same.
He didn’t believe me. In fact, he all but called me a liar by saying that he’d heard my “story” many times before (from students, I can only assume). He said absolutely no way would he let me eat any food I didn’t buy there. How he intended to stop me, I’m not sure, but I didn’t feel like pressing the point in the face of his obvious hostility. In summary — I was told to get out. Please understand that I’m a 40-year-old employed professional who bears as much resemblance to a cash-strapped student as Tipper Gore does to Summer Glau. Heck, I could afford to buy everyone in the joint a free coffee (somewhere else) out of my own petty cash — which I was momentarily tempted to do in an extreme act of comeuppance, but I didn’t because when I’m that mad my oratory skills abandon me and I clam up.
Anyway, I don’t like being called a liar, not one little bit. Others may feel differently, but the primary criterion by which I prefer one coffee shop over another is whether that place makes me feel good. I go out for coffee so I can feel good, not so I can be berated by some self-righteous idiot who’s at least my age and should know better than to break the Prime Directive of the service industry — namely, that the customer is always right. I am permanently offended and will *never* set foot in Haaseltons again.
Ever.
In future I’ll be spending my money at either Natas or Dreams of Beans, where the floors are cleaner, the bathroom isn’t locked, where there’s nice art on the walls, and where the staff know when to shut the heck up and be polite.
