Oh friends, though my heart hurts inside I had a breakup experience with Bar 35 last night. We went to try the weekly beer tasting (which was SUPPOSED to last from 6-8), and if only I could turn back the clock!
A fairly grueling tasting experience ensued ($20 for a tasting that starts with MGD 64 COULD have been funny, but after everything else it wasn't). The tasting was to involve 9 (4oz) beer tastes but after 2 hours we had experience only 3 tastings. We are tired, we are hungry, and we are thirsty. So our waitress (who had been amazing in the face of extreme adversity otherwise known as being the only waitress in a fairly busy bar) obligingly brought out the rest of our tastings for us...but she only brought out tastings 5-8!
No worries we thought, she's busy, and we'll get her next go-around.
She comes back, and asks if we need anything else. Yes! we reply, we'd like our tastes of 4 (a Blue Moon, which I also think is a tad silly on a tasting menu, but I have a deep fondness for Blue Moon) and 9. Sorry, she says, I only have tabs (the tabs are a whole 'nother story!) for 3 9's (and no 4's!). We look at the five of us sitting at the table, and think...errr? But there are 5 of us? And we're missing an entire taste? At this point we are REALLY tired and REALLY hungry (it's 9:15 at this point) so we say "whatever"
I am still not that annoyed, though it does seem as though if a mistake was made you would want to correct it, right? But she's obviously having a rough night. Still, we paid $20 and we are broke graduate students, and I want the goods I paid for!!!
So, A goes to talk to the bar manager, to explain the situation. Do you know what he does? He nods, does nothing, and then calls over the waitress who has been busting her butt all night.
If you have 5 unhappy customers you DO something about it, right? Given them the 2 beers between five people (WHICH THEY PAID FOR?!)? Comp them their fries they ordered because they were starving and hadn't planned on being there for 3+ hours? Comp them an entire tasting since in total there were 28 ounces of beer not served to the party? All of the evening I would have laughed about and forgotten, but this was just the poorest example of management I have ever seen.
This is where I lost my love for this bar. If anybody in a relationship ever treated me with such disinterest and distain I would leave their cold heart in the mud and possibly stomp on it on my way out the door.
Once more I want to say the waitress (Jo-knee) really was doing her best with what she had, and ran after me to return my credit card as I tried to rush out (HUNGRY) which I really appreciated.
So Bar 35, farewell. I'll miss your beer selection, but if I wanted to be treated like sh!t I would have paid for a dominatrix. read more