Dear Buffalo Wild Wings of Cleveland, TN,
Congratulations! You have angered the Mama Bear...and the Daddy Bear...and the uncle...and the grandparents...of a beautiful infant. We tried to handle this nicely and politely during our experience, but since not ONE member of your staff or management could be bothered to so much as care about our concerns....well, you have officially eliminated that option for yourselves.
Thank you for ruining the day for me, my parents, and especially for my baby, "B-Dubs." I can't express how "overjoyed" I was to see my normally happy, smiling child terrified and hysterical, while whoever controlled your sound smiled at us and our openly angry faces as he continuously raised the sound system volume and deepened the bass. Yes, we saw you look directly at us and smile every time you adjusted the volume. And no, it wasn't funny at all that you would turn it down noticeably during the softer parts of songs, then crank it up again when the brain-rattling bass would kick back in. Yes, we noticed you switch the music from country to more hip-hop/R&B music so you could really crank the bass to watch the hostess and female servers dance, you chauvinist pig. Next time, keep your eyeballs in your head and remember you are at WORK, not a nightclub.
For the server, hostess, and so-called "experience manager" who all told us that the volume was set to "Buffalo Standards" over and again, this is at LEAST the fifth BWW I have visited, and I've never left the rest of them (or any other restaurant for that matter) fighting a migraine myself or with my child screaming his fright to high Heaven. Standard, my overweight backside. If that's your company's standard, call the corporate music police on the ones in Chattanooga, Macon, and Atlanta, because they clearly missed the memo with their slightly-louder-than-most-restaurants-yet-still-perfectly-reasonable decibels.
Finally to the captain of the ship, the manager on duty who could not descend from her castle office for anything more than joking around with the staff, you clearly have no idea how to treat a customer. Having your people tell us there was "nothing you could do" and feed us lines about corporate standards is the poorest customer service I've seen in Cleveland, and that's including the server who left us at a table for half an hour AFTER we'd finished our meal at Chili's waiting on the check because the tableside printer was out of paper and let our glasses run empty the majority of the meal.
We would have understood more if you just would have taken the time to stop by our table when we had voiced our complaints politely at least six different times to two or three different members of your staff. If your hands were truly tied, we would have been less displeased about having to eat in shifts so someone was in the car with the baby at all times to protect him from your malevolent sound guy's thirst for dancing girls. Had you even stopped by and offered us any sort of apologetic gesture, I wouldn't be writing this letter. Instead, I would be giving you a favorable TripAdvisor review, as is my custom.
However, you chose to ignore us and to ignore the other frustrated looks of the customers around us...maybe that's why your dining room was so empty at prime lunch time. The only reason I can imagine you would even have the volume at such a level in such an open space with only four occupied tables is that you've heard the buzz that louder volume statistically means people buy more drinks. Well, unless you're trying to cater to an exclusively alcoholic population, I can guarantee no one in there was at BWW to get wasted at 11:30AM when there isn't even a football game, UFC fight, or basketball game on, and especially not when your bar was completely vacant.
All in all, on a scale of 1-10, today doesn't even get a rating for how low my opinion is of your restaurant, and I have no desire to eat there again. Even if you sent us $1000 in gift cards today, you've already lost these customers. I would daresay a lot of parents who understand that having a baby can't make you house-bound unless you don't value your sanity at all will frown upon this experience as well. They may not be the client-base you seek most to impress, but they're the only ones that chose your restaurant for lunch today, and not a single beer was on a single table the entire hour and half (that's a whole different can of worms that I don't care enough about to open) we were there. Hopefully, your Public Relations people pick this up on their radar so they can school you in the ways of customer service. Apparently, you all need it from top to bottom.
Sincerely,
One Severely Disgruntled Mama Bear, Who Will Tell This Story On Any Site That Will Post It Since You Didn't Give A Tiny Rat's Hind-End While We Were In Your Establishment
PS--Don't P.O. a writer. When we have venom to spew, more people read it. Life's funny like that...and so are we. read more