Awful customer service with pushy, spiteful and uncaring staff who show complete lack of understanding for disabled people.
Went here yesterday with a friend and we were forced to move to the bar, despite the restaurant being empty, and us explaining that the high stools would be difficult for us to sit on as we both suffer from physical impairments. I suffer from a chronic back condition and also have a dodgy knee whilst my friend had injured his foot.
When we arrived we had planned on eating, as soon as we sat down the server asked what we would like to order. We asked for a bit more time as we had just arrived but to placate her, as she seemed fixated on us ordering something immediately, we ordered some drinks and nibbles. It had been a while since we had seen each other so looking at the menu was waylaid by us talking. The server came back to the table twice more to ask us to order something from the main menu - on the second time she stated that we would both have to order a main from the main menu if we wanted to sit at a table, otherwise we would have to move to the bar. A space so restricted that you would struggle to seat a child, let alone full grown adults there and for people like us - would prove a complete nightmare to sit at due to our health issues.
We had a look at the menu and nothing caught our fancy, we would have left there and then but our drinks and nibbles had already arrived. When we politely asked if it was at all possible for us to remain at the table until it was needed the female server raised her voice at us in the middle of the restaurant saying "If I do that for you I will have to do that for everyone who asked, you cannot sit here if you're not eating, you need to move now." If the restaurant had been heaving I would have understood her insistence on enforcing this policy but, bar us, there were only two other tables with people at them in the entire place. My friend and I had hobbled in, so it is not like the accessibility issues that we have were not visible so some common sense and human kindness would not have gone amiss. I was also very taken aback by her tone and manner in speaking to us as we had been nothing but polite in our query so there was no reason for her to not only speak rudely but raise her voice, embarrassing us in front of other patrons in the restaurant. We moved to the bar, with no assistance from the server in terms of helping us to take the things we had ordered there.
The rest of our time in the restaurant was pretty uncomfortable as we dealt with dirty looks and stares from her and the two other staff members in the restaurant. We decided to eat and leave as quickly as we could. When it was time to pay my friend put their card in the wallet with the bill and got up to retrieve our coats with the intention of coming back to pay. This server, having seen that my friend had left their card in the bill wallet, whilst my friend had stood some distance away from the bar to get our coats - opened the wallet and took their card - which is contactless - to pay the bill. In all my life of eating out I have usually had a server wait until you hand them your card in order to pay the bill and I was completely flabbergasted as to why they would decide to do something so forward and rude. As we left none of them said goodbye or any other pleasantries to us as I had observed them do with other customers. The table that they insisted we leave remained empty for the entire time that we were there, as did the many other empty tables that were then when we arrived. Proving once more that beyond being spitefully petty there was no incessant or high demand which meant that we had to move.
Having lived in the area of Woolwich for a few years it is nice to see new and more refined establishments popping up, however, the "customer service" at this restaurant is atrocious, left a bad taste in my mouth and I will not be going here again. read more
