TL;DR: While I was actively ignored by shop staff, I was privy to a loud conversation involving…read morecavalier hate speech. When I was finally helped, the employee, though nice, was unable to offer me any relevant information necessary for the repair and excused the hate speech. Do not recommend.
I arrived and entered the lobby, where someone in the shop I could see through the window pointed to someone I couldn't see and said "he's right there; he'll be with you in a minute." I nodded, as when you enter a loud bell tone plays to indicate a customer is waiting and I also heard the person in the shop say to the person that I couldn't see that I was in the lobby.
I waited nearly 20 minutes before anyone again acknowledged that I was waiting there. When the employee came out, I politely stated that I had been waiting nearly 20 minutes, and he looked surprised and said "no one saw you?" This was confusing, because this same employee had literally looked through the window and made eye contact with me ten or so minutes earlier while he and another employee stood around and chatted.
The employee then told me I couldn't leave my car and would need to wait for service to be done. He was unable to tell me 1) how many other cars were in front of me, 2) about how long I would be waiting, and 3) how long it might take to do a realignment.
While I was waiting, I had the privilege of hearing two employees I couldn't see discuss how much they "can't stand the LGBT" and "gay people" and engage in relevant hate speech. When I told the employee that eventually came to assist me that I had overheard this, he said "oh, they're just making jokes." Well, jokes, famously, are funny, and saying that you hate an entire group of people isn't really... funny. He seemed uncomfortable that I brought this up, which, again, if it's just jokes, why are you uncomfortable that it was brought up? I replied and said that jokes are usually funny and don't lead to violence (Herek, 1990; Kopytowska & Baider, 2017; Soral, Bilewicz, and Winiewski, 2017).
I politely let him know that I didn't think it would work for that day. To his credit, he genuinely seemed like a "nice" person and it is understandable that he might be thrown off as he likely wasn't expecting me to comment on the very loud conversation. They apparently didn't know I was there despite being told twice and making direct eye contact with me, after all.
Of note: there is a sign in front of where they keep price sheets that says "price subject to change based on customer's attitude." As someone who has had my fair share of customer service jobs, I understand this sentiment. However normally if you are seeking to uphold this type of sentiment you should actually be providing acceptable service in the first place.
I ended up going instead to Ek A Nee Affordable Auto Services in Capitol Heights. I had a really great experience here, and they are $15-25 more affordable with the added benefit of no hate speech or hate speech apologists!
