There are no words for how terrible my experience was at Geyser Peak.
In the interest of being fair, I do want to acknowledge the following events happened during the Wine Road Weekend, which I can only imagine is very busy and stressful for all of the businesses involved. That being said, there is absolutely no excuse for the injustice my friends and I suffered there and the behaviour of the owner.
On the wine weekend, it truly isn't uncommon for some wineries to offer free little trinkets and party favours. I still have a keychain that was given out during the 2016 weekend. Upon arriving at Geyser Peak, they had a couple baskets on the counter with little odds and ends. So I went and grabbed one of each and walk back to my friends holding both. One was a pour top for wine, and the other was a cheap little bottle opener with their logo (the kind you can buy for a few dollars at Trader Joes)...I notice the pour top has a little label that says $5.99 and realize it isn't a goodie and it's actually for sale so I went and returned it to the basket immediately. I check the wine opener and it has no such label so I place it in my pocket...again, it was a really cheap wine opener so it didn't seem strange it would be free. IMMEDIATELY an employee (very politely) runs up and asks me if I was going to pay for that, I balk, realize my mistake, hand it back while explaining I thought it was a free souvenir, and thought that would be the end of it. No harm done right?
Wrong.
Within 5 minutes a surly woman with a trollish attitude (and the appearance to match) comes up to my group and asks my FRIEND - not me - to "return whatever merchandise she took." and identifies herself as the winery owner. My friend is shocked and confused, and the owner keeps saying "you heard me, give it back." I immediately jump in and explain what happened to me (as I think a mistake is being made), and reinforce that I already spoke to an employee and sorted the confusion out and I'm sorry for the trouble. She rudely says "Yeah I know what you did, but your friend stole something too."
We immediately begin offering to turn out our pockets, empty our purses, anything to demonstrate we don't have any merchandise. She keeps saying not to do that and to just give the merchandise back. I start getting angry because at this point she is just berating us without being constructive, and she snaps at me "DON'T GET DEFENSIVE." So I shortly explained that "defending is what you do when someone wrongly accuses you of something." which completely set her off. She continues to lecture and admonish us, so finally I tell her she can't just sit here and demean us because "she's the boss" and to either give us something actionable (ie. apologize despite our innocence, empty our pockets to prove we didn't have anything, etc) or to leave us alone. She huffs off.
She proceeds to tell EVERY single employee to avoid serving us. We kept demanding service (we had already PAID for the event and the wine) and every time we approached the counter she would grab any bottles near us and transport them to the opposite end of the counter while avoiding eye contact. She started being rude to ANYONE she saw even talking to us, and kept pointing at us and whispering things to her employees.
It was a really offensive situation to be in, and we were a part of a large group on a bus so it wasn't really within our power to just leave as we had to wait for our buses scheduled departure time. We probably remained there for a solid half hour after the entire argument, and she made darn well sure it was as unpleasant and uncomfortable as it could possibly have been.
Again, I understand it was a busy weekend and they were likely overwhelmed, and I'm not offended she approached us if she genuinely thought she took something - but it is absolutely inexcusable how we were treated and there is NO reason for that level of unprofessionalism. read more