I had quite literally the worst experience I've ever had at any establishment in my life at this…read moreplace on Thursday, July 9th. My fiancé and I were celebrating our ENGAGEMENT with a party of 9. We had been looking forward to this place for SO long and were so excited to spend an entire evening here. For VERY important context, both my fiancé and I were restaurant and bar managers for several years. Neither of us have ever raised our voice at anybody working at a restaurant, bar, etc. We are literally an entire crew of service workers or former service workers who are very respectful of the entire industry and its practices.
When we walked up, the older blonde woman working the front was extremely hostile and rude from the jump. I was trying to ask questions about the venue, food options, etc before we went in, and she began barking at us for IDs immediately. Not a single hi, welcome in, etc. Just immediately aggressive.
My fiancé, who is 27, gave her his Oregon ID. Considering this state is literally a few hours away, you would think they are fairly familiar with this ID, but apparently not!
She began aggressively and repeatedly bending the ID to the point we sincerely thought it was going to snap it in half. Despite it being obviously real after looking at it under a light (Oregon has very specific and complicated patterns, it's widely known as the hardest ID to make a fake of), she said she didn't believe that it was real. We were a bit baffled, and insisted it definitely was. She asked my partner what his zip code was, and because we had just moved, he gave her our current zip before realizing she meant the one on his ID. She laughed and said "nope, i'm keeping this! This is a fake". She said because he said the zip code wrong, she wasn't going to give it back.
At this point I got angry. I told her that 1. It is 1000% a real ID and 2. It is completely illegal to hold somebody's ID hostage. Her and her coworker got really defensive and told me to "just calm down" despite her continuously bending it and laughing. She kept saying "I'm allowed to keep it if it's fake" which it WASNT. It is completely illegal what she was doing. This is THEFT OF PROPERTY, so I was absolutely not going to calm down.
My fiancé called his parents to hopefully get a photo of his passport to diffuse the situation. The older woman who was holding us hostage demanded to TAKE HIS PHONE and speak to his mom. She then grabbed it and walked all the way down the sidewalk, spinning around and giggling. It was one of the most bizarre things I had ever witnessed, and frankly, we believe she was intoxicated. Her coworkers looked incredibly embarrassed and wouldn't even make eye contact with us.
She finally came back and we took the ID and phone back from her. She never once apologized for stealing our property, almost breaking it, and falsely accusing us of committing a crime. Not even an inkling of remorse. Just giggling.
I told her how absolutely unprofessional and illegal everything she just did was. Luckily, we have legal resources that we will absolutely be exploring this week, because no patron deserves to be held hostage, have their property stolen, and not even receive an apology. Not only did RMU tarnish what was supposed to be one of the happiest nights of our lives, they lost out on thousands of dollars (that we spent elsewhere that night) from our party because their hostess had a major power trip.
To make matters even worse, we had other folks join up with us later that night who also stopped by RMU and had equally unpleasant experiences. They all said that the same rude hostess was bending the ever loving life out of their IDs and being incredibly snarky.
