If you would like a joyous occasion tainted by rudeness and incompetence, don't hesitate to hire…read moreLeenas.
We can start with communication. The proprietor, Jessica, was consistently uncommunicative throughout the lead up to our wedding, requiring multiple followups to every outreach - before offering usually clipped, often difficult to understand, and more than once condescending responses. In fact, it was only after I relisted the project on Thumbtack (in desperation, two weeks before the wedding) that she finally responded with a signed contract.
And oh what a contract... In retrospect, I should have walked away after first reading a document so chaotic, so preemptively defensive, and so rife with typos and garbled sentences. But I was busy planning a wedding, and the price was right. My mistake.
But hey, bad communication can be forgiven when followed by great service, right? Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Our "Essentials Package" called for two bartenders and two service staff. What we got was Jessica... and her three VISIBLY UNDERAGE CHILDREN. I'm all for an intergenerational family business, but watching a boy who looked like he just made the jump from cub scouts to boy scouts try and move a rack of glassware between bars, a girl who looked like she should be considering college applications next year get a real time lesson from guests on the difference between tonic water and club soda, or a boy who looked like he just traded a learner's permit for a real driver's license try and back a pickup truck out of a crowded parking lot isn't super comfortable or confidence inspiring.
When Jessica herself wasn't pushing un-requested tequila shots on the bride (and taking them herself...), she was being short with guests, complaining about various aspects of the setup that - while I can understand posed a slight challenge (e.g. keeping two bar locations stocked during the cocktail hour) - would have been easy to problem solve had the staff been even semi-professional adults instead of children who could not operate independently. As icing on the cake, With an hour left in the party guests were told the bar was out of water and running low on beer, but when we cleaned up, we found nearly 100 unopened beers and close to 10 liters of water.
At the end of the night, Jessica demanded additional gratuity of $200 dollars per staff member (who, if I haven't mentioned, did not not seem remotely old enough to have their own bank accounts), on top of the $150 in the tip jar. That's a total of $950 on an event fee of $1925... or ~50% gratuity. I paid it to avoid a scene on my wedding night, and had it not been for sympathy on behalf of the hardworking kids put in an impossible position by their mother, it would probably be among my life's great regrets.
Jessica might be able to handle the bartending needs of a 12th birthday party, but if you want a good experience at anything more complex, I highly recommend looking elsewhere.
