My husband and I were recently in New Orleans for the SIGGRAPH computer conference held at the New Orleans Convention Center. During the early hours of August 7, we decided to end our night out with a stop at Cafe du Monde for coffee and beignets. Since we were out with several of my husband's friends and co-workers, we left at different times to meet up at the cafe at around 1am. First 2 members of the party arrived, then my husband and myself, then one more person in our party arrived. I hardly believe that it is unusual for additional parties to arrive when meeting up at the cafe.
The first 2 had already ordered when my husband and I arrived. The server brought out their order, and we placed ours. Since the server had gotten one of their coffees wrong, he gave it to my husband and went back to put in the rest of the order. In the mean time, the last person of our party arrived. The server brought out the rest of the order, which was incomplete as he forgot an order of beignets, and the third party placed his order. We had to place an additional order after that, because the server was irritated, quit listening to us, and didn't bring out the correct number of beignet orders.
When it came time to pay out, my husband paid for the entire table's food and coffee. The total came to $19 or so, and my husband tendered a $20 bill and a $1 bill. He told the server to keep the change (while intending to leave an additional tip on the table). The server yelled at him and threw the $1 bill down on the table, telling him he could keep his stinking tip. Then he gave us all a lecture about how rude we were for arriving and and ordering food at different times. Nobody had been rude to him, we were all just trying to order food and get him to serve it to us correctly.
My husband ordered an additional 3 iced coffees, and the server brought them out to him in a to-go bag, even though we hadn't asked for it to-go. When removing the coffees from the bag, one of them got spilled. That prompted another lecture from the server. He didn't try to rectify the fact that one of the coffees got spilled. He just told us that he took one off our bill - without asking if we'd like it replaced. We left him a nice tip of $20, even after the way he treated us.
We were not drunk, belligerent, or otherwise ugly to him. He was clearly irritated about something from the moment we arrived, and his behavior was terrible toward us. Our party included people from all over the world - England, Germany, Sweden. And they all got a taste of some pretty awful behavior by a server at Cafe du Monde. I'm sure it left quite a bad impression on them.
As for myself and my husband, we visit New Orleans quite a bit and Cafe du Monde is always on our list of places to visit. However after the last visit there, it will be a long time before I want to subject myself to that again.
Sincerely,
Cindy Everitt
1 comment:
I sincerely hope that you've sent this to them. That type of customer service is inexcusable! As a store owner, I would hope that a customer would inform me if one of my employees had this type of behavior.
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