| rev:text
| - Even dive bars, specially if they at least follow passable levels of customer service deserve some love. Sneaky Dee's, The Rhino, Wide Open, these are holes in the wall which are far from perfect but have cast a niche for themselves as lovable rascal bars.
The Imperial was a bit like that to me but now I can never give them a cent again.
I decided to try out hosting my Spanish speaking group on their 2nd floor patio for this month, every Saturday at 2:00pm. We had brought business in the number of 20-30 people almost every Saturday... that's not pocket change. In fact the manager, was quite friendly about our arrangement and offered us a 25% discount on food orders.
Unfortunately what is the point of a discount if the service is utterly aggressive, rude, defensive and shamelessly crass?
During our stay during the month of May I received a few complains about the elderly lady bartender/server whose behaviour border-lined on the vagrant.
I let it slide because I gave her the benefit of the doubt, even if I had experienced hints of it myself. Mostly regarding her overbearing attitude. As a host, you can't take any petty attitude personally and if I had any serious issues I could go directly to the manager.
In the end, it all came to pass last weekend when a large group of random customers came to the patio, for you see, it was generally us who took most of the real estate but once you had both of our groups together well, we apparently reached capacity.
That's when she lost it, along any last shreds of politeness as she screamed --in front of 30+ of my guest about how there was no space. That no more comers were welcome and that she would get in trouble and for sure SHE WAS NOT going to get into trouble (with whom?) about us. And that my group was huge "You are huge, you have 50 people out there!'
We were 32. For those of you wondering, her count was off by almost 40% but hey, who is counting? Specially when it comes to a specific limit of customers allowed on a patio? ;-)
Of course, I understood her concern, however instead of trying to discuss this --as I brought up solutions like splitting the group with half moving indoors --which she originally was okay with.
Unfortunately her attention span broke after 15 seconds after serving a drink to someone else and she went back to shouting/ordering to move all my people in... or else.
Asked what 'else' meant, she said she did not allow groups at the Imperial and she was doing me a favour --which of course it is a lie, I have been there with other groups before. Then she screamed at me that I was "fighting" with her simply because I wanted to find a solution that would allow us to keep at least some space in the patio for later.
But she would hear none of it. Just kept on raising her voice apparently expecting for me to just take it. My request to talk this out went onto deaf ears. I tried reminding her that regardless of the situation her attitude was utterly unnecessary as that I was treating her with respect. Instead she just went back to proclaiming I was "fighting her." Seriously?
She then said, without any common sense or knowing the implications that we could "...just leave." Perhaps thinking that I would put up with her attitude just because we were about 30 people, I said "sure." And dropped the issue.
Told everyone to settle up their tabs, and went to find us a venue with better staff. Luckily Green Jean's at Eaton's was more than happy to have us over so we left, never to come back and put up with such bad service again. We ended up having a great time there and stayed out until about 9:00pm.
I had always wondered: With such great location near Dundas Square and with a few renovations this place could be one of the coolest places in the area. Now I know why it is not. I think it was best described by one of my members as we left:
"When you have a bartender who seems to have been working there for so long, they start believing they own the place. You can't complain because they are now almost like furniture. They come with the place and are not going anywhere and they know it and even if you were to complain to management chances are that nothing will be done. " Hence my not even trying to write the manager a letter. What's the point?
To be honest I am utterly surprised she would be so callous. I mean, there are now 30+ people and their exponential networks who will tell everyone within shouting distance to stay the heck away from this locale.
Sadly, main draw of the Imperial for most people is the second floor and their patio. It is a shame, the Imperial could have been such a lovable rascal but it won't as long as you have to interact with bartenders like her.
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