Then and Now
I first stopped here in March 2016. Excellent! The tiger was chill, the caretakers were very informative, and the local and federal animal dudes fully vetted the staff for giving him a better quality of life than his endangered relatives. Then, there was the café. Again, excellent. At least, very good as I recall. I stopped by again today, August 9, 2019. Well, I was sad to find out from waitress 1, that the tiger died. On their Web Site, I saw he passed away on October 16, 2017. However, I’m equally as sad to report that the “café’s” customer service was laid to rest as well. I was given a thorough demonstration of this by waitress number 2, who took my order. I was first seated by waitress 1 and she was polite, but number 2 clearly had something better to do than deal with me. My order was 90% correct but I wanted wheat toast instead. Not that big a deal. My order took about half an hour, but I won’t fault anyone for that either. I had a seat that allowed me to get a partial behind-the-scenes vantage point. This allowed me to see the cooks were cranking out a lot of to go orders and a few dine-in ones as well. The fault with my experience lies only with number 2. She was completely inattentive. Number 1 was the only person to ask if I needed anything else. Such as, a to-go box for the more than generous portion that I couldn’t finish in one sitting. So, I finished up and wasn’t going to leave a tip because I plan on never coming back. However, number 1 and the cooks were cool. I figure they might share tips at the end of shift like a few places I know. So, I left about 40% cash instead of tipping on the plastic which is my norm. Yours too? I get up to leave snapping a couple of wall pics for posting, and number 2 walks by, picks up the tip, and keeps walking without saying a word. No, “thank you,” nothing. Completely class-less. I walked to the register. After a few minutes, I look over, make eye contact with number 2, she turns away and keeps on doing whatever she does. I look over to number 1, she sees me and comes over to cash me out. Thank you number 1.