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“Sunday afternoon Carvery, 3 January 2010. ”

written by on 04/01/2010

Sunday afternoon Carvery, 3 January 2010.



This was the most shocking and concerning experience I have had in a restaurant .



When I have my children with me at weekends I enjoy taking them somewhere nice to eat. On this occasion I just had my 15-year-old daughter with me.



When we arrived the waitresses were very polite and courteous with us, but the first sign of the bad things to come was when my daughter and I mistakenly picked up the plates for our carvery before the chef, and we were told by the Manageress very impolitely to 'put the plates down'.



When I started my meal I realised that food did not taste good at all, but I continued to eat it rather than make a fuss. My daughter found that the food tasted so bad that she could not eat much at all - just some of the vegetables. I then realised that I couldn't ignore the problem, so when the waitress asked if everything was all right I told her the problem and she went to get the Manageress.



The Manageress was very rude to me and told me that it was just that I didn't like their food, that no one else had complained, and there was nothing she was willing to do about it. I had to ask for something else for my daughter to eat - just a plate of chips was all my daughter wanted by now.



I carefully considered what I was going to do if they tried to charge me for everything. I believe any complaint has to be fair, so despite how impolite the Mangeress was with me I decided to pay for everything except the meal that my daughter had eaten very little of. So I would pay £15.45 instead of the full £21.45 - just £7 off.



They did try and charge me for everything and went to get the Landlord/owner when I refused to pay the full bill (I think maybe this Landlord and the above Manageress are the co-owners of the Master Thatcher).



The Landlord looked very angry when he arrived (like he had fire in his eyes). He began to ask me the problem but then he cut me off from what I was saying after a few seconds and told me to listen to him, and he came from behind the bar and came up to me - maybe to try to intimidate me. In a very angry way he told me that it wasn't his fault that we didn't like his food, that he had no other complaints and demanded that I pay the full bill. He asked me inappropriate things like what job I do. He was also pointing and shaking his finger at me in an intimidating and angry way.



I was assertive and determined not to pay the full amount but remained polite and reasonable calm throughout. The most shocking thing was that he also aimed this anger at my 15-year-old daughter with his finger pointing and raised voice. I did demand that he stop talking to my daughter in that way, which he did temporarily. All this was in full view of his customers.



He relented and took the £7 off the bill. Most people would have not paid anything at all after being treated like this, but I realised that this type of person could be unpredictable and I needed to be careful.



When I had paid, in anger and with his finger pointing he demanded that we get out of his restaurant and threw the receipt at me.



By the end of this my daughter was distraught and was crying, and one of his waitresses was trying hard not to cry as she could see my daughter crying. One waitress said to us that she couldn't believe what he did to us.



I wasn't frightened during the experience but afterwards I was shaken by this experience. My precious daughter was understandably even more shaken by this experience.



I thought about whether to write this review before doing so, as I understand that people have problems that influence how they react, but a family needs to feel safe in a restaurant, and after this experience I think I should help protect others and their children from having a similar experience in this restaurant. I have also seen from other website reviews that other people have also been treated badly in this restaurant.



If the owners of the Master Thatcher read this I would like to say that I really do wish you the best, but please consider whether this is the correct way to treat your customers.