This afternoon I went to Bolton to meet a friend to discuss business. We went into Rhode Island Coffee, in Knowsley Street. We bought a latte and a cappuccino (total cost around £5) and sat at a table near the window, where we looked through a document together.
The staff behind the counter were friendly enough. But were rather too keen on clearing everything away from the tables immediately a plate or cup was empty. We finished our drinks and, soon after, a short bossy woman dressed in black, who seemed to be some kind of ‘floor walker’, asked us to vacate the table so other people could sit there.
I visit coffee shops almost every day and I don’t remember this happening to me ever before. I am not the kind of person who buys one coffee and makes it last several hours.
Even my friend, who is the easiest-going person I know, was fuming about it. He was also embarrassed, as it was my first visit to Bolton in twenty years and he was showing me around.
I said to the woman that I had never been asked to leave a table in a cafe so quickly and that we were probably going to order another coffee. She just said ‘thank you’ and had already sat other people at our table.
This is sheer rudeness and there is no excuse for it. To top it all, I then had the embarrassment of going back to the same shop later to meet two other people, as we had agreed on that location. Before I arrived, they had also noticed this woman’s behaviour and said, if they had known what had happened earlier, they would have met me somewhere else.
I understand that Rhode Island Coffee has its head office in Warrington. My friend remarked that they seem to have adopted the appearance of the American coffee shops but not the same standards of customer service.
In all, the Rhode Island Coffee chain lost four customers today. If you want to relax with a coffee, I recommend you find somewhere else too.
