weird and stressful
June 4, 2009 by tomnewtn

Thought it was nice relaxing place, but turns out to be a stressful experience. My girlfriend and I would go weekly to enjoy coffee, or even a glass of wine. One time we have her teen kids with us and were sitting in an area with leather furniture. We moved a couple of chairs so we could sit closer to see a laptop screen. One of the employees then came over and said that the owner is watching us on the video cameras all over inside, and doesn't want us moving the chairs. We hardly moved them! The employee seemed to be stressed and uncomfortable having to tell us to put the chairs back.

We then noticed that the phone rang, and could hear the employee saying "yeah, I told them", and "yes the put them back".

The phone rang again and we could hear another employee saying "yes I'm here, you probably couldn't see me". Then they said "yes, the door is closed", and then answering other questions that seemed trivial. Then we heard the employee joking about the owner watching everything going on every minute and how she calls repeatedly when she thinks something is amiss. We found it to be increasingly stressful, so we left.

We felt that once we knew our every move was being watched we couldn't really relax and enjoy an otherwise nice spot in Tacoma. It made us feel very strange and won't go back. By the way, we decided against ordering food whenever we went because from what we saw, it took them forever to take our order, let alone serve us. I think they are trying to do too much with too few people.

We were struck by comments of other customers who joked about not coming back because the owner is watching their every move, and calling the employees every minute to address something the owner saw on video. Weird!