Here is a glimpse of our sweet, innocent new additions. Cami is the mostly black female with a sincere and abiding love of people food who will stop at nothing to obtain said goodies and Frankie (Ole Blue Eyes) is the striking, standoffish male with the more timid demeanor. One incident I’ve been meaning to mention is a “little” problem the Circe domicile had last month with a certain ethnic family restaurant. Ok, yes it was a Mexican restaurant. (In Podunkville, the choice of eateries beyond fast food pretty much narrows down to Mexican or Chinese.) Now while it’s true TBC was the intended patsy/chump/sap/dupe and I was not physically present, the lack of any remorse whatsoever when confronted greatly concerned me and I decided the BBB needed to be aware of this establishment’s sticky-fingered workers. Therefore, I filed a complaint. With a few minor changes, here is a close facsimile of the transcript I submitted:
A few weeks ago, in the middle of December, TBC and a relative went to the buffet at this establishment to eat lunch. He has always left a generous cash tip, whether eating from the buffet or ordering from the menu. On this day, the buffet bill came to $15.15 and he paid with his check card. The following week he checked his bank statement via his phone and discovered a $20.00 withdrawal from this establishment. Knowing this was incorrect, he drove to our bank and reported the error only to discover an additional $4.85 added as an unauthorized tip to his bill. Yes, they stole $4.85 by applying it as a tip in addition to the cash tip he had left which would make the tip approximately 50% of the actual bill. He returned to “insert name of guilty eatery” upon learning of this outright theft and after asking to speak to the manager, was told he "had just left." He then informed the waitstaff of the problem at which point the lady spoke in Spanish to the boy who opened the cash register and gave my husband back his money. No apologies, no explanation, no nothing. TBC told his regular waitress that he always left a tip in cash and she replied, "I know you do." I carefully went through our past bank statements to see if this had occurred before and it had not. However, I am concerned that other patrons most likely were ripped off that day and the thievery has been an ongoing unreported problem. I am not sure that the manager is aware of this stealing from what I can only assume originates from his relatives running the cash register. A heartfelt apology would be appreciated…We will no longer be patronizing this local business. Thank you for looking into this matter, etc, etc.
Under “Desired Resolution”, I wrote in part: "A heartfelt apology…was the $4.85 worth losing good customer relations and personal integrity?"
These thieves have not yet responded as this is the message at the bottom of my complaint:
*** We are waiting for the business to respond. They have until January 21, 2008 to respond to this complaint.
I’m not holding my breath for their reply but at least I feel I attempted to right a wrong and warn others because there is no way he was the only goober they tried or succeeded in putting the screws to.
