My husband and I spend a great deal of money at this place. My husband is a local detective and gets his lunch there almost daily. I always get pasta and bakery items there. The food is decent. Nothing to complain about and nothing exceptional. It's a lot better than most of the food in the area (which is not saying much). It is clean but the parking lot us horrendous. \r
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The few times I have gone in with my children, there has ALWAYS been a problem. The employees (not all, of course) are not accommodating and I always get confronted with some of the nasty clientele.\r
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Today was the last straw and I will not ever go back.... I went with my 2 small children who have disabilities. My 4 year-old daughter who is medically fragile and has severe autism began to melt down while waiting on line to order sandwiches. The "gentlemen" behind the counter refused to wait on me. They completely ignored me and allowed people to just walk up and order. I kept asking for help and they would skip me and go to the next person. It was like I was invisible. There was a nasty employee in the bakery angrily shhh'ing my daughter (although one lady in the bakery gave my daughter a cookie- thank you). The employees looked at us- some with anger, some with disgust, but refused to help. The patrons had no problem cutting in front of us.It was crazy!! Finally a sweet woman who was shopping with her grandaughter came up to help us. She was kind and offered to order our food for us- and also smiled and said she would pray for us..... oh, I can use all the help we can get, Then an employee came up from the front and offered to assist us and order our food for us (no doubt because of the noise my daughter was making and because the customers were probably complaining). Had someone just helped us, e would have been gone a lot sooner AND my daughter would have been fine when she got her pizza (she does not speak and she just wanted her food). BTW, The pizza guy purposely put ice cold pizza in a box because he did not want us there any longer and would not heat my kids pizza up. The employee brought our stuff to the front and kindly offered to have our stuff made in advance if I call ahead. It seemed nice, however, based on the treatment we got today and previously, I can't help but think that offer means "we want your money, but don't want you to come back here again with your children." Is this the first time these people have seen kids with autism? It was like a twilight zone episode- what are the odds that so many nasty people would be in the same place at the same time? \r
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After leaving and then crying my eyes out, I arrived at my husband's job with food for him and his bosses. When I told them what happened, they won't be going back either. My husband pointed out that between he and I, we give them well over 1,000/month. His co-workers way more than that. I hope that Carmine's feels hurt by the loss of our business...... certainly they did not care about the hurt they caused for me and my kids.
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