Friends and I attempted to celebrate a birthday with dinner and drinks at Bea One Friday evening. When we arrived we were told that there was a 30 minute wait for a table, so we went to the bar to wait while having drinks. There was only one bartender, who was apparently new and very slow; we were sympathetic when only one of the three martinis tasted right. Later, I ordered a 2nd drink, which I never got, and soon my friends and I sat at the bar for over 30 minutes with empty glasses--we still hadn't been taken to a table to order dinner (i.e. we had waited at the bar for over an hour and still hadn't gotten a table though we were told it'd be a 30 minute wait). \r
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Finally one friend went to the hostess station to check on things and stood there for ten minutes without a hostess coming to respond to him or the crowd of people by the front door; he was told by many of the crowd that they had made reservations and had been standing there for 20-30 minutes and had still not been greeted by the hostess! Both the hostess and bartender seemed to be overwhelmed so it was amazing to us that the manager was sitting at the end of the bar the entire time, doing nothing to help with the situation! I finally complained to her about our wait--I tried to point out that waiting a long time for a table wouldn't have been so bad if one could at least get a drink. She seemed indifferent to the poor service and like I was crazy for complaining. \r
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No longer calm, we decided we'd go elsewhere and thought it was a little odd that the manager didn't offer to comp or discount the drinks after our exchange, esp. when one friend had given her a Discover card, which she walked away with and then returned a few minutes later because they don't accept Discover. At that point we thought any normal person would?ve finally said not to worry about it, just to get us out the door!
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