After our mishap with a Living Social deal for a place near the beach called The View (which had closed after being open only a few months) – we were able to cash in that unused coupon with Living Social for a new deal at a place called The Five O’Clock Wine Bar down in the Alamitos Bay Marina area of Long Beach. We had been there before when it had a different name after dinner one night, and had enjoyed the chocolate fondue.
Well the name changed and so did our experience. The place was super crowded when we arrived as an annoying Art/wine class was going on. The art class was crowded and the instructor sounded drunk –so we decided to sit away from the loaded art class and in an obscure alcove area located next to the broken ATM machine.
The Living Social deal was for a wine Flight and a shared appetizer which we thought would be a good start to the evening and then we expected to order more. The wine flight itself was nice, but the cheese plate was tiny and looked like something I could throw together myself with scraps from the fridge and we weren’t even given utensils to spread the cheese on the meager offering of crackers.
After the wine flight we waited awhile for our waitress to return hoping to order another glass of wine and maybe something more substantial to eat. We waited quite awhile as the annoying mood ruining art class rambled on and our waitress never returned. We finally decided we should go inside to see if we could order something else. The interior area was now fairly empty – our waitress was nowhere to be found so we walked up to the counter and stood there ignored by the staff , which seemed more content on chit chatting with their friends than serving customers. We stood there waiting for several more minutes until what we assumed was an owner walked out (she appeared to be drunk herself!!). She then proceeded to tell the waitress “ I want you to leave –because I don’t want to pay you for tonight…..go ahead and just talk with your friends” . We sadly agreed the staff was slacking off, but the owner/manager should have pulled her into the back room and should not have canned her in front of the customers, (Very Unprofessional) which she herself proceeded to ignore as we stood there getting no service for several more minutes as she (The Owner/Manager) then sat chit chatting with her own elderly friends. We walked outside and agreed that we should definitely go somewhere else, since apparently no one here was interested in serving us.
Rule 1: Hire good staff.
Rule 2: Don’t use owning a wine bar as an excuse to drink your own inventory while at work and inappropriately fire the bad staff you hired in front of the customers.
Rule 3: Actually serve your customers. The customers shouldn’t have to seek you out to get service and after doing so still get ignored , because you are too drunk to notice them.
Apparently you need to get to the 5 O'clock wine bar at 5 O'clock before the staff gets too drunk to care about the customers.
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