Not a child friendly place poor customer service

I'm always searching for lovely places to hold business meetings, meet my friends, and of course recommend to many people. I thought I had found that place when I discovered Thyme Out Cafe. Our first visit was it because it had a garden with swings and play area for children my son (a 10 month old baby) and my friends daughter played quietly and we ate at the back table. We spend a lot of money that day. It seemed very nice. After a nice experience the first time a few days later I arranged to meet a friend of mine who lives down south, I hadn't seen for many years. We were enjoying a lovely chat and catch up. My friend's daughter is a delightful child who played quietly with a DS. My son who is 10 months had not made a sound, which is usually for him he is a good and quiet boy, he does have his moments but this certainly wasn't one of them. My friend's daughter asked if she could play with my baby I produced a selection of toys for him to play with as always to keep him occupied. My friend's daughter started shaking a baby rattle with him. To my horror a man barked at me from behind the counter telling me to stop the child from shaking the rattle as it was very noisy (this was a small babies plastic rattle nothing more complex than that). He said it several times then stormed off into the back. I was so shocked, when looking around the cafe there were only a couple of people in the cafe and as we were sitting by the counter no one had complained. It wasn't as if the baby rattle was being shaken for a long time she had only just started. Even my friends 5 year old daughter said, “don't be silly it's not noisy”... out of the mouths of babes eh? We were astonished at just how rude a small business who are marketing themselves as a child friendly establishment is clearly not. I'm afraid the food was not up to scratch for the cost nor was it very clean; the floor looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a long time. What a shame this place was so poor, I'll be sure to never set foot over the doorstep ever again, I hope people reading this take my advice.

Jayne Bransby - 29/05/2010 | report this review