The scones are amazing. I mean, they must be; I have been known to wait in line for one for ten minutes on my way to work. And by "wait in line" I mean, wait behind the ONE other customer ordering something at the moment. I mean, waiting patiently while the same person I've seen at the cash register for YEARS now (possibly the owner, I'd always thought), squints at the computer screen, moves the mouse around, clicking and clicking -- and then messes up and starts all over. About 6 times. Same woman, every time I'm there, for years, and yet she somehow doesn't seem to know how her own cash register works. Almost every time I'm there (always to order nothing more than one scone to go), people in the line behind me eventually sigh and storm out because they can't take it any more.
Well, last night I walked past the cafe on my way home...to discover that the doors and windows had all been plastered over with yellow signs reading, "Closed by order of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene." I guess someone finally lost their mind trying to get a scone there, and the city said, enough already!
Which could probably happen almost anywhere in the neighborhood, to be honest. I mean -- just to give one other example -- after no longer being able to take the idiocy of a small local pharmacy, I gave up and finally had my prescriptions transferred to the local Duane Reade, a huge NYC chain. Bad move. Chain or no chain, it doesn't matter. Apparently people are pre-screened for idiocy before they are allowed to work customer service in Bed-Stuy. Every single time I went to this particular Duane Reade, the line would be at least 5 people long, and 4 out of 5 people (I always being one of them, unfortunately) would find ourselves saying things like, "but I got a phonecall saying the prescription was ready" or "you said come back in an hour; that was three hours ago" or "I picked these up yesterday, but one of my prescriptions wasn't in the bag; the label says PLEASE REFRIGERATE. Could you please go check in your fridge?"
And these people are responsible for dispensing life saving/life-threatening pharmaceuticals? Surely you cannot be serious. Within a few months, I joined a once-a-week Meetup group that gathers on the Upper West Side, over an hour from where I live, so I had my prescriptions all transferred there. How sad is that? The thing is, I've had prescriptions filled before at other Duane Reades -- ones that just happened to be down the street from the determatologist or whomever I'd just seen -- and they pretty much would have your order done right there on the spot, in something like ten minutes.
Oh, Bed-Stuy! Surely this cannot be good for property values.
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