Buyer Beware*

(*you know if I am posting on a weekend this HAS to be good)

The night started off innocently enough.

It was Friday night and we were kicking off the weekend right, at a dive-y Chinese Food restaurant in Braintree called Tiki Palace. My brother Peter, Adam and I arrived around 6:30 and ordered drinks, ready to play some Keno, eat some fabulous Chinese food (it really is stellar there) and watch the game.

My brother mentioned that the Scorpion Bowls for One were a fantastic deal because you got a tasty tropical drink in a ceramic bowl and for 75 cents extra you could add a shot of Baccardi 151. It even said so on the menu, Scorpion Bowl for One = $5.75, Baccardi 151= 75 cents.

Good deal, right?

So throughout the night we shared scorpion bowls, with the shot of 151, and played Keno and watched the game and ate the fabulous food and in general had a great time!

Peter left around 9PM to meet up with some friends and Adam and I stayed on for a few more hours. Around 11 we asked for the check and got ready to settle up. When we got the check, however, it was more than we thought it would be. Upon closer inspection we realized that we had been charged $5.00 per shot of 151, not 75 cents like the menu said. It was only a difference of $20 or so but still, it was wrong.

So I went up to the server, who also happened to be the owner, and I told him about my concerns. He informed me that the price for a shot of 151 with a scorpion bowl was, in fact, $5.00. I brought a menu over to him and showed him the price list that said it was, in fact, 75 cents and he then told me "I told the man you were with "these shots are $5 a piece" and he said that was fine so that's what I charge all of you". By "the man you were with" he meant my brother, who as I mentioned earlier had already left. Adam and I told him we don't agree with that price and he informed us if we didn't want to pay the whole bill, he would call the police.

Are you kidding?

At first I was just like, let's pay the bill and get out of here. But Adam thought we should stick up for ourselves, and for once not just say "Whatevs" and be on our way. So I went outside and called my brother to see if he had in fact agreed to this super secret Baccardi 151 deal and told him what was going on. He said "put the manager on the phone" so I did. They spoke (yelled!) for a few minutes and then he handed me back my phone and my brother said "Stay there, I will be there in 2 minutes".

He never backs down from a challenge, that one.

Now, please don't think this was about the stupid $20 or whatever he was charging us extra. It was the principle. The menu said the shots were 75 cents each. I don't care, I have spent far more money on far less food....but the fact was we ordered the drinks because of the price in the menu, not because of some secret price no one knows about but the manager ( and apparently my brother?). Further more, we were at that restaurant for a good 5-6 hours, spent a lot of money on food and Keno and this manager was being a jerk.

So my brother gets there and tells the manager that he was never asked if he wanted to spend $5 per shot and matter of factly tells the manager that we are going to pay the 75 cents a shot, as they are advertised plus whatever we owe for food and other drinks and if he has a problem with us, go ahead, call the police

Well, he called our bluff and called the police.

Again I ask you, are you kidding?? So I am at Tiki Palace waiting for the police to come to settle our dispute over a few shots of Baccardi 151. Could I possibly be ANY MORE Braintree?

And all this over a $20 discrepancy, but at this point it was like, we are already in this deep we may as well follow through. While part of me wanted to sneak out the back and call my brother and Adam from the parking lot like "meet me at the corner!", I honestly could not believe what an asshole the owner was being and simply could not stomach just giving him the money he thought was owed him, such a d-hole was he.

So the police come within a few minutes (Can you fucking believe this? The whole time we were waiting for them to get there I am like "Are you kidding? This is my life?) and OF COURSE it is a cop who I went to high school with and he ends up "mediating" between my brother and the manager and to make a long story short he ends up telling us we have to pay the bill because, and I quote "of a little something called Buyer Beware"

????

According to the dear officer, if something is advertised as a certain price, like in a menu, it is up to the consumer to verify that that is actually the price of the product before purchasing. Because, you know, at any dining establishment normal people say "I would like to order the Caesar Salad..can you confirm that it's $7.95?". So even though the price in the menu was 75 cents, because we didn't confirm this before placing the order then the manager can charge us whatever he wants for it.

Nice, right? Makes perfect sense. Totally.

So let's end my synopsis of the night by saying it was probably The Most Embarrassing Yet Most Hilarious Night Ever! Quintessential fucking Braintree.

But it has lead me to this, I never bad mouth any establishment as you know. I believe before you say something nasty about someone or someplace online you should offer them a chance to apologize but I have to say that Tiki Palace is an abomination. The manager, who I hope someday reads this, is such an idiot that rather than act like an adult and honor what his menu says, or at least try to come to some kind of deal with us, he calls the Police, who of course have nothing better to do and send no less than THREE officers down to deal with the fact that a small party of tired people don't want to be dicked around by an irate restaurant owner. It was seriously sad. They all show up all psyched for some drama and Adam, Peter and I are seated calmly in the lobby, talking about The DaVinci Code. One of them even came in, turned around and left immediately because there was So Nothing To See.

Utterly pathetic.

But, as I said to the officers as we left the restaurant, "At least this will make one hell of a blog entry"