Simonson Station Store

Bottom line:
The manager has bad customer service skills and was very rude to my family. I'm guessing it was based on his own assumptions, and instead of talking about it in a polite manner, he treated me like a delinquent and completely embarrassed and angered my family. We live in the area and were longtime customers, but will never go back again after today (August 11 morning).

Incident:
My husband often gets gas here, as we both live nearby. I usually wait in the car, however, today I decided to go in to get a few drinks and some sandwiches before heading over to the fair to avoid higher prices. Unfortunately, I found that I had forgotten my debit card. My husband quickly went home to get it for me, insisting that I stay since he wouldn't be long.

My sister and I decided to sit down and wait for him. I didn't have my phone with me to let him know where we'd be if we left, so there was no other option at that moment. My kids stayed nearby and I kept them seated as to not bother other customers or mess with merchandise, (I'm very self-conscience about bothering others). They were not loud and stayed calmly waiting, knowing that if they acted up, they wouldn't be allowed to go to the fair afterwards. We got them two cups of water since we didn't feel right getting pop or anything before I had my card with me, and waited for my husband to bring the money back.

Then the problems began. Overall, this whole incident occurred over the course of 10, maybe 15, minutes at most. Right after my husband left, the manager started hovering around us. Eventually he came over and pointed to the cups. "You know you have to pay for those, right?" I acknowledged it, telling him I knew and was fine with it. I told him we were just waiting for somebody to bring the money card I had forgotten. He walked away.

However, just a couple minutes later, he came back and pointed to the napkin my son was making figures out of to pass the time, (you know, to keep himself entertained instead of being noisy, crazy, or getting in the way). Well the manager pointed to the napkin and exclaimed, "You need to watch your kids better, or get out!"

I was shocked. He said something about the napkins and how "people eat here and need it clean," (even though there was nobody else around; no customers were even getting food). My two sons only had one napkin each, neither of the napkins were even in the way, and I didn't realize it was a problem until the manager blew up at me. Stunned, I shakily reassured him that we would be cleaning them up before we left. He didn't listen and kept being extremely rude and disrespectful to me; talking in circles like he was abnormally upset about the two napkins... acting as if we had just overturned a garbage bin over the table or something!

At that moment, my husband came back, expecting to buy something, but after paying for those styrofoam cups, I had to tell him we'd get something somewhere else because of the way we had been treated. I will never go back here again. I'm assuming the manager heard me tell my kids that I wasn't going to buy them candy, and decided I wasn't going to buy anything at all. Instead of using good customer service skills to communicate with me, he embarrassed and angered my entire family. My son was almost in tears in the car afterward, wondering why "the man" had been mad at him, (we tried to explain to my son that it was the manager's problem, nothing my son did).

Is this a way to treat longtime customers?
Maybe this business is doing so poorly that they can't even afford to spare two napkins. I'm not surprised the business is going down if the manager treats all their customers like this.

There are so many gas stations in town. It's no problem at all to find a better one to give my business to.