Krista B.
Yelp
First off, here is my disclaimer. This review is for THE WILLOUGHBY LOCATION, which is the sister store to the West Side Market. There was no page to review for this location specifically, so I will proceed to put this review here...because, frankly, people need to be aware of this spectacle or go witness it themselves if they are bored.
Situation goes as such: 7:00 p.m. on a chilly, dewy, Tuesday night, December 22nd. In town visiting relatives, doing some Christmas shopping. Stopped by another store in the same shopping strip and decided to drop in Pierogi Palace for some grab n' go dinner. I've been there many times before, had a pleasant experience with a helpful counter staff and have enjoyed many of their yummy pierogi. Not on this visit, however.
My husband and I walk into the store, as the door beeper goes off. Two seconds later, a grimey dish-water blonde young lad comes running (quite literally) out of the back room, all out of breath. He proceeds to immediately explain to us about how much the holiday customers suck and how much of a horrible day he was having. And...that he would appreciate if we didn't order anything that had to be fried, because he didn't want to turn on the fryers because he was "too slammed." OKAY. I figured we'd give him the benefit of the doubt, everyone has crappy days. But, oh no, it gets better.
Our greasy lad proceeds to tell us that he would also appreciate it if we only bought the pierogi by the dozen. (Excuse me? I thought I could buy them individually if I wanted to?) Then he says okay, we can do a mixed dozen, but it will cost $12.00. Okay. I picked out mushroom mozzarella. There was 8 in the bag. I said I wanted 6 of them. He offered to throw in the other 2 for $1.00. Okay, fine. (That would bring us up to $13.00, at that point) He asked us if we liked blueberry cheescake flavor. Sure, why not? So, he offered to give it to us for free since he only had one left. Okay, at this point we were still at $13.00.
After that, we attempted to get 6 Horseradish bacon flavor pierogi, to complete our "$12.00 mixed dozen". He had a total melt down because he couldn't find the bag of that flavor in the case. From that moment in time, things just got down right weird. We "believe" the kid was more than high on life. He began rambling incessantly, even more than he already was...rambling off flavors and numbers, repeating "Oh, cool, bro, (to my husband) I got you!" Just acting like a complete numbskull, not making any sense. I told him never mind about the horseradish flavor, just give me 6 of another flavor, and a bag of cabbage and noodles ($5.00) and then that was all. We just wanted to get the hell out of there, at that point.
So, our grand total should have been $18.00, no tax. He attempted to ring us out at the register, seemingly very confused. He pushed buttons, mumbled something, then told us our total was $20.00. I immediately questioned that amount and he continued to rattle off a whole bunch of nonsense jibber jabber. At that point, with the red flags flying high like our said lad, I decided to pass on the whole transaction completely. I told our lad to have a Merry Christmas and we promptly left the scene. But, not before letting another customer who walked in as we left, know that he was their problem now.
We are still trying to wrap our minds around what happened that evening. The whole experience was like a scene out of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas movie. We couldn't make this crap up if we tried! It's just really a damn shame that someone of that nature is the face of a small, family owned business. Especially during the holidays...he gives pierogi a bad name! Obviously, my family and I will never be giving Pierogi Palace our business again and we will not hesitate to let others know.