James E.
Yelp
Man I hate to have to write this feedback, but Anna (the manager), refused to take any responsibility for how she treated me, my wife, and my son. We have been coming to this location since my son was born. HE'S NEARLY SEVEN! Sbarros is one of the cornerstones of his eating habits, that is to say, SBARRO PIZZA opened the gateway to my kid eating pizza. When we were in NYC he HAD to visit a Sbarros. HE LOVES THIS PLACE AND REQUESTS IT WEEKLY, it's on his Mount Rushmore of Pizza, and as annual pass holders for Lego/SeaLife Aquarium it is our routine to stop and grab two slices of pizza each after Lego and before seeing a movie. As annual pass holders we visit this location AT LEAST TWICE A MONTH, in the summer it's obviously more often because there are so few air conditioned options in Phoenix. So if I'm getting the math right, I'd say on average we buy NO LESS THAN 100 SLICES OF PIZZA FROM THIS LOCATION ALONE, a year. My son only drinks water and will not drink soda or out of a bottle, only a cup. I know this is a specific detail and is my problem, not theirs, but for over six years, this has never been an issue, the staff was friendly and would politely offer a cup for water. I have left many favorable reviews on various platforms explaining as much. The pizza has always been hot and fresh and the staff friendly. Sometimes the wait is long and the tables are dirty, but it's always been worth it for the pizza. But this past weekend, something changed, and the only thing that I can think of that changed was Ana. Ana was unfriendly and unhelpful when I asked for cups for water, REFUSING to offer any cup stating "We no longer offer cups for water," coldly, while our five slices of pizza cooled on the counter. I asked why? What changed? How can we drink water? Isn't it illegal to refuse water to people in the State of Arizona? It's 110 degrees out. The shocking part was just her uncaring condescending tone, "We're not refusing you water, we're refusing you cups." A cup. For water. Sbarros has been around for nearly 70 years. In that moment I imagined Gennaro Sbarro and Carmela Sbarro, seeing their dream and hard work that started in Brooklyn that has led to thousands of jobs in over 600 locations around the world, and this one person staring me and my six year old son dead in the eye and blankly telling us she did not care. Would it be different if I was her brother? Or it was her son? Or mother asking? I don't know. I try to live by the Golden Rule and teach my kid as much, but this young woman only wanted to assert her ability to tell us no, not to treat us how she would want to be treated. Over a cup for water. She finally told us that Fat Burger offers cups for water. I asked her why she didn't lead with that? With a solution? Instead of creating a new problem for a regular guest? She told me that wasn't her job, and if I didn't like it I should come back tomorrow and speak to Delilia. My wife went to Fat Burger and wouldn't you know it, a place we have never been to gave my wife three 20 oz cups to fill water with, along with straws and lids, while offering a polite "hello and how can I help?" We didn't receive any level of friendliness from Ana at all. She was uncompromising in her belief that it was more important for her to be right, than to do the right thing. It's scary to think this person is a manager and will be training other staff at this location, that they will learn from her to be unfriendly. That they will look to her for answers and she will only create more problems. I don't know what her problem was, I know personal things can happen and some people just have a bad day, but I can't help but feel like she took it out on us. Was it because of the color of our skin? Was it because of how much food we ordered? Was it because we said please and thank you? I don't know, but it worked. She nuked our day and our love of Sbarros. It's dead. My son simply could not understand why she wouldn't give him a water, and thankfully I was presented with the wonderful teaching opportunity that we're not going to focus on the people that don't care about us and do not want our business, like Ana and Sbarro, but rather we will care and support the ones that do, like our new friends at Fat Burger.