How not to run a bar (No. 778)

Or, Rickshaw fucks up AGAIN.

I complained a little while ago that the Stella Artois at Rickshaw has been all but removed from the early evening Happy Hour, since it is now offered at a paltry - thoroughly vexing - discount of just 5kuai per 500ml glass.

You wouldn't think they could do anything to make this nonsensical and irritating policy worse, but...... over the past few weeks they have introduced a new 15% surcharge on everything. This is not advertised anywhere, as far as I can see. The staff do not alert you to this fact when they take your order. They are unable to explain the reason for it when challenged. I have heard it conjectured that it is intended as a 'service charge' - which is pretty rich! 15% is kind of high for a service charge. And the service at Rickshaw is notoriously wayward. And it's hard to justify a service charge on drink orders only - especially when you've served yourself at the bar (paradoxically enough, the waitresses are much more alert and attentive when the place is moderately crowded; when business is slow, they invariably slide into a bored torpor and gaze vacantly into space for minutes at a time). No, I think this must be a pure-and-simple Olympic price gouge. And it appears to have backfired on them bigtime, because the place was fairly deserted the two or three times I looked in there during the Olympics.

This stealth surcharge is particularly infuriating when you are drinking Stella on Happy Hour, because 15% happens to be - almost exactly - the amount of their puny Happy Hour discount on this brew. In fact, I think they should have given me 5mao back on each drink. But they'd forgotten to do this, or miscalculated on my first two drinks, and so, when I made to leave, they solemnly tried to present me with 5mao change on a 105kuai tab. 5mao!! Unbelievably fucking STUPID! I told them to keep it.

I've seen a couple of other punters get similarly exasperated over this outrage. Unfortunately, there never seems to be anyone around with whom to take up these gripes any more..... presumably because the owners are all too busy counting their money over at their new uber-successful venture, Saddle Cantina.

Rickshaw now rather has the feel of an abandoned child, and it is, I suspect, about to make a rapid slide from mediocrity (on a good day) into utter crappiness. I shan't much miss it.