Uncommon Grounds Coffee & Bagels - Western Avenue — Restaurant in City of Albany

I’m here to give 1 star for the lack of common sense of staff during my experience today 3/3/24 around 10am. I’m standing in line and notice an employee is behind the counter with a bloody nose sitting. Their paper towel is very bloody. Not just one spot but several! My 11 year old son pointed it out to me and mentioned “Uh isn’t that unsafe and can spread bloodbourne pathogens?” I get to the register and ask the cashier why there is an employee sitting behind the counter with a very bloody nose while they are making food. All she does is smile and ask what she can get me. No explanation and even my son noticed that she tried to brush it off. I literally had to ask where the manager is and question her about the same thing. I didn’t even order until something was done about this. I then proceed to tell her to ask the employee to remove himself to the back, bathroom, or go home. This is a place where you’re handling food & you have someone with a bloody napkin to their nose behind the food counter. I’m honestly disgusted and disappointed because this was my favorite spot hence why I rated everything else 5 stars. My son and I still ordered then got to the car and couldn’t even process what we saw. I’m shocked no one else spoke up but I am a first responder for the VA Hospital and cannot just allow this to occur. If my 11 year old understood the implications of this situation then so should adults working food service. I did not eat my food and will not ever return. Now this makes me question what else is allowed here. I hope the owner sees this message and properly trains staff on OSHA...

I’m writing this on behalf of my wife, who had an absolutely horrible experience at this bagel shop today. We live just a block away and have been here around 5 times, but after today, we will never return (out of the 5 times, we've had one good experience, 2 really bad experiences, and 2 okay experiences). Today, there was a male worker at the register—blonde hair, piercings, and white—and he was incredibly rude to my wife. She was simply trying to pay for a bag of day-old bagels, as she has done countless times before, and usually, she’s able to bypass the line when it’s just a quick purchase. The people in front of her had no issue with her going to the register first, but this guy became aggressive, telling her to go to the back of the line, even though she wasn’t ordering anything.

She was calm and understanding, but he had absolutely no patience or empathy, and his attitude was downright disrespectful. To make matters worse, his sense of entitlement and rude behavior made her so upset that she started tearing up. The person in front of her even offered to buy her food because of how badly this worker was treating her. That’s how out of line he was.

We’ve had poor experiences at this shop before, but today was the breaking point. My wife has always been kind and patient with staff, but this guy clearly has no business working the front register. I’m really disappointed because we were really TRYING to like this establishment, but after this, we’ll be taking our business elsewhere. If you're looking for a café with decent service, this is definitely...

I went in today with my father to purchase 3 bagels we ended up buying 6 and we were told after we paid, that we could only have one apple cinnamon bagel. The manager came over and said only one apple cinnamon bagel per bulk order(they had over a dozen)- I offered to pay separately for each and she said no. Even though there were two of us in the store they would one sell one cinnamon apple bagel.

I had the manager refund me for the bagels I wasn’t getting. She told me it was corporate policy even though it was not posted anywhere. Every single one of these stores has signage with specials and this was not listed anywhere.

I left and came back to the store and the manager refused to sell me another apple cinnamon bagel. I do not understand how this policy is enforced equally. Do they wait Or remember every customer and deny them service? If they have a policy like this they should have posted it. They could have at-least sold one to my father or sold me two because there were two of us.

You might think this is a lot to go through for 2 cinnamon apple bagels, but that’s my point. They should have made some effort to explain the policy instead of immediately becoming confrontational. They accepted payment then refused me service. They get refused me multiple times and were rude and couldn’t explain the policy that only the manager...