Cargo Coffee — Restaurant in Madison

I have been a customer of both cargo coffee locations in Madison for many years. Absolutely LOVE their food and the ambiance in their restaurants. That said, I have now had multiple instances of waitstaff being impatient, unfriendly and down right rude at the East Washington cafe. In one instance I was going through the drive thru and asked a clarifying question about the menu. Instead of just answering my question, the server yelled at me in a harsh tone and rolled her eyes, as though I was a moron and somehow bothering her. I might have understood the impatience on some level, had it been busy, but this was not during the morning rush, and there was absolutely no reason to be so rude. And then today, I stopped by to eat lunch, and a different staff person at the walkup counter, was grumpy ,passive aggressive and acted like I was wasting her time by placing my order- and when my latte came up at the counter, I asked the same wait staff (who was not waiting on anyone at the time) a question to verify that the latte was mine and rather than just look at it and say yes, she came over to the drink, abruptly pulled down the sleeve that was covering my initial, and shoved it at me. This sort of behavior by waitstaff is really unfortunate, because it makes people not want to come back. I used to really love going there. For now I will only go to the Park Street location, I guess…hopefully they will continue to give the pleasant, friendly, helpful service they are known for…otherwise, I will be moving on to...

This place seems pretty cool, but unfortunately the Meetup group that I was meeting there ruined my entire experience. I spent at least five minutes, looking through a relatively small place for this group who said that they would have a sign out. The only sign was laying flat on the table where it couldn’t be read from more than 3 feet away.

I will come back for this event frequently if the meetup group is not there. It’s amazing how clueless meetup group leaders are about how it feels to try to approach a group of complete strangers. It’s bad enough that Wisconsin culture mistrusts outsiders like it’s the 1950s… those of us who don’t have a network locally already need to be welcomed in. This group gave me dirty looks for asking why the sign was laying flat, and then all turned away from me without saying hi or even greeting me. Not one person told me their name.

The discussion in this group on the app reminded people to tip while they’re there… it sounds like this group is a negative...

I loved this coffee shop as I used to come here all the time when I worked nearby. Recently, I’ve had terrible customer service at the drive thru. She misheard our order and proceeded to speak to us with a condescending, annoyed tone when we kindly asked for clarification regarding where the rest of it was. We had ordered one chix wrap, one tea, and one croissant sandwich. When we asked where the croissant sandwich was, she seemed annoyed we were even asking and acted like we didn’t order it and were trying to scam her. She then came back with a cold, plain croissant without a bag or any packaging like we ruined her whole day. At first, we also attributed it to maybe a bad day but after reading other reviews, it seems like this is a consistent issue. Fast food chain drive-thrus have significantly better, kinder, and more efficient service. As a recommendation, there are other jobs that are not...