Charley's Place — Restaurant in Phoenix

We've been going here every Saturday night for weeks now for music bingo. It has become a huge family outing with three generations joining to spend time together with their friends, cousins and significant others. Because there are so many of us joining in on the fun, we often win which lately seems to be annoying patrons and workers. You would think the fact that we keep bringing more people in would be exactly what a business would want but that doesn't seem to be the case. Because we often win bingo, we have gift cards towards our purchases each week. We often either buy above what we have in gift cards or forfeit the difference AND ALWAYS tip decently. I've had a pleasant experience most evenings but last night our waitress was just rude. We seemed to be annoying her. Really tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because there were a lot of us, plus other customers and it seemed to be only her serving everyone. I get that is a ton of stress. I get waiting longer for food. I get forgetting a soda. What I don't get is the way we were talked to several times by her. (I work in customer service/management and I can't imagine speaking to a client/customer with so much disgust and contempt.) I will also note that I matched her negative energy with positivity, never stooping to her tone and making comments about understanding she has a ton on her plate in attempts to de-escalate her negative interactions. Interaction She did not hear my friend say she has a gift certificate and charged the full amount to her card. My friend was upset and said something and the waitress told her she never heard about the gift card until now and that she didn't have to make a big deal about it, she could reverse it and check it out again. It wasn't what she said, it was how she said it. She said it like she was talking to a small child who didn't understand something simple with clear annoyance in her voice. No apology, no accountability. The correct response to a scenario like this is ,"I am so sorry, I did not hear you mention that. I will gladly reverse that charge and check it out correctly. Thank you for bringing that to my attention." BLAST( believe, listen, apologize, solve, thank) method for customer interactions and de-escalating situations while empowering employees with tools needed to retain customers in not so great situations goes a long way. Fast forward, my son, my fiance and I all have separate bills. My son has a $20 gift card, my fiance has a $20 gift card and I have a $15 gift card. We all put a card on file. My fiance had to use one of my cards as we brought cash as we never put cards on before. Anyway, as she is helping my son, his total was like $13 and he was forfeiting the rest of his gift card and was asking if he could tip her on apple pay. She was a bit confused on how to do that and said she would need to charge something to do it, so I said I would cover his tip as well as my tip and my fiance. So she grabbed all our gift cards and left. My fiance total was $18 so he forfeited $2. My total was exactly $15. So, none of us owed anything, we just needed to tip. She comes back like 15 min later and out of nowhere very rudely states that we need to come check out at the counter when we are done because our bills are causing too much chaos for her. I politely said no problem. We finish playing and I go up to settle mine. She asks how much my gift card was and I say $15. Tell her I just need to tip and get my card. She says ok, but she needs my gift card. I told her she took it already and she adamantly states she only took my fiance's. Im like, "no, you took all of them and then came back and told us we were causing too much chaos. " she gets even more annoyed and rude and insists she never took mine. Im about to cry at this point when she looks down and says, "oh here it is." You think a person in customer service would at this point say sorry for the mix up but nope, she instead says, "see this is what I mean...

I have to edit my review, as it has changed since the last time I was here.

We used to come here for karaoke all the time. The food was great, it was always our favorite dive bar to occupy. We kinda went away for a while and came back to a newly renovated place. But I didn’t know any of the new customers. These were all new people.

One thing I have to say is, Rob is a GREAT cook. So thank you Rob

After a couple visits under the newer ownership, I don’t think we’ll be returning here. It’s a completely different vibe, and for the worse. It’s very clear that these owners have never owned a business before let alone a bar restaurant. It feels like they were bored one day and said “let’s buy a bar.” All of the good bartenders are gone, and I’ve seen a few one time but not again. Which shows me that either they don’t want a job or the owners don’t want them. But my impression is of the latter.

Also can I say that it’s not a really good image when one of the owners shows up loaded and acting not so...

This truly is a very personal neighborhood bar. I got a bacon cheeseburger and it was one of the best hamburgers that I've had for a long time. Served with shoestring french fries and coke products. The hamburger was cooked to order which is medium rare. Kelly the bartender was very friendly as soon as we walked in and sat down at the bar. My wife had the fish and chips and they were very good also. not a very large selection of microbreweries but they had one or two with the standard beers of Budweiser and coors. they also have four pool tables two dart boards and five tables that you could play cards on. Right now they have a Wednesday night special of steak and it is a very good deal. They also have karaoke night but I'm not sure what night.we have a client in the area and we are going to make sure we schedule them for Wednesday night so we can come here and have...