Pizza Hut — Restaurant in Town of Sidney

While I would never ever eat at a place where people sample the buffet items with their bare hands before plating their salads and where the long-empty hand sanitizing station is covered in a thick film of speckly dust and where the staff ALWAYS seems harried and scrambling even when no one or few people are actually there, this review is mostly centered around a nightmarish, debilitating, shocking encounter I had with the Regional Manager, Melanie, who was on front end duty the night in question.

I'm almost 50 now, I've been profoundly deaf my whole life, fighting tooth and nail to get by out here surrounded by people who unfortunately can be jerks about my situation. I have many many stories and many people stick out as the worst I've ever encountered in my colorful, well-traveled life....

Melanie, the Regional Manager at Sidney Pizza Hut, wins the prize as the absolute worst, most detestable, most viciously ableist person I've ever run into. This encounter will stick with me until I'm unalive.

Melanie, the Regional Manager, who bragged right to my face that there was nothing I could do because "I AM THE REGIONAL MANAGER, NO ONE'S ABOVE ME." (that's a real quote, readers).

Melanie, the Regional Manager, who refused to write down her long-winded, rambling excuse for why she was treating me as less than human, who looked at me right into my eyes with the confidence of a executioner who relishes their role and said "NO," when I very calmly asked her to write down all her ranting instead of trying to shoo me away with the worst attitude in the Southern Tier. Even after I mentioned that my hearing aid was broken and I was having a hard time keeping up (which is 100% true).

She even made sure to mouth it instead of saying it normally, just to rub it in just to make sure I knew that she knew I was deaf and simply did not care.

Melanie, the Regional Manager, who yanked my order out of my hands because I did not respond correctly to her entirely unnecessary and unprofessional query, turned her back to me without any discussion and placed it back into the warmer.

Melanie, the Regional Manager, who all but screamed in my face, "we're busy!" as if if that excused her contemptible behavior.

Melanie, the Regional Manager, who scribbled "Regional Manager" and pointed at her chest when I politely wrote a note asking her for her name and a phone number where I could lodge an ADA accessibility complaint.

Melaine, the Regional Manager, who wrote down HER OWN CELL # instead of a complaint # like I asked for. Perhaps she thinks I'm stupid and would not be able to reach out to someone to let them know that they have a immature, offensive child-like cretin operating as the face of their business. Unfortunately for her, I'm a published journalist and long-time deaf professional advocate for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (find me on Linked In).

I'm holding out some details while I continue to consider my legal options.

Melanie, congratulations, you've been nominated by Yours Truly as the most UN DEAF FRIENDLY customer service person I've encountered in my 6 plus years here.

Pizza Hut corporation, I used to work for you guys for awhile. I've always liked you as I was treated pretty well by my manager in Rochester (early 2000s, I was even employee of the month in December 2003 lol).

Now, I wonder what's going on, why are you allowing a truly awful human being to destroy your reputation with good folks like me.

Melanie Brienza, if you are truly the face of this Pizza Hut, truly the Lord and God of the place as you so brazenly insisted, you should be ashamed of your conduct, embarrassed. I can't imagine what else is going on over there. I've told as many people about this as I can and already convinced a couple regulars to never order from there again.

Hope it was worth it. I hope your little power trip that was completely unauthorized, blatantly illegal and hurtful...

To whom it may concern,

Today I had a horrible experience at Pizza Hut, Sidney center NY. My cousin and I wanted to order Bread Sticks and wings.

We walked into the establishment, cracking a couple jokes because that's how we are. We weren't loud or anything but we did quiet down.

When we walked in, there was nobody at the entrance to greet us. We waited 10 minutes to get seated. When we were finally greeted, our server didn't even introduce herself. We sat and order drinks, she wasn't nice in the slightest. When she brought our drinks and she poured some of my drink on the floor. We ordered our food and she still kept with her rude additiude. When she brought our bread sticks but she came up to our table and did when my chef in culinary calls a food auction. She didn't set the food down nicely, like threw it down on our table. So, we started eating the bread sticks and it had no taste and was dried out. We got our chicken wings, mind you we ordered 16 medium sauce boneless chicken wings, we only got 8 wings and there was literally no sauce. The wings weren't even good. So, my cousin and I continued eating our bread sticks, waiting for the waitress. When she finally came to the table, I told her that we only got half of our order and we wanted more medium sauce on the other half of the wings. She replied, "what do you want me to do about it" and "So?" After explaining it to her again, she then said that she would complete the order. A minute after she left she came back and gave us our receipt, but we weren't even done. I read the bill and she charged us for 2 adult buffets which hiked our bill up. I tried to signal her with my eyes so I could talk to her about it but she would only speed past our table. I got so annoyed that I called her over but she raced past me and then turned around and responded, "Yes?" with so much annoyance. I explained how she charged us for something we didn't order and didn't add our bread sticks. She took the bill and said okay. A minute later she came back over and said that she didn't understand my issue. I explained it again and then she said she would fix it. She brought my bill back and she only took one buffet off and put our bread sticks on. I immediately called her back which got me a glare from her. I told her my issue and she finnaly correctly fixed it. We wanted to leave so as soon as I got the fixed bill, I paid. Note, we didn't eat the wings and never got our other 8 wings. My cousin and I gave our wings to another table that had been waiting 30 minutes for breadsticks. As soon as we left, we called pizza hut and filed a report.

I don't like speaking ill on establishments but this was unnecessary. I'm taking Culinary arts at BOCES and going into the food industry. I know that the way I was treated doesn't just affect their establishment, it affects the food...

Look, it's the nature of the beast of fast food. Last time I went they had to have been short staffed because there were tons of people waiting to order and pickup, one came in and had never received their delivery, one came in and had been waiting for curbside for 30 minutes, all within the time I was waiting to pick up a small order of bread sticks. It was obviously a bad day for them.

I've not had these issues before, so in general my experience has been pretty chill. I always order online because of pizza huts deals available on there and I pickup because I'm out of range for delivery. Usually my food is ready and is cooked fine.

One other issue I had was they ran my card and thought it didn't go through and ran it again. I confirmed to them that it showed twice on my online banking but they insisted that the second one would drop off when I knew it wasn't like a typical duplication. No surprise it didn't and I ended up having to call pizza hut headquarters because the store had no idea what to do and wouldn't help.

They're just people trying to work to feed themselves, so I don't really expect much. It's a hit or miss, but the only pizza hut around if you are craving them in particular. So have at it as you will.

TL:DR Unless you want something you can only get from a pizza hut, just go to one of the MANY other pizza options in the area. There are fantastic choices like Gavins. Heck, Mirabito pizza is some of the best pizza I've had and service is always simple, quick, &...