[ReneeBausch]

My husband and I had entered the town of Turangi late the night of April 16th, 2007 and searched for a place to have a drink and potentially something to eat. We noticed that the lights at Valentino’s were lit, and decided to try the door. Since it was opened, we walk up the stairs and heard a woman’s voice say hello. She saw me first and said “How can I help?”. I asked if my husband and I could sit and have a drink but when my husband walked around the corner, she was quick to respond “No I’m sorry you can’t”. My husband asked her if we needed to buy food in order to have a drink and she simply said “We are closed”. I asked her why the door was opened if they were closed and she said “Excuse me…I don’t have to answer that”. I believe at that point the reason she was being so rude and unwilling to serve us was due to the fact that my husband had a black eye resulting from an elbow in the face from a basketball tournament in Hawera 2 days prior. My husband then told her she didn’t have to be rude, we were just asking why the door was open if the restaurant was closed. The waitress then bluntly said “I think you need to leave now…if you want to drink, go to a pub”. I started to get angry with her attitude and said to her “why are you looking at him (my husband) like he murdered someone? He’s a highschool teacher!". I truly felt she was treating us with discrimination due to his blackeye.

After this was said, a man came to the door and was asking her what was happening and she said to him “all they want to do is drink” (which was not true). He said to us “if you eat, then we can give you drinks” which proved to me that they were in fact not closed. But being repulsed by this waitress’ bad attitude we decided to go elsewhere. I have NEVER in my life been treated so badly. We are hard working people (my husband is in fact a highschool teacher in the Wairarapa and I also work in a primary school). We normally have 1-2 glasses of wine before we eat…I don’t understand the problem with this.

A week after the incident, I called the restaurant and spoke to the waitress. I asked her for the owner’s name and restaurant address (to send a letter of complaint) but she would not give me either and proceeded to hang up on me. VERY unprofessional.