Open Letter to The Oasis for Poor Service

Before I move forward with this open letter I do not want any fame/publicity because of this disgusting foolishness, press interviews about this open letter, featured on any news’ outlets for this discrimination, or given/offered any forced complimentary dinner on this company’s dime. This open letter will be featured on this website about the deplorable customer service I received for being an African-American lesbian in Austin, Texas.

On April 6, 2013, I visited the establishment, The Oasis, for the first time with my fiancé. She loves this place and wanted this place to be a possible wedding venue for our upcoming wedding. I had heard other great things about this place and wanted to see for myself if it lived up to its name. After arriving, my fiancé took me to the rooftop/Star Lite to view the sunset. The sunset was amazing off the rooftop but the customer service overall I received was in very poor taste.

After watching the sunset, we went down to the ground floor to make our reservations to be seated inside. The host seemed in great spirits until I stepped to the podium. Her demeanor changed completely as my fiancé made our reservations. She aggressively handed the pager to us as if she was appalled. She informed us that the wait time would be approximately 15 to 20 minutes. I didn’t see the problem with waiting because that is MOST INDIVIDUALS do when they go to any an expensive restaurant but I noticed that several other customers that came after us were being paged before us. After waiting for 40 minutes, my fiancé went to the host to ask what the time frame was for us to be seated. The host had informed her that all pagers had gone off. How could that be possible when ours never did? Did we receive a faulty one? Or did the host forget to put us on the list?

After waiting another 7 minutes before being seated, I was already done with The Oasis for its lack of professional decorum. It took 15 minutes to even get a waitress/waiter to our table for a simple drink order then another additional 15 minutes for us to be served. My fiancé have come out to this place multiple times and she has never had any problems with service.

I’m trying to figure out since I am an African American woman who dresses masculine, were we treated this way? My fiance has never been treated that way until that day until she was with me.

I would have rather been told bluntly that I wasn’t going to get any service because of my appearance then given the utmost disrespect from people.

My Open Letter: