N & S Liquors Eureka

Pretty standard liquor store. Nothing fancy. Lots of skeezy patrons, but hey, it’s a liquor store in downtown Eureka. The college kids at the till were pleasant to deal with. Paid in cash.

This is the kind of place that creates a «bad neighborhood».
This place is so bad I decided to stop shopping here even though it’s convenient to where I work. The owners wife is a rude, unprofessional woman who can’t keep her policies straight.
I work next door, and used to come in practically 5 days a week — because it’s right there, a 30 second walk, in the lot over from our parking lot.
Never again.
If she wasn’t always giving me a hard time about using my debit card, she was making up and changing prices off the top of her head.
She kept changing the minimum required purchase on me, and trying to refuse me service unless I either bought more stuff or paid cash. In her own words the minimum purchase could be: «$ 5, maybe $ 4, sometimes $ 2» — I’m not kidding she actually said that. No. Not okay. (The owner never enforces it, but he told me technically it’s just a 35 cent fee, not something to refuse service over.) She also liked to refuse to honor the marked prices on things (and very, very few things are price marked at all), saying it was «wrong». On things with no price, she’d just make the prices up; one week a banana was 90 cents, another it was a dollar fifty. Once, there were a bunch of caramel Bugles snacks marked with a sharpie as «.25» — I checked that every single bag had the marking, so was going to buy two. I got to the counter and was told it was $ 2.50 each, not $ 0.25 and that the marking was «wrong» without so much as a «sorry about that.»
Never mind that there are actually laws about lowest marked price. You know, enforceable rules that businesses have to follow by the decree of the government? Those silly things?
Considering what she did to ultimately lose my business, I should have just bought the bugles, then taken a picture of the clearly marked «.25» price on the bag, the $ 2.50 on my receipt, and sent it to the city prosecutor, the BBB, or whoever — since she’s so into «busting» people;
The last time I was in there, I had been early to work and was just browsing for a few snacks for my break later. I was carrying a Cliff Bar around, but decided I didn’t want it, because it was nearly $ 4 and they’re less than half that anywhere else, so I put it back where I got it. When I came to the counter without it she asked me for it. When I told her I didn’t want it so she scowls at me and says, loudly, «Please not to try to steal!»
I had no idea what she meant. It took me a second then I realized she was meaning the Cliff bar. I told her I didn’t have the Cliff bar and she shrilled that I did too have it, because she had watched me go into the back of the store where she cannot see, and now I do not have it so I must have stolen it. When I opened my bag and turned out my pockets to show her I didn’t have the little Cliff bar, instead of an apology she started lecturing me to put things back where I found them, not just leave them anywhere, because it creates more work for her and she had not seen me put it back.
Seriously, she was wrong, and instead of admitting it she found something else to get on my case about — which she was also wrong about.
Absolutely charming.
I told her I HAD put it back exactly where I found it, and if she didn’t believe me she could go look at the camera.
She still was staring at me like she didn’t believe me. Only when I decided not to make a purchase after all (she wasn’t getting my money at that point) and I told her I would not be buying anything did she manage the grace to suddenly apologize.
Her apology was curt and insincere, almost begrudging, like when parents force their kids to say it on a playground. She kept repeating it, too, over and over because I refused to acknowledge it.
I put everything back where it belonged so she’d have nothing to complain about and said «No. No ‘sorry’.» as I left.
If it had been just that one incident, I probably would have accepted her apology, but I was sick of her antics over the course of weeks. I’m not going to give my business to a place that makes up their prices when they look at you, changes their policies at their whims, and expends their boredom by treating customers like latent criminals.
I haven’t been back. I’ve been told her family owns the Patriot too, so I’d rather walk two blocks down to the Shell than give that location any business either.
What a trashy little place. For the record, I think if you have the money to start a business and choose for that business to sell dirty magazines and Mad Dog 20/​20, across the street from a pawn shop, you don’t have any right to treat anyone who comes in there like riff-​raff, as CLEARLY riff-​raff is your *target* demographic.
Good for her. I’m sure her choices and attitude will make her very happy in life.
Good Grief.