Jonah’s Blog

I went to the Tea Lounge on Seventh Avenue and 10th Street in Park Slope today. For those of you not living in Brooklyn, there are two Tea Lounges in Park Slope, both very trendy, and both have great tea.

But in many ways the Tea Lounge really sucks. It is not uncommon to hear ridiculously loud crappy post-punk alternative music blaring over the stereo while customers try to read.

Today I had probably the worst experience I’ve ever had there.

There was this dark-haired woman in her early twenties behind the counter with the other two employees when we got there. She was going on and on about how drunk she got last night and how she and whoever she was with got to the Tea Lounge at around 3 a.m. and started closing the place, including counting the money in the cash register.

“You have no idea how long it took us to count out the drawer,” she told her coworkers. Apparently it takes longer to count large sums of money drunk.

Then my friend Kate tried to put in an order. The girl with the dark hair told Kate she would not help her, because she wasn’t working.

“Normally I’m a lot nicer about it, but I am so hung over today,” she said.

We were eventually served and took seats on one of the couches to read our newspapers. Steadily the music got worse, and as it got worse it got louder. Sick of hearing me bitch about it, Kate suggested I ask the people behind the counter to turn it down.

I walked up to the counter and asked a woman – not the same one – to lower the volume. She called to one of her coworkers in a slightly annoyed voice, and turned to me and said, “Just give me a minute.”

“That’s fine, no problem,” I said and sauntered back to Kate and the couch very proud of myself.

A half hour later the music was just as crappy and just as loud as ever. We left.