Black People! My people... Do NOT patronize this business. You have been warned.
This Hookah Lounge was completely empty until my people showed up! If you look at my pictures you will see we are the only ones there.
The way the owner and his workers swarmed us like money hungry blood hounds and uncomfortably stood over us yelling and demanding payment for items that were not even ordered was a nightmare. The employees at Ali Baba Hookah Lounge should be ashamed by the way they treated us. We were not even 5 mins into the establishment before the staff was in our faces impatiently begging for money. ( Excuse me, can we breathe? Can we sit? Can we look at a menu) They never welcomed us, never showed compassion, never smiled nor never asked if we needing anything. Instead they bum rushed us, treaded us with the most disgusting amount of terrible customer service. They purposely took their time on hookah refills and coal changes and only gave us old small coals. Not even to top off ever last one of those workers were musty. Good hygiene should be taken seriously when working face to face with the public.
And yes, I do believe my friends and I were treaded this way because we are Black.
This past Saturday several people I know had decided to come to this hookah lounge. Majority of us are apart if a Black Run club and we celebrated 3 years of success. We started the day with a run, Brunch, Day party then we found a hookah lounge central for every and out out of state friends to meet at. We chose AliBaba because It looked nice and has a big capacity and not typically busy. ( from the few times I've gone in the past )
Once I arrived , there was literally 1 other person there before me. I informed the owner/manager guy that I had some people coming and there would probably be more. he was super adamant on knowing the guest head count. But I could only be sure of about 10. He gave me a section informed me the rules which is 2 people to a hookah and 3 hookahs on the table.. okay and he would charge $20
A person after 9:30 OKAY!
Once people started to arrive, that's when things began to get uncomfortable.
The owner and a swarm of his workers surrounded around my people who had just walked in and began to demand them to pay for hookah, cups, ice, and where they were sitting. Confused and not even greeted or made to feel welcome they asked them to give them a min so they could adjust and to even see if they were gonna buy it or not. Or to see if this is where they wanted to stay.
The owner then came back to me and another friend of mine demanding us to make the other people pay for the hookah or pay 300 . This went on for about 25 min then the workers began to get rude and pushy. So people just started to pay for hookahs so they could leave them alone. The workers were so busy harassing other people, they had failed to bring me my cups and ice I had paid for now going on 30 mins. A particular means I ended up going back and forth about 2 red solo cups and ice because he was trying to charge me , I had already paid. Then he wanted to change me for Ice. By this time I'm already extremely irritated and unpleased with the way my people are being treated. The fact this man wants to charge me for Ice completely sent me ...
Mind you some people were just there to chill. This is a BYOB place and they were prepared to pay for that and that was all. The owner then threatened to call the police on us and kick us out because people were expressing how rude he and his workers were. The owner tried to lie and say they don't speak English... but that was a lie. They also turned off the music for about 20 mins. Until people paid... even after they already paid ...
It was a complete joke how we were treaded. If you looked around you would see all the people who were there were not enjoying them self. The fact others got bullied out of buying a hookah . Some people tried to have an off to the side conversation with the owner on why he was so rude and nasty with us. However he continued to be rude mean and nasty. And would shut the conversation down with calling the cops . But once he had collected money. read more