The Kingsport Town Center Is an Epicenter of Depression & Terrible Customer Service

Sorry, I couldn't think of a shorter or more clever title for this article without losing the point of it all.  For anyone that is lives in this small corner of the world, you probably are familiar with what I (and almost everyone I know) refer to as the Fort Henry Mall.  I refuse to call it anything else because for nearly all of my life it has been named that but in 2008 it was all supposed to change.  In 2008, a huge (for our area) announcement was made that the Fort Henry Mall was going to henceforth be known as the Kingsport

Yeah, this is really it.  Doesn't it look like
the epitome of hip and fun?

Town Center and some major changes were on the way.  Promises of an actual food court, expanded and newer stores, a bowling alley, skating rink, and a Unicorn were all made but 5 years later, the place is more depressing and boring than it was when it was just an empty lot back in 1975.  It seems that every major store or eatery has left the building in those 5 years since the announcement.  Every time that I go to this sad hull of economic depression it seems that something else is missing or something has closed.  It's like a really terrible surprise when you step foot through the same exact dirty glass doors onto the cracked tile and stained carpet that has been there probably since the early 80's.  When things first started closing down like the Chik-Fil-A and Radioshack, I expected that they would promptly be replaced with something better.  Instead the Radioshack has practically been boarded up and the old Chik-Fil-A has had a series of independent restaurant disasters.  Nothing got better, it got worse.  The actual number of stores is probably half of what it was 5 years ago...and then the movie theater closed.  What is the point?

I say all this because it is now a terrible, terrible place.  It's almost like the souls of the deceased failed businesses that have came through have seeped into the embodiment of remaining employees of the mall.  My wife still goes to the FHM for certain things like getting her nails done or getting her make-up, and sometimes I tag along.  Tonight was one of those nights.  She asked me if I wanted to take our kids to eat in one of the two remaining "restaurants" of the mall while she got her pedicure.  Not wanting to cook nor clean it up, I said "sure".  Now on the lower level of the "mall" is a "restaurant" called Piccadilly.  No, it is not the storied street and social center in London, no it is actually a dingy, dark, low-quality, over-priced cafeteria that employees the most hateful, disgruntled, fuzzy-headed women in the greater Tri-Cities area.  "Why in God's name would you go there?" you may be asking.  Well, I don't have any answers that I can be proud of nor find valid.  Since my wife was getting her nails done directly across from us, I just thought it was sensible.  We arrived at the below-school-quality-cafeteria at about 7:45 and grabbed a tray to go through line and have our slop distributed to us.  We were quickly informed that they closed at 8pm but that they would still serve us by a portly, grease woman.  How very kind I thought, they are open for another 15 minutes and have all of this food available and they are still going to serve us?  As we trudged through the line, my kids were repeatedly told by the serving wench what they couldn't have.  Keep in mind they were closing in 15 minutes and whatever isn't sold is thrown out, but we still have Kim Jong-Il of the cafeteria telling the kids what couldn't be served on a kids meal.  Two of my kids wanted fried chicken, Jong-Il informed them that

What eating at Piccadilly feels like

they were allowed to have two chicken legs with their meal.  There was only one chicken leg left along with 2 thighs and about 6 or 7 chicken breasts.  Server Jong-Il gave my first child the leg and thigh after much debate with Manager Hitler and told my second child that he could only have the remaining thigh.  Perplexed, I asked Hitler if he could just get one breast instead.  "No!!  Breasts don't go on the kid's meal, sir" she replied.  I could tell it was about to get stupid and I thought I might as well play along.  "Aren't you all getting ready to close anyway?  Do you think it's really going to make a difference?" I asked.  "Yes, we can't do that.  What do you want for your sides, sir?" Jong-Il replied.  She brushed my stupid, illogical question off and was ready to move along.  Every item that we asked for was a problem and a standoff.  Since I so stupidly got hush-puppies with my frozen fish, I was not allowed to have a nice, hot dinner roll.  "It'll be $1.50 extra" Jong-Il informed me.  No, I'm not giving you any more money than I'm already obligated to give at this point I told her.  My kids stupidly chose the wrong cup size for their kids

Our Server Jong-Il

meal and instead of calling it square, Server Jong-Il told them to pour out the drinks that they had, and go back and get the smaller kiddie cups.  I asked her if that sounded logical to her, and she didn't appear to understand the question based upon the dumbfounded look upon her face.  When the kids returned from trading in their washable, reusable 18 oz. plastic cups for the non-biodegradable 10 oz. Styrofoam cups, both Jong-Il and Hitler seemed pleased and rang up our slop for $19.11.  I don't think I really need to tell you, dear reader, how terrible the food was but I'll give a quick mental picture.  Imagine a child going to a really impoverished school and they are an hour late for lunch and the cafeteria worker gives him the barely warmed-over leftovers scraped from the pans.  Now imagine being jealous of that.  That is the level of food we are dealing with here. One last kicker about the whole Picadilly experience, refills on drinks were free.

Now as we are dejectedly getting up to leave we have to pass by the slop line and I noticed that the chicken breasts that my son couldn't have and the nice warm roll that I couldn't have were both being tossed into a giant industrial sized garbage can along with all the other uneaten food.  Now I don't feel that we were necessarily entitled to said food but to waste it with such gusto really irritated me.  Greasy Server Jong-Il couldn't just take one of her sausage hands and give my kid a freaking chicken breast because it didn't go with the meal but yet she can shovel it into a garbage can?  I can get over that, I can forgive that but the pure fact that they were wasting this terrible food was ridiculous.  But I will expound on that a little bit more in a moment.

So we've left the pig trough and told my wife about the traumatic dining experience and informed her that she would unfortunately not be able to enjoy the same food we did since they were now closed and all the food was in the garbage.  She looked relived and instead went and got a sandwich from a Italian Village.  I have zero bad things to say about Italian Village.  They are great and far too good to be lumped into this shell of broken dreams know as the Kingsport Town Center.  Anyway, the kids belly's were not quite satisfied so we made our way to the American Cookie Company for some sweet treats.  At this time it was about 8:58 or so but not quite on the 9:00 closed down time.  I approached the fully-lit, fully-stocked with cookies, counter and before I could get a word out of my mouth the 19 year old douche-canoe told me that he had

My suggestion for their new logo

already closed the register.  I sadly looked at all the delicious cookies, cookie cake, and brownies as did my kids but I understand once you close down your register it's kind of a pain in the ass.  I didn't argue even though it was still not quite 9:00 and I politely said, "ok".  We sat down not 15 feet from the cookie joint and watched the little douche-canoe chat up some girls and casually clean up.  As my wife was finishing her sandwich, I noticed they too were actually taking these delicious, sinful little treats and dumping them by the piles into a similar trash can as I had seen earlier.  My youngest son saw this too and asked if maybe they would let them have one before they threw them out.  So I took my six year old by the hand up to the counter and once again before I could get a word out, douche-canoe interjected.  "We can't give you any.  It's against the rules.  We can't even hand you one."  That seemed a little redundant to me but whatever.  I asked him, "don't you think that this is the least bit retarded?"  As he continued to shovel more of the yummy goodness into the can, he said "I guess, kind of."  I wasn't satisfied, I needed him to know how completely ridiculous this was.  I needed him to understand that what his boss or whoever told him to this was an idiotic sociopath with zero common sense.  I leaned in and told him this and asked, "Do you really grasp this concept?  Do you understand the level of stupidity this is at?"  I think he understood because he was able to shake away a wisp of hair and nod.  To put it all into perspective, my 6 year old understands the concept of discarding food in front of children makes one an asshole.

What did I witness tonight?  I watched food that could have easily been donated to a shelter be thrown into a can...twice.  I watched two businesses basically tell a customer to go f**k themselves.  Did Server Jong-Il, Manager Hitler, or Teenage douche-canoe really think that doing a nice thing or the right thing was going to cause Satan to come riding in on dragon-headed horse through the ceiling and disembowel them all?  I'm
glad that these good local Kingsport businesses are hard at work not feeding any of the homeless or helping out the community in any way.  Forget my petty little wants, I can get over it even though I still think it's inconceivably absurd, but the fact that they can't take an extra step or two to not donate their food to the needy is unforgivable.