We drove to Taylor Grocery last night with our 9yo son for our anniversary. I haven’t been since college. My wife and son have never been. We were looking forward to it all week. As per their website, we called to see what the wait time was before we left Oxford. I was told an hour or more. As we pulled up, we realized we forgot the special bottle of wine. So I put our name on the list and asked roughly how long it would be to gauge if I had time to run back to get it. There was a college aged girl who was working the counter that I asked about the wait as she put may name on the list. She said she couldn’t say for sure. I saw she had written down the wrong name for me and politely corrected her. Another older woman from out of nowhere says “the name don’t matter” and that they are busy and will get to us when they get to us. I said ok thank you and decided it would be ok to race back to the condo in Oxford. I left my wife and son there with a tiny Life is Good bag cooler. There were other parties on the porch with bags and cocktails in hand. Some were holding bottles of wine not in bags. While I was driving back to Oxford, the older lady who spoke to me inside comes out to the porch and sees my wife and son among all the other folks waiting. She pointed at the cooler and asked if that was hers. My wife said yes. She said that it needs to get off the property, that it is a dry county, and that my wife has to take that cooler to our car. My wife said I had just left in our car to go to the condo and would be right back. The lady went OFF on my wife that it is a dry county and they can’t have a cooler on their property (while people sitting there had bottles of wine in their laps not in bags). My wife took the cooler down the long porch from the wood floor to the concrete porch of the next building which had no lights turned on inside or out just to comply. She was thoroughly confused what she had done wrong. The lady from Taylor kept fussing. All the other patrons were shocked and silent as this went on. One woman kept saying “oh my gosh. I can’t believe this” over and over. The older woman said “no that is my property take it to his!” without clearly explaining where her property ended and where “his” began. She continued yelling at my wife that the next building is their property too and to get the cooler off. My wife had enough at this point. She walked out into the street, set the cooler down, and asked if she was finally off the property. The lady said “you need to find somewhere else to eat” and pulled out her phone to make a call. Another lady walked up and kindly offered my wife to put the cooler in their golf cart until I got back. That patron said that the older woman is always a bitch to customers and none of the regulars know how she keeps her job unless she is a part owner or related to the owners. The older woman from Taylor was still on the phone down on the other end of the porch as my wife took the cooler to the golf cart and a sheriff’s car pulled up. We do not know if the sheriff’s car was just there by chance or if the lady called them. But the sheriff never got out of his car. My wife and son sat on that golf cart until I got back to get them. I was gone maybe 20-25 minutes total. As we drove back and my wife told me all the details above, our son said “Daddy, that lady was crappy to Mommy. And you know I don’t say that word. Her eyes were mean when she looked at me. I think she has hate in her heart.”
Have any of you ever heard of such a thing there?
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