A visit to our favourite restaurants or cafes is nothing short of an experience, especially in the post-pandemic era. We hit our much-loved local haunts for a vibrant atmosphere, refreshing drinks and good food. While paying for the services at any restaurant, there are certain things that we automatically assume are included in the price of the dishes. For instance, the cost of the electricity, rentals of the restaurant space, ingredients used in cooking and more. Imagine the surprise of a customer when his bill at a cafe included the charge of him occupying space there! Believe it or not, a cafe in Guatemala billed a customer for ‘occupational space’. Take a look at the tweet here:

Los Q58.30 más caros de la historia. Vaya trolleada al restaurante. pic.twitter.com/WUf1FrHbHU— JPDardónP (@jpdardon) August 31, 2022

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The tweet was shared by user @jpdardon and it was a picture of the invoice from the café called ‘La Esquina Coffee Shop’ located in the city of Quetzaltenago in Guatemala. There were three items in the bill mentioned in Spanish and the total came out to be 58 Quetzales or ‘Q’, which is the currency used in the country. While canned soda cost Q8, potatoes with cheese cost Q20, and ‘occupational space’ was billed at a whopping Q25. “The most expensive Q58.30 in history. Go troll the restaurant,” wrote the user in his tweet in Spanish.

It is unclear what the restaurant meant by ‘occupational space’ and why they charged the customer for it. Some reports suggested it was for the use of the restroom, while other users speculated it was for the use of table and chair at the restaurant. A number of Twitter users were infuriated by the bill shared on Twitter, which was circulated across platforms. “The cost of a client who consumes little -generally- is very high,” said one response while another wrote, “I’ve been to that cafe more than once (about a year ago) I must say that it’s so lonely, that I wonder if it’s because of this.”

Meanwhile, the La Esquina Coffee Shop sat up and took notice of the chatter online. They issued a statement about this incident and said it was an ‘involuntary serious error’ that was a one-time, isolated occurrence and not the policy. They further said that the error had already been corrected in their system and asked for an apology for the same. “Being an isolated error for which in the most humble way we ask for a public apology to our appreciable and faithful clientele,” they wrote in the statement. Take a look at their post on Instagram:

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“We inform that our administration is already doing everything possible to contact the affected person to make said refund and compensate for the provocative damage, which should not be carried out since it is not according to our principles,” wrote the Guatemala café in Spanish. “Let us emphasise that this type of collection has never been made in the past, nor will it be made,” they added.

What do you think of the cafe billing its customer for occupational space? Tell us in the comments.