D&D Brewery and Hotel... for us great place with unfriendly staff

I wouldn't be so hard on the people working at the D+D brewery. They have to work for an arrogant ugly American bastard. ( arrogant --adv.~ offensively exaggerating one's own importance). How somebody in Honduras could be so culturally unaware to just order his employees around in the manner we saw was surprising. I can't imagine they come to work with a big smile. I'm surprised they come to work for him at all.Warm,not very good beer, nothing special for a location,tension between owner and staff. I don't understand what other people see is the attraction. Once was enough.

You just never know... I was reading some raving reviews of the place and him, granted, some of them were on his website, but others weren't. Seems some people really had a great time there and enjoyed talking with him. I mean, man, Jim, what the heck happened there to prompt your comments? Had to have been pretty bad, and I'm not doubting you at all, it's just that this points out how hard it can be to draw an accurate bead on a place until you've been there. I do think it would be helpful to the forum, however, if you were to share what exactly happened there instead of just the ugly american comments. You've got me curious. Thanks

Actually Jim jogged my memory a bit and I think he's on to something. I didn't personaly see any of Robert's bad behavior but the first day we were there, one of the woman who worked there mentioned something about Robert getting very, very angy with workers sometimes because he thought they were over charging people on purpose.

This brings up another gripe about the place in that they use the tab system which invites errors along the way. In the few places that I have stayed in where they start a tab from the beginning of your stay i think nearly every time there was a discrepency when paying the bill.

What's more, they add like 12% tax to everything and say, hey that's the law. Nowhere else in Honduras did I ever run into seeing a price and then some tax being added on at the register. I smell bull...

And by the way, did everyone else here drink the tap water? I was told that Robert filtered all of the water at the D&D because of the brewing process....
I had a funny stomach for the rest of my trip after staying there....

He looks like a typical gringo gone south, white tennis shoes and all....
[http://www.dd-brewery.com/about.htm]

I went to D&D last year but just to eat lunch as all the rooms were full. It was okay but without question it has been given too much hype. I have had various friends that also live here in Honduras visit, and none of them have been impressed, but not to the point of leaving for another hotel, perhaps it is just all too much hype.

I did want to comment on the tax comment, yes everyone charges the 12 percent but they say it is included in the price of the item. The reason that they can do this is they dont claim to the government that they have had as many sales as they really have, only a fraction. So I am guessing that D&D might actually be claiming all the sales that make, so they have to add the sales tax at the end. Just a guess.

My sincere apologies to the owner of d+d brewery for the bastard part of my comment; early morning coffee!! But the arrogant part stands. Yes I'll admit he has worked hard and built a nice place. It is his establishment - he can treat his employees as he sees fit; that said I was embarassed at the demanding,ordering, lack of respect he showed to the girls working there. He managed to turn my walking toward the kitchen for a refill of water into an ugly incident,by ordering (not asking) the girl to stop what she was doing to " GET HIM SOME WATER!" Ah, the look on her face told me all I needed to know. That image will stay with me, and my Lempiras will stay away. Once was enough. J

The last poster had a good point. Ironically it reminded me of an experience I had at a local Canadian fast food place where the manager constantly was looking over staff's shoulders and making them feel incompetent (as Roseanne Barr once said 'telling them how and when to breathe'). Not only did I pick up on how little the staff wanted to be there, it really made me not want to be there. I think as customers we can all step up more and tell owners what this experience is like for us and how it serves no one, including him. In fact the next time I'm back there I'm going to do just that, probably placed at the end of a compliment I'm giving to the service (because it was good despite his constant nagging).

I once had a waitress having a bad day and dropped a soda on me in CR, the owner/manager yelled at her in the back of the cafe until she cried. When she came out I said dont worry, we all spill things, and left her 5,000 Colone tip! That put a big smile on her face.

I bet it did! You were conned. They squeezed you for sympathy dinero, then went out back to divide the swag, chortling "Stoopeed Greengo!"