It’s family owned so I’m assuming the two women are sisters. When I dropped off my jewelry to get fixed, I dealt with the nice one. Super friendly and personable. We talked about my young daughter starting 3rd grade at the same elementary school her kids went to. Great experience. However, when I picked up my jewelry the following week I was “helped” by the not so nice sister. Very condescending and rude. She made it a point to continuously imply that my 14k gold jewelry was poor quality. She probably said 3-4 times that my rope chain was hollow and to be careful with it, not to hang a charm from it because it would break. The necklace isn’t so thin that I couldn’t hang a dainty charm from it. I felt like she was again trying to make me feel as though the jewelry was poor quality and exaggerating to make her point. She made assumptions about how I wear my jewelry that I took as a cultural dig. She assumed my necklace broke because I was wearing too many at a time. You know, typical Black woman who wears gold hoops and too many gold necklaces, like a rapper or Mr. T or any stereotype in any movie. I’m always taken aback when people treat me poorly so I tried to make conversation. I told her I bought a lot of gold on Etsy. “We repair a lot of gold from Etsy, it’s cheaper there.” She gave some good advice, like taking jewelry off when sleeping but everything had an air of condescension. I waited months to go in there because this is what I feared. Small family businesses can always be hit or miss and sadly this was a miss. Sucks because they are right down the street from my house. Alas the search continues. I would go back if it were guaranteed I didn’t have to deal with her again. Oh and when I picked up my jewelry it had tons of lint all over it, for the cost of having it fixed a complimentary cleaning would have been nice.
