CJ's Beach House

Birch Bay, WA is a relatively small town so I figured it would be easy to query the locals to find which of the 2 or 3 restaurants was best. CJ's appeared to the be the consensus-great food and good service I was told. We drove up to what appeared to be a fairly busy restaurant--that's was good sign right? We walked up to the door at 8:05 pm to find that the doors were locked! There were no hours posted on the door, but we were able to signal the hostess through the window who was just a short distance away. She eventually made her way over to the door and told us they closed 5 minutes ago and indicated that the kitchen had already been cleaned up so they couldn't seat and serve us. Really....? I mean I wasn't looking for them to conjure up an original dish for satisfy Chef Ramsey, just something off of their standard menu. Having worked in restaurants before myself, I fully undertand that the pilot light on the stove is on an autotimer that shuts off exactly at 8 pm in small towns like Birch Bay. You couldn't get one to work at 1 minute past if you tried to start it with rocket fuel... Well, maybe at 1 minute past, but 5 minutes past is a complete impossibility. I asked the hostess if the manager was available to which she responded she was in Saudi Arabia.....Well, she had me there; it's pretty hard to make an appeal to someone who's in Saudi Arabia. I guess my real beef here is that when you have willing customers who are looking for quality food at the recommendation of people in the community, who are willing to pay a good price for it (and typically tip 20%+), 5 minutes shouldn't be that big of a factor. I wasn't kidding about working in restaurants. I know good ones and I know bad ones. I was alway under the assumption however, that businesses existed to make a profit. My observation is when a business isn't really interested in providing service to willing customers, it's probably not too far off before they don't have any. I'm not saying CJ's isn't worth trying--clearly I wouldn't know; but I would recommend those of you who are their customers let them know they took some major steps backward from being the high quality place you all have come to know them as.