Restaurant Owner Teaches Customer a Lesson Via Yelp

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 9.47.08 AMAs Yelp continues its descent down a long, bumpy, rusty slide into a pool of irrelevancy, more and more restaurant owners are realizing they have no fucks left to give when it comes to people leaving bad reviews about their restaurants. Case in point: the owner of a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Linh in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Last week, a customer named Mary needed to take a dump but when she couldn’t find a restroom to her liking she decided to use Yelp as her toilet and diarrheaed out a review about her meal instead. She says the atmosphere is “fine” and seems rather disappointed that there aren’t enough booths to sit in. She is also not impressed with the lighting or the parking options. Already, it sounds like Mary needs to stay in her little bubble at home where she has soft-lighting, an atmosphere to her liking, a banquette in the kitchen and her own private garage. She goes on to compliment the waitress calling her “beautiful visually.” Not that a server’s appearance should ever affect a review, but I wonder why Mary had to specify that her beauty was visual. Maybe the waitress is beautiful on the inside too, Mary, did you ever think of that?

Mary’s real problem was with the ordering. In fact, it was downright “P R O B L EM- A T I C.” She did not appreciate having to recite her order multiple times and she was also upset that the food came out “peace-meal.” (I think she meant “piecemeal.”) I can see how that may be confusing, but it has been my experience in many Asian restaurants that the food comes out when it is ready and not necessarily all at the same time.

But here’s where we truly know that the problem is with Mary and no one else. She freely admits to waving her credit card in the air to indicate she is ready for her check. Does Mary not understand how fucking annoying and rude that is? She claims the waitress did not show up to her table for five minutes. Five whole minutes. Now that may not seem like a long time to most of us, but I guess if you are an ancient fossil on your last dying breath, five minutes can be the difference between dying at a table in a restaurant (not a booth) or dying in the parking lot on your way to your car. She saw her waitress in the kitchen who was “dancing, joking and cavorting.” This is when Mary pulled out her cane and “hobbled” over to teach her a lesson: “if the waitress wants to play with others, she should take care of her customers first.” The apology from the waitress was not enough to keep Mary from leaving a 1-star review.

Enter Tam, the owner of the business who responded to Mary’s review. He calls her out on her bad behavior and, in the snarkiest backhanded compliment ever, thanks her for giving him such a wonderful teaching moment for his staff:

I’ve reiterated to them many times that out of 100 patrons, there will be 1 or 2 who are unreasonable and are generally unpleasant. Your dismissive, disrespectful, holier-than-thou, and overall sense of entitlement provide a shining example of the type of patron that is, quite frankly, too good for our middling establishment.

Ouch. Someone go get some aloe vera gel for Mary to rub on that burn, ‘cause that’s gotta hurt. Tam then goes downstairs to dry storage to get some salt that he now wants to rub into Mary’s wound:

I often preach to my staff to do whatever it takes to ensure our guests have a pleasant dining experience.  With that being said, I would never want to subject my staff to a person of your quality.  Thank you for teaching us this invaluable lesson.

Basically, Tam just issued a big ol’ “Bye, Felicia” to Mary and told her to not come back.

pocahontas-bye-felicia

Listen customers, if you’re gonna be a pain in the ass and treat the staff with disrespect, most restaurants are going to be more than happy when you say you will never come back. Like Tam said, out of 100 people, there are just a couple who suck. If you don’t come back, there are 98 or 99 others who will and those are the ones we want to serve. All of you “Mary’s” can stay the fuck at home.

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Discussion

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