In case you hadn’t heard, there is a solar eclipse today that is going to create a massive shadow here in the United States. The 70-mile wide swath of darkness will hit cities from the West Coast to the East Coast and some small towns that will see 100% totality were not prepared for the massive influx of tourists who have besieged upon them like a swarm of locust.
Yes, the solar eclipse is a scientific marvel and all that, but just to keep it in perspective, I want to share this message I got from a server who lives directly in the path of the great shadow of 2017. This is from “Lucky” who lives in Clarkesville, Georgia, population 1,733.
All these people want to come to our little, quiet town to see the eclipse and then bitch because nothing opens until 12 on a Sunday. And then bitch some more because the restaurant I work at is closed on Monday. Please, go back to your big city life and leave us the hell alone. And FYI, it’s a small town and a small restaurant with not a huge staff which means, Monday is THE only day some of our staff get a day off. If you can’t respect that, LEAVE. Quit being dicks. Watch the eclipse and leave. Please don’t come back if you can’t be a decent human being. We don’t have time for assholes.
Be strong, Lucky. Be strong.
Nanc
Sure, they could have discussed it but maybe the employees wanted to see the eclipse, too. Kind of like folks who work in restaurants want to see their families on Thanksgiving and Christmas and that’s why they’re closed those days.
Nah, it’s probably that all restaurant employees have a super-secret meeting just before big events to figure out what they could do to really piss off customers and this is what they came up with. A+ on the Pissed of the Customer grading scale!
Lucy Fur
I waited tables this weekend at a restaurant in the path of totality. We were slammed and most of these out-of-towners were crappy tippers, across the board, to all the servers. They were also rude and demanding. We get busy for big events all the time and the only thing I can compare this crowd to is the cheap-ass Christian convention people.
Jill
I live in portland, oregon, and I have been feeling such empathy for my fellow servers in madras, and Prineville oregon, where there populations went from 500 to 30,000 for 2 days. These are small rural towns, and they don’t have gluten free soy sauce and dairy free creamer for all the asshole tourists who surely asked for special shit from these small establishments. I hope they fared okay, cuz I do not envy their long weekend.
Steve
If your only day off is Monday, all your errands and appointments are always Monday. You’d even have standing appointments for Monday. To create minor good will in strangers who will never come back it’s not worth changing. And what of the regulars, the locals who support this place every other day? They lose their Tuesday plans. You know small town diners live off of their regulars? Throw them off and it’s more likely they’d lose more than they gain. But yeah sure, fuck everything up just for strangers who have never come before and will never come again that you can’t even guarantee will stop there to eat or tip well enough to make it worth it. I summered with my grandparents as a kid in the Berkshires and every eatery there would do what this server is talking about…
nolaredhead
I’m at a loss to figure out why a small town restaurant wouldn’t jump at the chance to probably triple what they would normally make for a once-in-a-lifetime event like this.
I imagine the “big city tourists” were scratching their heads over it too…
Kyle DeFaria
I was thinking, how do you not take advantage of an opportunity…
Andrew
Real entrepreneur thinking there Lucky….
A once in a lifetime event that could be capitalized on but instead you look upon it as a hardship.
Charge double on Monday and take Tuesday off.
Fortune
I’m not the owner, I just work there. And we had a place set up in the park behind the restaurant where the point of totality was. We sold food to the crowds there but there was no way the restaurant and that could be run simultaneously and efficiently. We are a really small staff in a really small town.