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Be Kind or Leave!
Ever since some restaurants have opened up full time following partial or full shutdowns due to the pandemic, many of them are experiencing an uptick in abuse by customers. One restaurant owner in Erie, Pennsylvania, Chris Sirianni, decided he’d had enough. He decided to hold customers accountable for their bad behavior. Recently he posted the following sign on his business window:
Simple, direct, and straightforward. Just my kind of guy.
Why did Sirianni feel compelled to post this sign?
Sirianni said: ‘During this pandemic, we’ve dealt with some of the most pleasant, courteous and thoughtful people as customers. But since we’ve reopened fully, there’s definitely a growing number of people who have become rude and short with our staff.
‘We always say in this business, ‘You get one disgruntled customer out of 100,’ Sirianni said. ‘But it seems like it’s grown to almost one out of every 10 customers lately being just rude or unpleasant from the get-go.’
Why are customers behaving so badly? Part of the problem is the limitations that the businesses have had to cope with:
‘It could be (prompted) by telling a customer that we’re out of crab or fish because the Canadian border’s closed and we can’t get that stuff easily. Or they might have an hour wait because we’re busy on a Friday or Saturday night,’ Sirianni said.
‘There was a time when most people were fine with that. But service businesses and restaurants are all seeing more and more of this collective anger.’
Sirianni posted this message on Facebook, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.
Customers have been demonstrating rude behavior nationwide. Slow service due to staff shortages, food shortages, and limited open hours are just part of the problem. Customers also bring their attitudes and stress from their daily lives and their accumulated COVID tensions to the restaurants. Impatience, feelings of helplessness, and unrealistic expectations that customers have of the staff are just part of the problem. An inability for many customers to recognize their own acting out prevents them from pulling back and modifying their behavior.
Sirianni comments further on his customers:
However, Sirianni has witnessed disrespectful behavior directed toward restaurant staff on several occasions and he considers it unacceptable.
‘I’ve seen our best and brightest employees be broken down by people,’ he said. ‘They’re servers, not servants. This kind of behavior makes it harder for people to want to do this kind of tough work.’
Nowadays, anyone who enters a business is benefited by realizing that he or she has no idea how well or poorly the business is functioning: its staffing, its stocking, its financial situation, and the many other factors that small businesses must cope with.
Let’s all try to be a little more patient and understanding when we do business at these places.
[photo from contributor to the Erie Times]
Published in Business
Possibly they changed it when the parents no longer understood what it meant, or why little Beelzebub was getting a ‘C’ in it.
I mostly agree with the sentiment of your post, Susan. I think everyone should be kind.
But the sign suggests that some customers are unkind. And if I were about to go into a restaurant and saw that sign on the door, I would think two things. First, that in this restaurant there is a conflict between staff and customers such that the management thinks it warrants a sign, and such disagreements I wouldn’t want to be exposed to while eating out.
And secondly, that I would be subtly watched for my “kindness” as part of my table service, which would make me feel uncomfortable as well. I eat out rarely and look at eating out as a celebration, not a schooling event.
I’ve seen a restaurant that had a sign on the door:
I asked the hostess about it and she was friendly and informative, but we passed on it.
After all the resistance to this sign, I have to say that I think a number of people are making far too much of it. Just go in, be polite and enjoy your meal. Half of the customers won’t even see the sign.
Which half will see it? :)
Yes I also have noticed that since COVID, there seems to be the general idea on the part of some companies that anything goes, because “COVID.”
Well COVID has changed the way I operate too.
Screw me around, and I will definitely be ordering what I need from an online provider. That might not be true if the business is a tiny outfit. But if it is a mid sized concern, and the cashiers are inattentive or rude, or sales people on the floor are too busy on their phones or talking to each other to answer a question, I can get my duct tape, hammer and other items online.
Agreed.
We went to a local restaurant a few months ago. Sign on the door said they were shorthanded. We ordered and waited an hour for the food. Which is about 30 minutes longer than I wanted to wait but nobody wanted to make a scene. I said “At the one hour mark I’m getting up and leaving.” And that’s what we did. As we were walking out the waiter said “But your food is almost ready!” I said “We’ve been waiting an hour already. You have 5 minutes.” She said “There IS a sign on the door…” We sat and the food came right out. We ate and left. No tip.
I get it. COVID has hit a lot of people hard. But at least comp us the meal, knock 20% off, something.
On a lighter note, thinking of odd restaurant customers, I once used to frequent a jazz club called Club Narcissus (named after the street it was on) that had a paid pianist and was always full of pick-up retired musicians that came in and played just for the society of it, mostly horns and saxes, playing standards, along with a few talented amateurs. It was where I first had a mahi-burger — delicious. And one night the room was packed and I was sitting next to a couple of women, and one woman ordered linguini alfredo topped with roasted chicken, and she complained that part of the chicken was underdone and asked if she could have a replacement. The waitress said, Of course. And while the woman was waiting she ate all the linguini and the cooked half of the chicken thigh.
When her second meal arrived she ate all of it, and said, Now this was good. Then I overheard them examining the bill for a possible 35-cent overcharge. The reason this stands out to me is that the woman lived in Palm Beach, and I wondered, If she lives in Palm Beach and got a free meal, why is she quibbling over 35 cents?
As they left I figured that’s how they could afford to live in Palm Beach. Remembering it, I would have to say that they were both always kind to the waitress.
The waitress should have taken back the original plate. If they didn’t, it’s kinda on them.
I’m not exactly criticizing the technical propriety of it, but the fact that there was almost nothing left on the plate to have complained about — maybe a largish morsel stuck to the bone was left on the offending dinner plate.
Beer makes it better . . .
Well…I quit drinking…maybe that’s my problem!?