Fuck Boners

O.K.  Here’s the story.

A woman ate at a rib restaurant named Boners in Atlanta, with her husband, because they had a discount coupon ($10 off).  They weren’t thrilled.  The woman wrote a bad review of the

Not exactly a high class joint

restaurant online.  The restaurant put up a facebook post, naming her and saying she was a cheapskate customer who didn’t tip.  (She says she tipped)

The restaurant has since apologized and even offered her a free meal as compensation, but the damage has been done.  (or has it?)  Internet comments seem to be running heavily in favor of the lady, although plenty of commenters are siding with the restaurateur as well (I suspect many of them are either current or former waiters or waitresses).

Now, before I weigh in, I would like to indulge in a conspiracy theory or two.  Maybe the restaurant owner figured that the massive amount of negative publicity would still be a massive amount of publicity and even after people forgot about what assholes they were, they would still remember the name.  In other words, any publicity is good publicity.  He might be right, too.

The super paranoid and unnecessarily  complicated, Occam’s razor violating version of that is that maybe he and “Stephanie S.” were in on it together.  “Ha ha, let’s start a fight on the internet and get lots of free publicity for my restaurant.  I’ll send you a bunch of free ribs.”  It could have happened.  Actually, I’m surprised that it doesn’t happen all the time.

Now, I’ll weigh in.  I’m siding with the customer and against the restaurant in this case.  I’ve never waited tables but I drove a cab for about a year when I was 21-22.  In that time I never once complained to a customer about not receiving a tip or asked a customer for a larger one, and I was absolutely shocked whenever one of my colleagues told me they did that.  (A lot of the fuckers also used the Triboro bridge from JFK into Manhattan, if it was obvious the customer had never been to New York.  I’m no fan of Rudy Giuliani, but legislating a  flat fee from the airport to Manhattan was a brilliant move.)

Tipping is a voluntary thing.  If a customer just wants to pay the bill, they are entitled.  The driver (or the waiter) just has to suck it up and try a little bit harder with the next customer.

The experience did make me a better tipper, especially in cabs but also in restaurants.  I am still not an automatic tipper, though.  Mediocre service gets a mediocre tip and bad, like piss-me-off bad service, might very well result in the waiter/waitress/bartender/cab driver/whatever getting no tip at all.  It’s not my fault they are underpaid and I don’t see why I should give extra for a spit in the face.

So, I am siding with Stephanie S.   But that still gives Boners a bit of free publicity.  The world is complicated.