A Findlay, Ohio server has been fired from her job at Texas Roadhouse for complaining about crappy tippers in a Facebook status.
Kirsten Kelly was laid off last Monday after she came home from a particularly bad shift and posted a Facebook rant about terrible customers. Kelly didn’t mention any specific customers, nor did she mention Texas Roadhouse by name…but one of the people she was talking about was apparently a high school classmate she was friends with on Facebook.* The classmate screen-printed the status, took it into the restaurant, and got her fired.
So, first off: total dick move by the customer there. If you’re going to leave a 10% tip, you don’t have the moral grounds to complain about your server calling you an asshole. At the same time, I can’t blame Texas Roadhouse for this at all, and I hate this story for the fact that it just caused me to type that sentence.
“I just said, ‘If you come into a restaurant and spend $50 or more, you should be able to tip appropriately for that,'” Kelly said.
I mean, that’s true. That’s a fair point, and that’s absolutely correct. But then there’s this little cherry:
The Texas Roadhouse Corporate Office based in Louisville, Kentucky, told WTOL Kelly was fired for using a derogatory name to refer to the customer in her Facebook post, which has since been removed. They say it is corporate policy that employees are not allowed to make any mention of the restaurant on social media…”Texas Roadhouse does not tolerate offensive language towards guests, whether it occurs online, offline or even in the parking lot.”
Yeah…about that. I have no problem believing Kelly’s post swore about the guest, because when I got shitty tips, you can bet your ass what came out of my mouth would’ve made a longshoreman blush — and that’s a thing you just can’t do where a customer might see it. You can say you hope they get genital botulism or that they have the common decency of lawn furniture or that they belong in a special level of hell where they have to spend eternity watching Mind of Mencia reruns, but you can’t say it in potential view of said asshole, no matter how badly you want to.
I’ve been in Kelly’s position before vis a vis wanting to find some way to get back at horrible customers — every server has. Hell, once I actually went online and looked up the name of a douchebag CEO who left me $50 on a $600 check (a name I really wish I still remembered, because fuck that guy). Of course, I didn’t do anything with that information, nor did I post about it in any way, because that’s the thing — you can’t. That’s part of the shittiness of being a server: you have no recourse when customers are dickholes. I think part of the reason Behind Closed Ovens and Not Always Right are so popular is because servers don’t feel like they have a voice when people crap on them.** Even still, you have to know the potential consequences before you click post — and how the hell do you not know the consequences if one of the people you’re talking about was a former classmate who you’re friends with on Facebook?
Was the customer who printed out a screenshot and took it in an unquestionable shithead? Absolutely. Getting someone fired over something they said in their personal life after you were an asshole makes you less than pond scum, as far as I’m concerned. But Kelly should’ve known better, and she doesn’t really have much to complain about here. Chalk it up to a lesson learned.
*This right here is why I don’t accept friend requests from classmates I didn’t like. I’m just saying.
**This is also the reason I will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER do a BCO from the customer’s perspective. You have plenty of avenues to speak already, go whine on Yelp about your server forgetting you asked for no mayo.