I seriously wish I was joking about this one. I really do. Yes, this is a serious article, and one that has been delayed by something like 3 weeks now, mostly thanks to the MLGW Hoax earlier in the month; I never did write about this while it was fresh, and by the time I did intend to get back to it, well, I got caught up in other articles and working.
So yes, this is old news, but I thought I would get my thoughts out there because this has to be the single most stupid thing to come out of this city in years. Not just that, but the subject matter is on a whole just so absurd, it just has to be discussed.
So anyway, here’s the story. Apparently sometime around the beginning of the month of July, a regular customer of the Imagine Vegan Cafe in Memphis (which is, of course, located in Hipster central – Midtown – and ironically next to a place I desperately need to visit, Goner Records) had a bad experience. It wasn’t too terrible of a review; it certainly wasn’t positive, but the story presented is one that makes you just have to say, what in the absolute fuck was going on at that place
So, you’re reading that right – this person went to the restaurant, had a slightly crummy meal, and was treated to a naked baby exposing itself to them and the stares and yodels of an older child.
What. In. The. Actual. Fuck. Is. That?
Now, this place touts itself as “family friendly” in their replies to this review (which are in and of themselves a complete mess), but let’s address the elephant in the room: Not only do very few, if any people, want to have some child belting away the greatest hits of Bavaria, but not a damned sane person wants to see some toddlers anus. Ever.
That’s not withstanding the health hazards such presents, having a child run around like this is just sickening. The fact that this is a restaurant adds to the problem since, you know, a child isn’t exactly the cleanest thing running around, especially ones who still wear diapers, so the idea of having a child running around a restaurant in the nude isn’t just appalling on principle, it’s quite probably not sanitary either!
But wait, there’s more! I mentioned the responses the restaurant gave on their now-deleted Facebook page were quite, well, special. Special as in, they got pissed at the review and went right to hostile reply mode.
Of course, the perfect way to fuck it all up: pull the classic “haters aren’t welcomed” crap, call yourself something full of shit like “mama bear” and call out someone by name. This is the point where they totally screwed themselves over; rather than apologize, they go this route.
Now for a few more of their replies, for what it’s worth:
Oh, sure, a baby running around naked is the exact same thing as an adult being topless. Right, totally… wait, no it’s not, what kind of goddamned sick analogy is that? I know vegans can be a strange bunch but that shit sounds like something some kind of pedophile would say! As for the 5 year old child trying to talk to the customer, I don’t think it was so much a talking as it was the kid doing some horrible singing with no regard to what the person wants – hence the term “yodeling” in the original review.
I don’t want to ignore the tail end, either, with the “I’m a parent your opinion doesn’t matter” entitled rant that’s oh so common in situations like this, but if I delve into it too far this article would go on till next week.
Lastly, what evidence suggests is a post from about a day later, probably once they realized they needed to do damage control, comes this explanation as to what happened.
Okay, you’ve got a kid who is toilet training and likes to rip off their diaper. I don’t care even if the kid is trained, I have to, at this stage, ask the question of why in the hell are the kids up at work anyway? While it’s common for small business owners who are parents to have their kids up at the store sometimes, it’s less common in restaurants, and not for long enough for things like this to happen – clearly the kids pretty much live up there some days, or so it seems – this is alluded to in that their menu mentions children being present.
Okay, that’s cool, but that still doesn’t excuse a child running around naked for the reported 15 minutes! Not just that, but the 5 year old trying to say “hello” doesn’t match the story of the child “yodeling” at the customer. Clearly the child was doing far more than just saying hi.
So, what can we take from all this? Kids shouldn’t be in the stores more than they need to be – kids shouldn’t be in a store more than they have to be, and they should be well supervised – if you’re going to let them live up there like this, they sure as all hell should keep their clothes on (seriously, that has to be a health code violation) and it would probably be better to not let them interact with customers beyond an occasional hi. Really, it shouldn’t be this hard to figure out and I get being a business owner and a parent can be hard, but shit, figure out a better solution than that.
Lastly, when you get terrible feedback on something like this, the last thing you want to do is snap back and attack the reviewer – address the problem, regardless of how you feel about it, in a sensible way, and maybe it can be seen as just an isolated incident rather than turning into the media circus this has become.
http://wreg.com/2017/07/06/restaurant-faces-backlash-after-response-to-negative-review/
Still, if we take a look at the news report on this, you will see the store owner seems to not care that they put bad press on themselves, still seeming to blame the initial review (which of course isn’t accurate, according to the store owners) for all the trouble, rather than the fact that the child was there and stripping down.
I really can’t say anything else on this, and hopefully won’t have to. I just have to say though, shit like this is some of the more absurd, yet still valid reasons to get out of this city – if it isn’t idiots believing someone from a basketball team is paying their utility bills, it’s this kind of stupidity.
Oh, and yes, people are defending this trite, too. I just don’t even care to get into that though… but damn, just… I never thought I would write about something like this, let alone 1100 words on it!