Intrusive thoughts — having them isn’t wrong, but act on them, and you might have a very regrettable mistake on your hands. That said, a member of Deacon Blues’ bar staff in New York let their inappropriate thoughts get the better of them as they called a group of female customers “old b*tches.” They didn’t straight-up say it to the women’s faces, of course; they wrote up the rude insult on the table’s bill before printing it out as the receipt. Needless to say, the owners of the bar nor the customers were pleased with such indiscreet harassment.
“I assure you that the owners are currently on vacation and are genuinely mortified by the behavior of their staff,” a Deacon Blues employee told Times Union. The bar owner chimed in, pleading, “Please do not judge the entire restaurant based on one disrespectful person.” And they’re not wrong; one reckless worker doesn’t mean the whole bar discriminates against older women. Still, one small mistake can potentially mess up years of goodwill and reputation with the local community. Users on Reddit do seem to understand this is definitely more of careless employees making dumb comments rather than a whole restaurant being misogynistic.
“[I] Bet the host went to the kitchen to tell them the reservation for 7 old ladies just walked in. The cook said “bunch of old b*tches just walked in!” And the server laughed and put it as the table name and forgot to change it before they printed,” speculated a Redditor. Another agreed, saying, “Yeah they probably didn’t intend to print that but this is why you don’t input sh*t like that in the ticketing system.” Someone chimed, adding how it is possible that the staff member dealt with grumpy old customers before, which is why maybe they made such a remark. “But you just talk sh*t about them in the kitchen like everybody else,” the user noted. “You don’t type up sh*t talking. That’s a terrible idea.”
Another Redditor response criticized how it’s normalized for employees to talk this way, even behind customers’ backs: “It is absolutely misogynistic, regardless of the intention,” they remarked. This much is true; being disrespectful to people in secret might be better than a public display of harassment. However, the fact that it happens reveals a level of disrespect in said unmannered individuals. Hopefully, the bar staff member gets some manners put into them after this embarrassing incident.
