When did it become my job to scour Facebook in search of restaurants with one-star reviews for stupid reasons? Is this what my life has become? Am I really that petty?

Yes. Yes, I am.

I take it as an opportunity to educate non-restaurant people to the ways of our world. We expect that customers would understand certain aspects of dining out, but that would mean that our customers have common sense and we all know that is very often not the case. Today’s offender is Bridget who left a bad review for Hose 22 in Rochester, New York:

I would love to be giving this place 5 stars right now! My boyfriend and I stopped here for drinks about a year ago and loved it! So, I planned surprise trip for Father’s Day for him and his son today. We arrive at approximately 11:15 to doors open, however get told upon walking in that they don’t open until 1130. We say “well it’s only 15 minutes”. The response we got was “you have 18 minutes”. Now I’m sorry but that is poor customer service! At the very least you invite your customer in to have a drink and wait for the server to seat you! Not sit at your laptop with doors open turning people away. Needless to say we are eating at Shamrock Jack’s where we were welcomed with open arms….5 minutes before opening I might add! Your loss!

The place doesn’t open until 11:30 and Bridget showed up at 11:15 and could not understand why they were not ready to serve her. It matters not that the doors were unlocked, Bridget. What does matter is the opening and closing time. If you go there before they are open for business, it is not their responsibility to adjust their hours of operation to satisfy your eagerness to eat. That’s not poor customer service, that’s doing business. Your suggestion that they invite you inside to have a drink and wait the 15 minutes is also ridiculous, because who do you think is going to serve that drink? A server, that’s who. And that server is still not in the right frame of mind to serve you. Those last fifteen minutes before the restaurant opens are precious to us. That’s when we eat our breakfast, talk to our co-workers, check our cell phones before we put them away for the entirety of our shift, and question our life choices. It is not when we suddenly decide to start work earlier than required.

Imagine, Bridget, that you are at your overnight shift at the meat processing plant and your shift is to begin at 1:00AM. At 12:45, in waltzes a whole brood of chickens who are ready to be turned into chicken nuggets. You’re all, “Hold up, hens. My shift doesn’t start for fifteen minutes, come back later.” And the chickens are all, “Bawk, bawk mother fucker, we’re ready to be processed now. Pluck me, bitch!” I know what would you do, Bridget. You would explain to the chickens that if they want to be processed at your factory, they’d have to wait fifteen minutes and if they didn’t want to wait they could head on down to Shamrock Jack’s Processing Plant where they would greet those needy chickens with open arms.

Lesson of the day: Pay attention to the hours of operation. They exist for a reason.