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fly in drink-banned from bar
Sam
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
not a bar per se but a coffee shop that serves alcohol.
I'm a regular there, I got a glass of wine. An insect fell in it, and the bartender (different from those who usually work, they like me) just took it out and started ignoring me. I bought another glass then asked for the owner's contact. He responds by calling the cops and putting me on the banned list.
what are my options- I'm thinking of contacting the better business bureau, I'm working on getting in touch with the owner (pointless but if i were him i'd want to know) and contacting public health since it isn't exactly safe for a place to be licensed that expects their clientele to drink drinks that have insects in them.
I'm a regular there, I got a glass of wine. An insect fell in it, and the bartender (different from those who usually work, they like me) just took it out and started ignoring me. I bought another glass then asked for the owner's contact. He responds by calling the cops and putting me on the banned list.
what are my options- I'm thinking of contacting the better business bureau, I'm working on getting in touch with the owner (pointless but if i were him i'd want to know) and contacting public health since it isn't exactly safe for a place to be licensed that expects their clientele to drink drinks that have insects in them.
Sam on
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doubt he'll be happy that his bartenders are banning potential customers for no reason
regular customers.
the fact is it's my word against his employee's...
why not
You're not going to get anywhere with a health code type thing. It'll be your word against his. At least the owner will look into your 'lifetime ban'. Who knows, maybe that bartender has other complaints.
If you really are a good, regular customer there, call the owner and voice your complaint. Explain that you didn't do anything wrong, you didn't make a fuss, the bartender was just rude to you for no reason. If other people have had similar experiences and complained about them, it's possible that the owner will notice the larger pattern of dissatisfaction, fire the asshole barkeep, and let you back in. It's also possible that he'll say "thanks, I'll get back to you" then you'll never hear from him again. We live in an unfair, arbitrary world.
I suggest you just express your feelings with your wallet and find another watering hole.
Man, in this situation the customer doesn't sound out of line, but you've obviously never worked retail.
You probably wouldn't want to go health code because being a regular its probably a pretty cool joint. Try to contact the owner, or if the dude wasn't one of the regular bartenders, why not go in another day and let one of the good bartenders know what happened?
Because there wasn't one? Bugs get in food in restaurants—it's not the end of the world. In any case, it seems like the OP's beef is how he was treated, not with the fact that a fly landed in his wine. Presumably he wasn't to distressed with the conditions of the premises, considering he bought a second glass.
I'd say go in when that bartender isn't there and talk to the manager. I'm kind of surprised that the police didn't tear the bartender a new one for wasting their time in the first instance.
Were you raising a big stink about the fly landing in your wine? I could see certain places not really having a lot of patience for a customer in that situation.
Def. drop the owner a line. Just be professional/courteous. Explain you're concern over the employees behavior. He'll hear you out at least, probably.
Absolutely nothing. The bar has the right to deny anyone service for any reason as long as it's not discriminatory. If the barkeepers think you're an asshole, they're not obligated to do business with you, period. You have no recourse in this situation beyond complaining to the establishment itself.
When something shitty happens to you, your first thought should not be "how can I make this even worse for them and everyone involved with them, yea, my wrath shall scorch the earth of their place of employment even unto seven generations." If you did call the health department, and they did come in and happened to find something, do you know what would happen? You would not be magically reinstated in the corner booth at Cheers again. Instead, the owner would be smacked with fines, he might be forced to close down either temporarily or permanently, and he might have to let some staff go. Is a black fly in your Chardonnay seriously a bigger deal to you than someone else's livelihood?
Let it the fuck go, man.
I'm going to be frank with you, Sam, if you were as unreasonable about this with the barkeeper as you're being about it here, I'm not surprised that he called the cops.
that's unreasonable?
And what did you tell the police when they got there?
Really, does anyone think 1 complaint will get this bartender fired? And would anyone also suggest that anytime you have a bad experience someplace you should just pack up and find a new place?
Especially if you've been going to a place for a long time, you get attached to the surroundings and the other regulars. Damn right you should complain to the owner or manager.
But there's also a point where you just drop it. If you're thinking of calling the health inspector and the BBB because nothing else is working out, thats probably about the time.
And no, of course it's not OK. But it's also not your place to rain down as much sandcastle-kicking fire as you can on an entire business because one guy was a dick. Talk to the owner about it, talk to one of the countless other bartenders who surely knows you and can vouch for you if you're such a regular... basically, deal with this like an adult before you picket outside their sidewalk with a sign reading "OMG NEVAR GO HERE, THEY CALLED TEH COPS ON ME FOR NO REASON!!"
I don't mean to judge you based on your past posts here, but because of "getting over inconsequential theft thread" I'm a little hesitant in thinking that this is all there is behind the story.
that's fine, i have no reason to lie here- it doesn't achieve anything, least of all for myself.
i'll reiterate the entirety of my interaction with him from the previous post
I'm sure my body language was unpleasant when he gave me back the contaminated glass and I paid for a new one. I never used foul language however.
i said hi officer, im the guy he called about. i proposed that he tell his side of the story then i tell mine. he said he has no side he just wanted me banned. the officer proceeded to do his job, in this case write down my name and tell me i was free to go. i didn't wait for him to tell me to embrace that freedom. outside the premises i asked to clarify the legality of my being kicked out for not disturbing the peace or doing anything illegal and they obliged.
You go to a coffee place in the middle of the day and start drinking. At some point (you don't specify how many drinks you've had at this point, just that you "weren't drunk"), a small insect ends up in your drink. You haven't specified how much of your drink was left, just that a small bug wound up in it after it had already been paid for. You presumably sat there glaring at barkeeper or otherwise making the place uncomfortable "until he couldn't ignore you anymore", and demanded that he replace your drink -- for free -- over something which was no fault of his or the establishment's. It's hard to imagine that you weren't being in some way threatening, abrasive, or disruptive, because barkeeps don't call the cops over "nothing", and it sounds like the cops sided with the guy who called them, because it sounds like the police told you to take a hike. And while you're apparently a regular at this place, rather than taking up with the other employees (who you'd presumably be on a first name basis with), your first course of action is to jump on the internet and ask H/A what you can do to ruin this business for angering and possibly humiliating you.
That's what I'm taking away from this.
Edit: Moreover, it troubles me that you're going back and editing in details as people reply to you.
I got that there was a bug in the drink, he said "hey, there's a bug in my drink" and rather than replacing it, the bartender swept the bug out and handed the same drink back, then started with the ignoring and the "until he couldn't ignore me anymore" new drink purchase.
not entirely accurate. it was my first glass. I had finished very little of it (let's say I'd finished under 20%) because i was reading a book. I wasn't seated at the bar. I went up to the bar when I found the insect. I didn't glare, I stood at the counter where people pay for their drinks, which connects to the counter with the barstools. this is where the ignoring took place.
insects getting in your drink- the fault of that is ambiguous but establishments have a responsibility to keep the place fly-free, one would imagine, especially given that customers pay a lot more than what a glass of whatever costs them.
As for contacting the other barkeeps, they might be cool with me in the sense that they recognize me and have had little chats, but they're going to be friends or at least colleagues with the one who banned me. Also, I can't go to the bar, I'm banned. It's not like I have these people in my phonebook. With this in mind does it still seem iffy that I'm here and not talking to them?
Also, the cops had no choice in who to "side" with. They were doing their job. They were actually pretty nice to me all things considered. I didn't feel particularly humiliated because I wasn't escorted out, and the cops never yelled at me, in fact no one raised their voice so all anyone would've seen/noticed was cops go in and out and me leaving.
You, on the other hand, did something to get the police called on you, then you got on the internet and started looking into your options for destroying this business over what was probably a $4 drink to begin with.
The extent to which you're overreacting now makes it almost impossible for me to believe your account of how this all happened, especially given that you're actively revising and filling in the story.
However, doing anything that would adversely affect the store itself and not just the bartender would be mean and dumb. If you're a "regular", as you say it, you obviously like the place. Why would you want to fuck it over because one employee was mean to you? Speak to management, have that employee dealt with, and be done with it.
Also, said employee may continue to be employed there, in which case you probably won't be allowed to be in the store when he's there. Even if you were, you probably wouldn't want to be. That's going to have to be something you live with.
this is what i did to get the cops called on me.
s: can i have the owner's contact info.
b: no. and get out. and don't come back.
s: why? what did i do?
b: you're being weird, you don't tip, i don't want you here, get out or i'll call the cops.
s: ok, call the cops. I haven't done anything wrong.
I'm filling in details because you're making assumptions like I was sitting at the bar, drunk in the middle of the day, etc.
but go ahead and picture me as a violent midday drunk. although you're ignoring the fact that if I'd actually done something to disturb the peace (i.e been threatening) they could've filed charges against me, which they didn't.
Nobody here is going to give you advice on how to fuck with this business, because frankly, you don't deserve it. As I've already said a couple of times now, several people have suggested positive, useful, mature things that you could do to help resolve the situation. If you're not interested in any of them, I suggest you give up on the thread, because H/A is not an idea bank for ways to exact petty overblown revenge on innocent parties, especially for someone whose version of the story changes every time he retroactively edits his posts.
See, again, here's the thing. You told us in your OP that you had given us "in fact the entire story", but every time someone replies, you revise the story with vitally important details -- and dig the hole a little deeper in the process. You keep running back and making edits without specifying them as such in your posts (you added 3 paragraphs to the last one after my reply to it), but everything you're adding is furthering the argument that the barkeeper didn't do anything in the wrong.
You're unreasonably upset about this, and you're hugely overreacting. Just don't go there anymore, the end.
Stuff like what i'm quoting below is what makes me want to fill in details.
a. i posted the op from my phone. b. it isn't easy to picture how someone else is going to read what you write. like you implying that i was drunk, or that i was there to get drunk.
seriously, what major details did i leave out in the op?
So right now, your story has gone from "there was a fly in my drink and the barkeeper was a dick and he called the cops for NO REASON AT ALL" to "after I was a confrontational asshole over getting a fly in my drink by deliberately making the barkeeper and/or the environment so uncomfortable that he couldn't ignore me anymore, I was asked to leave, and I refused, so the barkeeper exercised his entirely legal right to have me removed from the premises."
Do you see the distinction there? It's pretty important.
I make the environment uncomfortable by asking for the owner's contact info. that's what you're saying?
And he "couldn't ignore me anymore" because I was standing where they take orders. When someone keeps standing there you have to eventually attend to them.
also, he couldn't have pressed trespassing charges, because that would require that there be an inquiry into why a paying customer was asked to leave, which would have fucked him over, which was exactly what he was trying to avoid by banning me immediately after I asked for the owner's contact.
It only LEGALLY becomes trespassing when the police have a record of you being banned and you violate that.
And stop quoting me wrong. My OP doesn't say I got kicked out for "no reason" My OP says he responded to my request to contact management by telling me to leave and calling the cops.
The reason I didn't leave when he asked was because I was unaware of the fact that you can be kicked out for asking for management's contact info and not being disruptive, which I wasn't. I didn't raise my voice and I doubt (though I can't be sure) that anyone in there heard the exchange. It was at conversation volume level.
I'm implying that drinking in the middle of the day, doing something to get the police called on you, getting banned from a bar, being so mad about it that you (apparently on the spot via your phone) ask the internet how you can punish people for it, then revising your story at breakneck speed after having previously insisted you'd told said internet "the entire story" looks pretty bad for you, yes.