Don’t Order Chilli Prawns If You Can’t Handle The Heat
This is probably an odd thing to write a column about.
A story in the Dailymail got my attention about a Melbourne restauranteur who lost his cool at some woke social-media influencer who ordered a chilli prawn pasta and then complained that it was too spicy… by making a video-recorded message of himself bagging the food. The smug little twat got chucked out of the restaurant by the owner and rightfully so. I’m glad someone is finally taking a stand.
Don’t dox and humiliate people and small businesses for no good reason. You ordering a dish you couldn’t handle despite the menu descriptor telling you what it was is a pretty bad reason. And dont just video-record whenever the hell you like, least of all in a private business or residence without permission from the owner or tenant.
Melbourne and Victoria seems to have a culture of contempt for small-businesses going back years and exacerbated by lockdown years. Small business-people aren’t your slaves. They are people trying to earn a living. Show some respect, if you have an issue with the product or the service, then learn to broach any complaints or disagreements politely to management rather than trying to embarass the business.INn a way this is another example of the modern contempt for privacy.
Resist the instinct to use modern mass media technology as a way to rake someone over the coals, because what goes around comes around (and I’m consciously doing my bit to put this incident in the spotlight because I too have copped unfair bad reviews in my day job, one bad review hurts the rating for more than several positive reviews can remedy, and even if it isn;t justified its impossible to remove a bad review. The google algorythm is very inbalanced and the appeals process is non-existent. A bad review is a very nasty thing to do to a small business).
People who think this is okay may be torching a future customer of their own or someone who might be giving them or someone close to them a job. Think beyond yourself. And learn to cook your own food if you can’t behave civilly in a public restaurant (or learn to fix your own stuff/not break it if you don’t like to pay for a professional assessment, to apply this metaphor to my regular job).
That chilli prawn pasta sounds great and if I venture into the inner-north I might head over there to try it myself sometime. Unlikely though, I stay out of the inner north/inner-west now due to people such as the customer that got chucked out.
Irony of ironies.
