Restaurant Shuts Doors Early After Ill-Mannered Customers Treat Servers 'Like Trash’

Mar 07, 2023 by apost team

One restaurant owner had enough of customers treating her service staff like garbage and decided to take matters into her own hands and close up shop early.

East Park Tavern in Charlevoix, Michigan, is among the eateries in the area that are swarmed with tourists – known locally as “fudgies” – during the annual 8-day Venetian festival. For years, its general manager Larah Moore has endured the hectic period when they descend, but in July 2022, she decided enough was enough.

After witnessing servers breaking down due to “rude” and “cocky” customers, she closed the restaurant early. In a post shared on Facebook, Moore explained that night’s situation alongside a photo of a sign hung up in the restaurant that read: “Due to the mistreatment of our servers our kitchen is closed.”

“I’ve worked in downtown Charlevoix most of my adult life during Venetian. It’s usually great, busy, but fun and worthwhile. I’m so incredibly disappointed and embarrassed by the Fudgies we have this year. My staff took a BEATING all week. Last night was our last straw. Too many rude comments. Too many arrogant individuals acting like they can throw money at us to get their way. Too many cocky jerks,” Moore wrote.

She added she loved her staff too much to allow them to be so thoroughly disrespected. 

“No one gets to treat my staff like trash. They are the absolute shining stars in my life and I love and appreciate the hell out of the few of them that I am lucky enough to have. If you push your servers, watch them start to push back. We are here to ensure great food, drinks and quality of your time spent with us. We are not here to be abused. We will not tolerate that anymore,” she wrote.

Moore’s post went viral, and she found sympathy from many in the food service industry in the area. 

“We have had a really difficult tourist season here, too,” one Facebook user wrote, according to Today. “People have just been a whole different breed this year! It’s insane.” 

Moore said a number of factors went into the decision made that night.

“It was just a week of my staff working doubles. So that’s 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. And just being beaten down every day by the amount of people that were coming in,” she said and recounted one party’s behavior after being told they would have to wait 30 minutes for a table. Instead, they ignored the staff and plonked themselves down on two tables.

“They told me that they were just going to sit there and wait for half an hour until somebody would come over and take care of them. I had to ask the woman two or three times to stop moving the tables. And then she crossed her arms and sat in a chair and told me that she wasn’t going. She intended to stay there. At that point, I just told her, whether or not that table would be available in half an hour, my staff would not serve her and her party, just due to the blatant disrespect,” Moore recalled.

Moore said she hoped the incident – and the strongly worded sign – would serve as a lesson to customers.

“The ‘professional’ choice probably would have been to simply have a sign that said: ‘Our kitchen is closed for the evening.’ But I felt like people needed to be aware of what was happening. People needed to be aware of their actions and how they impact others.”

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What do you think of the decision to close the restaurant? What’s the rudest behavior you’ve ever witnessed at an eatery? Let us know, and pass this on to family and friends so they can share their stories, too.