Server Gets Revenge On Restaurant Owners Who Refused To Stand Up For Their Staff Against A Group Of Awful Customers
"The customer is always right" — until they're not.
Miljan Zivkovic / Shutterstock A waitress took to social media to share an infuriating encounter she had with a group of unruly customers. But what was even more frustrating was the lack of support from the restaurant owners, who demanded that the staff apologize to those customers.
A waitress got justice for herself and her fellow staff members after restaurant owners refused to defend them against a group of awful customers.
In 2018, Marianne Rojas worked at a Mexican restaurant in her hometown. In a TikTok video that has been viewed over one million times, she recalled an incident during one shift where she had a party of 11. They were the only ones left at the restaurant at closing time. After the restaurant closed, the staff members started doing their closing duties, including vacuuming the floors, so that they could go home.
While they were working, one of Rojas' customers approached her manager. “He comes up and he was like, ‘Hey, when do y’all quit serving?’ and she said, ‘Well we closed five minutes ago, so five minutes ago. Why, is there something I can get you?’” Marianne recalled. “And he says, ‘No, we’re just trying to finish our conversation we’d appreciate it if you waited until we were done to vacuum.’”
The man’s request caught all of the staff off-guard since he had otherwise been extremely kind and respectful up until that point.
“You just got your answer that we’re closed, so why are you asking us to hold off on our closing side work?” Rojas pointed out.
The staff was kind enough to delay their closing side work by 30 minutes per the man’s request. However, many of them were no longer on the clock and had to get home. Rojas went up to the table and informed them what would be happening.
“I said, ‘Hey guys, we are definitely not asking you to leave, we know you’re trying to finish your conversation, but we just have some people that are just trying to finish their work so they can go home and this is the last thing that is keeping them from being able to do that. If you could just sit tight while they finish up their work, that would be great!’” Rojas said.
However, the man who originally confronted the restaurant manager was not happy. “He comes up to me … and he just starts cussing me out telling me what a terrible waitress I am, and how we’re ruining this restaurant, and he’s lived here his whole life and how could we do this to him,” she recalled.
Photo: fizkes / Canva Pro
Thankfully, the manager stepped forward and defended her staff. She told the man that he was acting like “a fool” and told him that he and the rest of his party had to leave.
That’s when all hell broke loose. The customers became violent, going up against Rojas, four other servers, the host, and the manager. The group taunted the staff by pulling on their hair, grabbing their faces, yanking on their arms, and screaming at them to the point the police had to be called to the scene. A few members of the party wound up getting arrested for their unruly behavior.
However, the chaos was far from over.
It just so happened that many of the customers in the group were close friends with the restaurant owners.
“They called up the owners and said, ‘Our friends got put in jail because your staff called the police on them because we were still trying to hold our conversation while they were closed!’” The customers failed to mention that they became violent with the staff and that they threatened to brandish a knife.
While the restaurant manager was planning on pressing charges against the customers to keep them from entering the restaurant again, the owners protested their decision since the customers were their “friends.”
To add insult to injury, the owners responded to a local newspaper story about the incident in the customers’ defense.
According to Rojas, the restaurant owners claimed that the entire incident was “a big misunderstanding” and referred to the customers as “valued members of the community” who were welcome back anytime.
The restaurant owners did not once stick up for their hardworking staff. It was that lack of support that persuaded Rojas to quit her job.
Two years later, she began sharing her experiences working in customer service on social media. As she gained more of a following, many people wanted to know more about the Mexican restaurant she previously worked at, and began doing some digging.
One day, Rojas said that her phone began blowing up with notifications from some of her former co-workers. They had all sent a screenshot of a Facebook post shared by the restaurant. The post read that they were “aware” that an incident that occurred in 2018 had been made public by a former staff member and that they were “handling it.”
However, many people were uninterested in the restaurant defending itself and instead called them out for the cruel treatment of their staff.
People online slammed the restaurant and their ratings plummeted.
Some of them even took to Yelp and Google to leave the restaurant poor reviews.
Rojas claimed that the restaurant was trolled online for days, and that eventually, they had to disconnect their phones to keep people from calling and permanently removed their review sites since their ratings had tanked.
While the restaurant still stands today and Rojas said that it was never her intention to see them go under, she admitted that she enjoyed having a little justice. “Those bosses had every opportunity to and really have the backs of the little people but then they stuck it out with their weirdo friends,” she said.
Photo: Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock
She thanked her followers and supporters for their efforts and for getting her and her co-workers the justice they deserved.
When it comes to running a business, people are often told “The customer is always right.”
While that's true to a certain extent, if you want your business to succeed, you must back up your employees that keep it running especially if customers unfairly go after them. Without them, there would be no customers in the first place.
If you refuse to support them, you may just have your business dragged online by a bunch of TikTok users.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.