A friend of mine WAS a waiter at a very high-end restaurant in Atlanta.
I emphasize WAS.
This guy is everything you would ever want in a waiter.
He’s a family man. He works his ass off. He treats customers like they’re guests in his own home. He always has a smile on his face. He remembers names. He remembers what people drink. He remembers where they like to sit.
He is one of those increasingly rare people who understands that hospitality actually means being hospitable.
And apparently, he just got fired.
Now, I eat out a lot.
Actually, “a lot” doesn’t adequately describe it.
I probably eat over 600 meals a year in restaurants.
I have so many OpenTable points that I am beginning to think I should have diplomatic status.
If OpenTable ever establishes a sovereign nation, I expect an ambassadorship.
So while I have absolutely no qualifications to perform brain surgery, repair a transmission or land a 747, I feel extremely comfortable saying I know a great waiter when I see one.
And this guy was one of the best.
So when somebody told me he had been fired, my immediate response was:
“What the fuck did he do?”
Did he steal?
No.
Did he get drunk at work?
No.
Did he punch the chef?
No.
Did he poison somebody?
No.
Did he take a customer into the walk-in refrigerator and try to sell him crypto?
No.
Apparently…
He misgendered a transgender customer.
I did the thing my dog does when I make a strange noise.
Head sideways.
Eyes narrowed.
Complete confusion.
WHAT?
“You cannot be serious.”
So naturally I started asking questions.
Was it intentional?
Apparently not.
Was he mocking the customer?
No.
Did he refuse to use the person’s requested pronouns after being corrected?
Not that I have heard.
Did he stand on a chair in the middle of the dining room and announce:
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I HAVE MADE A GENDER DETERMINATION!”
No.
He apparently made a mistake.
A fucking mistake.
Which, unless something has dramatically changed since I went to bed last night, is something human beings occasionally do.
But apparently the customer became extremely upset.
I originally described it as a “hissy fit.”
I have since been informed by the imaginary Department of Words I Am No Longer Allowed to Use that “hissy fit” may itself be problematic.
So I would formally like to apologize.
I should have said:
“An emotionally expressive event involving an elevated level of dissatisfaction.”
There.
I have completed my sensitivity training.
And then, according to what I was told, within minutes my friend was shown the door.
That is the part I cannot get past.
Not because the customer was transgender.
I genuinely don’t give a shit.
Be transgender.
Be straight.
Be gay.
Be Republican.
Be Democrat.
Be vegan.
Identify as a Labrador retriever if that gets you through Tuesday.
Just don’t make me eat vegan cheese.
My issue is much simpler:
When did an honest mistake become a firing offense?
Because if that’s where we are headed, we’re all fucked.
We have somehow constructed a society in which intention is becoming irrelevant.
Context is irrelevant.
A person’s history is irrelevant.
Years of doing a great job are irrelevant.
One human being can make one verbal mistake during one interaction with another human being—and suddenly management apparently needs to activate the corporate nuclear football.
“FIRE HIM IMMEDIATELY!”
Jesus Christ.
Whatever happened to:
“Hey, I actually prefer ‘she.’”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No problem.”
“Would you like another martini?”
END OF INTERNATIONAL CRISIS.
That entire diplomatic incident could be resolved before the bartender finishes shaking the fucking drink.
Instead, everybody is terrified.
The employee is terrified.
The manager is terrified.
Corporate is terrified.
The restaurant is terrified.
The PR people are terrified.
Somebody is probably in the back Googling:
“Can a restaurant be canceled between the appetizer and entrée?”
Meanwhile, the other 150 people in the dining room are just trying to figure out where the hell their Dover sole went.
And this is where political correctness loses people.
Most normal people are perfectly willing to be courteous.
Most normal people don’t wake up in the morning thinking:
“Whose feelings can I hurt today?”
They’re trying to get through life.
They’re trying to raise children.
They’re trying to pay mortgages.
They’re trying to remember passwords to 47 fucking apps.
And now apparently they’re expected to navigate every social interaction with the precision of an attorney drafting a merger agreement.
Eventually people throw their hands up and say:
“Fuck it. I don’t know the rules anymore.”
And that doesn’t make society more tolerant.
It makes everybody afraid of everybody else.
Which is the exact opposite of what we supposedly wanted.
And now to the restaurant owners, whom I have known for a long time:
Grow the fuck up.
If the facts are what I’ve been told, you didn’t demonstrate tolerance.
You demonstrated cowardice.
There is an enormous difference between an employee deliberately humiliating a customer and a good man accidentally using the wrong word.
One deserves consequences.
The other deserves:
“Hey, be more careful next time.”
That’s called management.
It’s also called being a human being.
But now for my favorite part of the entire story.
My friend is fine.
Actually, he’s BETTER than fine.
He already got another job.
At a BETTER RESTAURANT.
Apparently another restaurant looked at the situation and came to the radical conclusion that a phenomenal waiter who knows his customers, remembers their names, treats people like family, works his ass off and made one honest mistake might still be worth employing.
Imagine that.
So congratulations to the restaurant that fired him.
You successfully protected yourself from a waiter who accidentally used the wrong pronoun.
And in the process, you lost one of your best employees to a better restaurant.
Outstanding management.
This may actually be the first recorded case of someone being promoted for getting fired.
And somewhere in Atlanta tonight, my friend is probably walking up to a table at his new, better restaurant with that same smile on his face.
Hopefully his opening line is:
“Good evening, carbon-based life forms. Welcome.”
No assumptions.
No pronouns.
No genders.
Nothing.
Although I’m sure by Thursday somebody will inform us that “carbon-based” is exclusionary to silicon.
At which point I give up.
As for my Chief of Staff, who will inevitably read this and say:
“Joel, you’re going to get canceled.”
Canceled?
Please.
Don’t throw me into the proverbial briar patch.
I’ve spent most of my life there.
Besides, apparently my waiter friend discovered something important:
Sometimes getting canceled is just God’s way of upgrading your reservation.
Directive 17