Yelp! Sucks!

In my 32 years on this earth, I have spent 17 of them working in a restaurant and/or bar.  My first restaurant job was waitressing (I say waitressing, and not serving because in this case the connotation is right on the money) at a Steak & Shake. It started as what I thought would be an easy summer job, and I quickly realized that serving is actually really high stress , and you have to have severe multitasking skills. Turns out, I was awesome at it. You had to "perform" to a certain degree, and I loved the act. I would watch as all the other 15 and 16 year old summer hires would drop like flies. I enjoyed this, especially because it left me with my pick of the shifts.  I took a lot of pride in the fact that I had what it took to cut the mustard in the rat race of waitressing..ridiculous I know, but it was nice to be good at something. And unless you have done it, and have done it for a high volume establishment, you have NO idea.


Most of the summer hires would quit within the first 3 weeks. Because I kept showing up, got the least amount of complaints, and loved going home with a fist full of cash, I began to be favored with the management.  I also had the bonus of getting life lessons like, how to recognize a stoner/meth head/alcoholic, how to not be/be a stoner/meth head/alcoholic. Wonderful nuggets of wisdom like how there are lots of different ways in which to ingest tobacco, and that even though when you get off work all your friends have already been partying for several hours, and you show up smelling like fryer grease and cheap menthol cigarettes, it is somehow all worth it. I left every night that summer with around $100.00. $75.00 was what I made legitimately, and the other $25 I made from bribing the meth heads for their side work. I worked about 4 to 5 nights a week. That is a lot of money for a 16 year old to make a week when she has no bills, and no responsibility. I never had a debt with Columbia House,(that is a joke intended for the audience of people born between 1965 and 1979. ) I had a beautiful man made tan, acrylic nails that would put some of the Real Jersey Housewives to shame, and more cheap clothes from Famous Barr than one could wish for. It was a simpler tackier time in my life then. 


That S&S I worked at was open 24 hours, and my shift ended anywhere from 9pm to sometimes 3am, so for me it was like not having a curfew. I was totally hooked. My parents had to force me to quit in the fall when school started back up.

I was very fortunate to have my first experiences in the industry before the ever prevalent internet. There was no Google, no facebook, no twitter. In fact if I remember correctly there were no search engines. There were chat rooms and AOL. If you wanted to know something about say a Mercedes, you played "www dot roulette". Type in www. Mercedes.com and keep your fingers crossed that they have a web page. If they did ten minutes later when your dial up connection had loaded the page, you may be looking at 15 minutes before you actually find the model you were talking about. We still used the library, and if a customer was a jerk, you could kind of tell them so. And yes, you are probably a jerk sometimes. And sometimes I was the jerk. I was 16! I spilled coffee on a woman once by total accident, and she chewed out the GM, and as soon as she walked out the door we all died laughing about how she had called her genitals her "beaver" and how I had allegedly burnt it off. Despite the fact that she was fine, and it was an accident, she was given a coupon or something, and we never heard from her again. No one worried about this woman telling a billion people she doesn't know, that the establishments staff is incompetent, or that there was a 15 min wait on her food even after her crotch was molested by hot java.

These were the glory days. Sure we knew she would tell her 10 friends in the world, but who cared. By the time she wasted her breath, the most any one would get out of the story would be that last year, some dumb waitress there spilled coffee on their friend. Now don't get me wrong. I felt terrible that this happened, but by no means was I afraid I would be fired, fined, or sued. The business would most likely not be affected by this. I say all this to say...

Yelp sucks! I understand that all you "Yelpers" out there feel as though your hours of lazy couch dwelling with the channel tuned to the Food Network makes you a foodie. Maybe it is your dedication to Anthony Bourdain, or the fact that you were the first of your friends to eat organic that makes you think you are one of the culinary advanced? Or you believe yourself to have the wit of a John Stewart or David Sedaris. Aside from the fact that you are not an expert, there used to be no immediate outlet for consumers with sub par intellect, and mediocre palettes to unleash their droll views on polenta! Oh no.  If you wanted to be a food critic, you had to keep a journal for years, You had to have a LOT of extra cash to throw around for long periods of time, visiting several different establishments on Saturday nights. It entailed glad handing concierge and hostesses, and meeting and interviewing Chefs. Word of mouth was simply that...word of mouth. Or if you were good and somehow managed to get your years worth of notes and food journals to an editor, then perhaps you were one in a million that got to work for a paper or magazine. But trust me you earned that position at that point. Your opinion was respected because people found your views to be consistent with reality. Not because your phone app asked your opinion.

Since the invention of Yelp, it has done terrible things to empower our already spoiled society. First it has allowed anyone with an IP address to put their stupid 2 cents out there for everyone to see, and elevate their already inflated sense of self. ( Yes, I am aware of the irony as I type this blog. haha very funny!) Secondly, it has given them something to threaten establishments with, and Yelp has done nothing but further perpetuate this by rating it's "Yelpers"  as beginners, elites, and VIP members. Forgive me if I am wrong but isn't membership free? And is it fair that all you need to gain extra elite status with Yelp, is to review review review. So if you are a jerk, the more of a ridiculous jerk you are, the MORE say you get? Rewarding the blowhards with publishing their drivel on the establishments parking lot, or how the hostess wore too much makeup. This is insane.

Essentially what Yelp! has done is equip any and all asshats who go out to eat to rate establishments, a freedom that should not be indulged by the masses. Hear me out. Having a desktop makes you no more qualified to be a food critic, than playing guitar makes me a Beatle. I'm not even going to start about the irony of how most of these so called (self proclaimed)  "food critics' are generally hipsters that pride themselves about how they attend farmers markets, local pet stores, and neighborhood ice cream shops, appearing to be pro local small business. However, they then turn around, and because they didn't like the decor of the new local bistro, the server didn't kiss their ass, or the creme brulee was too soft, they in a huff climb on their literary high horses, locked and loaded with their fully equipped $1500 Mac Notebook (curtousey of their corporate job) to the nearest chain Starbucks to blog/yelp! about the audacity the small business just had. How dare they call themselves "french inspired" when the they don't even have crepes on the menu! How dare that owner/family man, local, city tax paying american THINK he has what it takes to own a restaurant! After all we yelpers are here to  "SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS! We are the 99% you know." But you Mr. Restuarant owner are a nobody failure because my tattooed self inflated ego says I know better since cooking channel tells me I am qualified to say so! Never mind the fact that I just discovered cheeses like Borsin, Goat, Manchego and Gruyere in the last five years, I am the authority on all things cheese now!

Now you may think that I am being too hard on them, and that for the most part people blog responsibly on Yelp!, except for a few bad apples with impossible standards. I would agree with you if it wasn't for self experience. The truth is this..Yelp! IS a powerful tool. I have worked for many restaurants that have kowtowed to the demands of the Yelp! elite. And this is where all my hostililly comes from. If you have had a bad experience at a locally owned business it is completely in your rights to go on Yelp! and say so. It is freedom of speach and I fully support that (obviously if you are reading my blog you know that!!) BUT, I consider it unAmerican, cruel and counter productive, especially in the city of St. Louis, to not give a small business a fair shot. You should be doing any and all you can to support the life of a small business. After all, especially in THIS city, no one is coming here!! Factories and corporate jobs are dwindling, leaving or shutting down. So if you like jobs, we have to provide them to our own people! It is the only hope we have to combat the crime, detritous and vaccancy of so many local nieghborhoods. So speak up! Physically! To the owners/ managers, while you are there. Give them a chance to fix things. And if you do speak up, and they fix it, give them the amount of frickin stars you would have, had you not had the problem. It was addressed and fixed. Drop it! 


When you go on Yelp! and tell potential tourists or metro east conumers that have come to the city, to stay away from a local business because you were unsatsified with the service (could be isolated), or the expantion of the menu left not enough vegetarian items for you, ( you have no business calling yourself a foodie if you don't eat meat. I'm sorry. You're not.)  you are killing the local flavor that a small business is trying to bring to our fair lady city, as well as continuing a reputation that we have been fighting against since the 70s. St. Louis's downtown is ghostly, and the scariest part is there is something like 200,000 more people living within the city limits now then there was when I moved here 10 years ago.
We are all brought up to believe that the little guy has the power. Unite! Protest! Be heard!..forget it all if we prefer to be faceless villians on Yelp!

Not to mention the local economy. If you are a yelper and you found your server to be less than perfect, you go on Yelp! and describe said sever as "white girl with short blonde hair, eye brow pierceing and a tatoo of a pinup girl on her forearm" and go on to state that she was "rude". She was "over whelmed and didnt visit the table enough". Or she "wasn't knowledgeable enough about the drink menu." She "forgot to refill my iced T." This is how the aftermath falls out...

This particular servers name is lets say Agnes. Agnes is usually a great server. This particular day the kitchen is short handed, and the restaurant manager didn't anticipate the charter bus that pulled up with no reservation, and therefore underestimated the volume of business for the night, leaving the floor with too many tables per server. One of the servers didnt show up, so she is given triple the normal amount of tables to take care of. Also, her boyfriend dumped her last night, and her car broke down on the way to work. NOW, your Yelp! review has done the following....

Got the one server who showed up to work dispite having had a real crap day fired. You just contributed to the loss of a job.

The manager screamed at for under-staffing.

Chef was reemed about ticket times putting him in a less than happy mood. Then spends the rest of that night cooking from a perspective of a paycheck instead of a love and passion for cooking, giving future customers a less than best experience.

And a meeting is called for all staff members to retake a training course retraining them on their menu knowledge (without pay)

ALL this because the yelper "says" so.


I even have more respect for the Yelper elite who at least try to throw their unmerited authority around to get free food, then I do a yelper who says nothing while at the restaurant and goes home and gives the establishment 1 star. Restaurants are only as good as the feedback...FEEDBACK, not blind egotistic complaining. If you had a hair in your food, (gross I know, but it happens everywhere!!) it is up to you to tell your server. If you are unsatisfied with the ticket time on your food (amount of time from when you ordered till it arrives on your table) it is your responsiblility to tell the server to alert the management.

I have had the pleasure of working for small business owners who actually care about ratings. When we are given a basement review they contact the World of Warcraft playing jerk and offer them a second chance to prove them wrong for free. Now THAT, really burns my ass! Staff doesn't generally eat or drink for free. They don't get Christmas bonuses, and are paid very little. But the Yelp! complainers? Oh we are rolling out the free red carpet for. Should we really reward the middle aged single male living in his mothers basement a free meal, because he found the cocktail menu TOO expansive? NO! But we do. Yelp has far too much power. The start scores are cummlative, so for every 5 star review if you have a 1 star, it will set your average at 2 1/2 stars even though you perform 90% of your business at 5 stars.

All in all unless you have actually waited on tables, leave the service alone unless it is atrocious. Alert a manager, but I find it unfair to comment on a restaurants reputation, simply because you were unhappy with a server.  If you dont like the decor, sure state it if you think anyone values your taste, after all I am sure between food network commercials you switch over the HGTV so I suppose you are an expert on interior design as well. If the food is awful, please be my guest to warn customers, but if it wasn't awful but simply a matter of your steak being overdone, then maybe say something like this.
"This place tends to over cook steaks", or  "order less done than you want"..or generally very busy, not a date like place. Better for lunches..sure, but ripping on a business like Gail Simmons? No.

I have eaten at Le Bernardin, and I dont even consider myself a "foodie" so just stop it. And if you have never heard of Le Bernardin, you aren't one either.

Mrs. Newlywed Out!