By Rich Kozlovich
Over the last year the number of hits I've been getting on P&D has more than doubled, and believe it or not, I give American Thinker credit for that. I think AT is by far the best news site on the planet. Good writers, a lot of volunteer authors, and discussions on every subject facing humanity.
While I don't always agree, I find the articles well thought out and well written, and I've commented a lot over the years, even linking my articles in my comments. They've even graciously posted one of mine. As a result I think, based on reader comments, a lot of those readers are following P&D, far more than I ever got from Twitter or LinkedIn, who I had issues with.
LinkedIn and Me, LinkedIn and Me, Part II, LinkedIn and Me, Part III
LinkedIn kicked me off their site. No loss, and I resigned from Twitter before they followed suit. Since Twitter has been taken over by Musk I signed back in but truthfully, I never go there, ever! And for sure, I'm not going to pay to go there. And I'm becoming convinced more and more people are walking away from these social media sites, including Facebook, or whatever it's called now.
I'm also getting a lot of hits on articles I've linked years in the past, like this one. Steakhouse loses $12,000 human rights tribunal ruling after ignoring germaphobe’s requests, saying:
$12,000 was awarded to a man with obsessive-compulsive disorder because the restaurant stopped fulfilling his requests, including his water be served without lemon or straw.....The decision released this week found the man “suffered injury to his dignity, feelings, and self-respect” after the restaurant refused to make “very simple accommodations” and after the manager made “hurtful” comments to him. .....
“The door is open with respect to the risk of discriminating against people for any reason,” said Don Longchamps, a professor of hotel and restaurant management at Algonquin College in Ottawa. “Responsibility (to accommodate) will never be lessened. It will only be increased with time.”...........In the fall of 2013, however, the restaurant changed ownership...... He said the manager eventually came out and told him he was “high maintenance” and the staff no longer wanted to serve him. He claimed the manager uttered words to the effect: “Now I know why the police shoot crazy people like you".......the franchise owner in question went into bankruptcy and is no longer there.
Okay, let's start out with this insight. I was an exterminator for forty years, and I can assure you people in hospitality industry are very often, not hospitable. And the number of jerks in the manager's positions is almost legendary, so I actually believe everything this complainant claims.
- Assuming everything this guy claims is true, ......he had bad service.
- Assuming everything this guy claims is true,.......the manager was an obnoxious jerk.
- Assuming everything this guy claims is true,...... none of this was worth a $12,000 fine by the government.
Hurt feelings isn't the government's business. That's insane!
His requests about the silver ware and water weren't all that unreasonable. Make no mistake about this, if he was Prime Minister of Canada they would have been happy to jump through those hoops.
However, he isn't, and since they didn't want his as a customer, the mistake
they made was letting him get seated in the first place. I would have
told him if he wants to eat here he gets seated wherever there's a seat
available, and we're not doing any extra cleaning, and he should have
been told that the last time he was there as he was leaving, not humiliate him after seating he and his wife.
What we don't know is how many other issues they've had with him
over the years. Remember....he's nuts! Having been in the service industry be assured, you meet all kinds, and I've met with and dealt with this particular variety, and it isn't pleasant. I put them in the same category as those who claim to have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome. There's always something they don't like, always a new demand, always another condemnation for whatever it is you're doing, always another whine.
It's tiresome!
I also wonder what kind of
tipper he's been over the years. Usually waitresses and waiters will do
a lot of hoop jumping for a good tipper, especially ones who are gracious and appreciative of what's being done for them, even one as fussy as this
one, unless they've been rude, demanding, and obnoxious like Jack
Nickleson was in As Good as It Gets.
Also, this is a public place, this isn't his home. This guy probably really was
high maintenance, and as time goes by he will become worse, and
yes, the manager's a jerk, and since the restaurant went out of business, he was probably a jerk to a lot of people
It's clear the staff that didn't want to wait on him anymore, and since they were seemingly the same staff that had been waiting on him for a long time, they were tired of his "requests", which I can understand. But none of that merits a $12,000 fine by a bunch of government bureaucrats.
The question we should be asking is
this: Who really was nuts in the story, the customer, the jerk manager, or the government bureaucrats? Answer? All of the above.
Oh...one more thing. I just had a thought. What's the difference between accommodating and enabling?
Two things: First, regarding hits to your blog — I undertake occasional internet searches to see if my own material gets any traction out there, and since Google is getting more and more obtuse about screening out results it doesn't want its users to see, I've also been using the Luxxle.com search engine to see if it can find what Google refuses to show. One of the Luxxle results this morning for me was your old January 19, 2015 mention of my GelbspanFiles blog ( https://paradigmsanddemographics.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-gelbspan-files.html ). Mine was the single comment at the end of that, thanks again for mentioning what I do! Back then, I was up to only my 78th blog post on how the smear of skeptic climate scientists implodes. I'm both happy to say - and alternatively sad to say - that my post yesterday ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=15997 ) about one of the central "nuts" in the climate issue (along with a zinger at the end about another absolute nut) was my 382nd.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy that the daily visitor count at my blog, small as it is, has always been on the steady increase. On the other hand, I'm sad that my goal of handing off what I do to some major person or entity (e.g. U.S. House Oversight Committee investigators) hasn't yet happened. It's a basic story, the climate issue only has two legs to stand on, "settled science" and "crooked skeptic climate scientists working for Big Oil." As I prove in huge detail at my blog, that second leg is vulnerable to total collapse around its small core group of accusation promulgators, and if that leg crumbles to dust, there's no way the climate issue can remain standing on its utterly faulty "settled science" leg. The fall of that first leg could lead to one of the biggest collapses of a political ideology in history, exposing one of the biggest acts of libel/slander in history when it concerns the accusation part of the issue, and it would expose how the mainstream media long ago abdicated on its responsibility to honestly report ALL of the news. The climate issue is actually a window into the world of how the mainstream propaganda news media withholds critical information from the public.
Meanwhile, to your other point in your blog here: who really are the nuts out there? Among all of them are the extremist enviro-activists who crazily demand that we "follow the science" while they absolutely do not do so themselves. On top of that are the nuts like the guy I detailed at the postscript end of my blog yesterday who rail against the "disinformation" put out by skeptic scientists, while the guy himself publishes outright disinformation about the scientists he accuses. These wacko have absolutely no self-awareness of how crazy their positions are. And then there are the nuts who are technically 'crazy like a fox' such as the former head of Greenpeace USA ( http://gelbspanfiles.com/?p=12705 ) who laugh like hyenas all the way to the bank.
Cap all of this with the nuts in the mainstream media, who either genuinely believe in the partisan propaganda they spew, or else they insanely traded in the highly admired and respected label of "hard-nosed reporter" for the unsustainable, money-paying one of "propagandist." What kind of lunatic would a person have to be to think they can get away with deceiving the public forever while not knowing how enormous of an act of political suicide this is?