Birthdays are supposed to be fun and lighthearted — but u/throwraWaitress109‘s turn into a moral quandary when a waitress mistreated OP’s husband. The diner took to Reddit to find out if she was a jerk for “leaving a bad review on a diner and ruining the waitress’ life” after the waitress’ behavior; let us know what you think!
OP starts by explaining that she and her husband went out to celebrate his birthday.
My f33 husband’s m30 birthday was several days ago, we decided to go celebrate at a new diner and invited my inlaws to join us.
The young waitress was googly-eyed for OP’s husband the entire time.
Throughtout the entire celebration, this 20ish waitress who served our table kept acting strange, she didn’t take her eyes off my husband and threw some inappropriate comments at him and infront of us as she came and went.
OP felt uncomfortable, but let it go figuring the behavior would stop. But… it didn’t. In fact, the waitress even took it further, muttering that his eyes were “igniting” her.
I was feeling uncomfortable, but decided to not make a scene hoping she’d stop but when she brought the drinks, She puts them on the table, leans close enough towards my husband thinking no one would hear but we heard what she said and it was “the sparkle of those eyes is igniting me!” (PS my husband has electric-blue eyes). I was flabergasted, truly! I couldn’t believe she just said that!
She told the waitress that the behavior was inappropriate, to which the waitress just smiled and walked off.
I told her “you know what? You’re being inappropriate right now, and you need to stop”. She then smug smiled then turned around and walked away. I got weird looks from my inlaws and it was AWEFUL.
When OP went home, she wrote a scathing review of the diner. The next day, the manager phoned and asked what could be done.
I got home and left a very bad review on the diner, the next day I’m contacted by the manager asking me to specify the bad experience I had at their diner and I tell him. He then calls back and tells me their business is new and this kind of reviews might harm their reputation, then asks what it’d take for me to take it down.
The manager winds up firing the waitress, who takes it upon herself to get in touch with OP directly to tell her the consequences of the job termination.
I tell him some consequences to the waitress. He calls back to tell me he just fired her but before I take down the review, I’m contacted by the waitress on my SM telling me that she didn’t mean to cause disturbance and was just “complimenting” my husband’s eyes, but I ruined her career and caused her to potentially lose her apartment and become homeless after getting fired from the diner and being unable to pay rent.
Her in-laws said she overreacted and that OP damaged someone’s entire life over something trivial. So, is OP the jerk?
I don’t respond but my inlaws point out that I overreacted and this stuff happen too often at diners and I just caused irreparable damage to this young lady’s life over “nothing”. Also MIL said that I must’ve done this because I felt jealous of the waitress.
AITA?
She throws in a few little edits:
ETA: My review was left on the business’ facebook page. I was contacted by the manager via my phone number that was available on my profile. But the waitress reached out via message.
ETA2: So I’m seeing a variety of opinions here of what I should have done/or how I should have handled this. I agree that I might have let things get out of hand but I had no plans to get her fired, didn’t even want to get the manager involved. Just leave a review and that’s it.
Also to all those asking “insecure/jealous much?” I’ll give you the same answer I gave my MIL, I might have been BUT I just don’t think that this was an appropriate way to act at work. That is all!
And Reddit chimed in with some serious feelings about how NTA OP was.
“Idk wtf everyone else is talking about. NTA. “Your eyes ignite me” = your eyes turn me on. Sexual harassment. MARRIED MAN. Waiters need tips, but most know not to mess with married couples/families. She should have known better, and the fact that she reached out after you filed a complaint (even if she was fired) is extremely inappropriate too. What are you gonna do? Get her job back? You’re not the manager lol. You’re not insecure, the waitress was obviously flirting with your husband. If I was in his shoes, I would of been extremely uncomfortable,” wrote one person.