Restaurant owner has the best response after customer verbal abuse moves staff to tears

Sometimes, restaurant customers face long waits, leading to stress and frustration. While minor annoyance is expected, some customers' behavior can cross the line of respect. When a restaurant in Brewster faced recurring incidents of staff mistreatment by rude customers, they decided to shut down for a “day of kindness,” as reported by WHDH. This move went viral, with other restaurant owners sharing similar experiences of rampant mistreatment in the service industry.

Ideally, it is not a server’s job description to put up with customers who belittle them or show rude behavior. But in July 2021, the servers of Apt Cape Cod, a farm-to-table restaurant in Massachusetts, had to bear such a huge emotional toll that they ended up getting overwhelmed and crying. Some impatient and disrespectful customers shoved away their frustrations on the servers in the most discourteous manner. The situation was exacerbated by the pandemic. “Patrons have crossed the line from being rude or upset to verbally abusive,” owner Regina Felt Castellano told WHDH. “They told one of our workers, 'I hope you get hit by a car when you leave work today'.”

But it was the last straw when one man lambasted one of the restaurant's young employees. “The server had told the customer that he could not take his breakfast takeout order because the restaurant had not opened yet,” Brandi Felt Castellano, the co-owner, told The New York Times, adding, “I never thought it would become this.” Following the incident, the restaurant’s owners put up a notice on Facebook, announcing that they were shutting down the restaurant for a few hours as a “day of kindness." The now-deleted post read, “Apt Cape Cod will be closed for breakfast this morning. We will be opening for dinner at 5 pm,” per the New York Post.

“This is an unacceptable way to treat any human,” they wrote in the post, elaborating that there had been an “astronomical influx” of customers who swore, threatened, yelled, and argued with their staff regularly. They told TODAY that they chose to close because they wanted to value "employees over money" and hoped to "spread a message of kindness and change the culture that restaurant workers should just have to take abuse because of the job they chose."

The post went viral, resonating with other restaurant owners who shared similar experiences, especially post-pandemic. A 2020 research from the Institute of Customer Service even showed that more than half of customer-facing employees report increased incidences of abuse since the start of the pandemic. “We’re hearing from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Las Vegas, like all over the country people are like ‘it's happening to us too’,” Felt Castellano told WHDH.

But this was not always the case. Earlier in the pandemic, customers overwhelmingly exhibited kindness, Brandi told The New York Times. But after the restaurants in the state were allowed to fully reopen in May 2021, customers’ treatment of their servers worsened. “It’s like abuse,” she said. “It’s things that people are saying that wouldn’t be allowed to be on TV because they would be bleeped. People are always rude to restaurant workers, but this far exceeds anything I’ve seen in my 20 years.”

She added that customers had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Due to the pandemic, the restaurant was grappling with staffing and supply shortages. This often led to longer wait times and the unavailability of certain menu items, which prompted many impatient customers to threaten and berate the servers. “I would say that it is its own epidemic,” said Brandi.

At the same time, many of the restaurant’s customers demonstrated their respect by gestures like dropping off ice-cream shop gift cards for the restaurant’s employees, and tickets to a parasail and Jet Ski shop in the next town, Brandi revealed. “A lot of people,” she said, “have been like, ‘Thanks for saying what we’ve all been wanting to say.’ ”

Sadly, the Apt Cape’s servers are not alone in facing this rude behavior from customers. Darren Cardosa, a long-time server who runs a blog titled "The Bitchy Waiter," told TODAY during the pandemic, "We've all seen these viral videos of servers being assaulted or yelled at by customers who are upset about masks or how long they had to wait for their table." He added, "There is this sense in the whole country right now that there's a lot of anger and frustration, and it seems like a lot of customers feel like it's okay to take that out on their server."