This morning, DR and I were having breakfast with Normlr and Q at the campground. The conversation turned to our favourite breakfast places. As we were naming restos after restos, they remembered one they used to love but don’t go to anymore as one time the waitress acted quite poorly in judgement and manners and singled them out in front of all the customer when they hugged a male friend goodbye. They only heard about what she had actually said later on and then decided to not spend anymore money at the homophobic place. I know for a fact that this story would have ended much differently if they would’ve heard the comments for themselves that morning. That waitress would’ve been typing her resume by lunchtime.

It reminded me of a an incident that happened a few years back, when I was still working in the management team for the Paramount family. One night we went to a Famous Players movie theatre, part of the Paramount family and as usual for me, we got there early, bought our tickets and had the choice to line-up or come back later. We went for a quick walk, looked around the shops decorated for Christmas. When we came back, we passed the few people in the line-up and went inside to wait. The cashier in the booth saw us coming and decided to play Policeman. He got out of the booth to tell us to go wait outside in the line-up. I ignored him and stayed inside with other people that had also gotten there quite early. When they decided to let the people in, the goof in the booth came out again and told the ticket taker to not let us in until everybody else was, that we had jumped the line. I rolled my eyes and told the ticket taker to take a look at the time printed on our ticket that showed we had already been there for a long time and had not jumped any lines. He let us in. But because I had been singled out in front of all the other patrons, I decided to let it go this easily. I asked for the manager but he wasn’t in the office, he was to return in a few minutes. We went in, enjoy the movie and as we left I had decided to drop it and not make a fuss, but as we passed the booth, I waved at the guy inside and gave a thumbs up, he replied with the finger #2.

Me: I’m very sure this is not the proper way to thank customers
Him: Fuck off!
Me: Did I just hear you say what I think you said?
Him: Yeah, fuck off… homo.

I went back in and asked for the manager right away. This time he was there. I told him what had happened and that maybe I had egged him on a bit, but that we both were managers in a company that sold itself on its excellent customer service and that certainly wasn’t acceptable. That kid might have been having a bad day, but regardless, this certainly wasn’t the way we had all learn to treat paying customers. He assured me he would deal with it before the night was over. As I left the theatre, I walked past the booth and saluted the kid in military goodbye manner. He just rolled his eyes, and then the manager entered the booth. A few weeks later we went to that theatre again to see Titanic, there was a nice girl working the booth.

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