Houston: Restaurant Ejects Diner for Tweeting While Eating

Not Louisville, but in light of some of the posts I've seen on the board lately this is a new twist on making your dissatisfaction known.

Actually the party was having a drink at the bar and tweets an insult about a bartender's conversation that is perceived as insulting about a bartender\owner she knows. GM of restaurant sees Tweet, calls restaurant, and asks her to leave over the phone.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2011/08/restaurants_and_twitter_dont_a.php

Ejectee's Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/AllisonHiromi/

Anvil Bartender\Owner that she was trying to defend bans her from his establishment calling her a PR risk via his Twitter feed and later blogs about it.

http://drinkdogma.com/houston-food-for-thought/

What I find fascinating about this is the perspective of the Anvil bartender\owner so closely mirrors what I have seen local owners post when they have a negative post pop up on this forum.

I am an IT Director, and understand Twitter and social media in general is a big to huge deal, but I am considerably outside that demographic and don't get the need to share everything. Are local restaurateurs setting up Twitter accounts and if so monitoring them as closely, Google alerts when names are indexed maybe, as this case would seem to indicate?

Robin-If this is in the wrong forum feel free to move or delete. Thought it might be an interesting discussion given what has been on topic lately.

We have a company twitter account, and one of the other owners monitors it regularly. People are going to say what they are going to say. I would never eject someone over a twitter message or bad review, or whatever. If they are a paying customer and they are in my establishment not causing a disturbance or being a menace, then they are welcome to stay and say whatever they want. If they have a complaint, I would prefer they tell me or the manager on site, but apart from that, live and let live.

Not sure the logic behind the ejection, apart from MORE bad PR.

I'm sorry...it seems a bit, erm...nutty to do what that GM did.

Ok. You know what? I'm just gonna say it: she sounds like a fruit loop. (I do feel better now) She needs to step away from the computer...

I agree, stupid move on the restaurant's part.

But I have a bigger problem with the article: it's a perfect example of sensationalistic reporting that misleads readers as to the real story. The headline says "Restaurant Ejects Diner for Tweeting While Eating," as though it was the food-service equivalent of getting ticketed for texting while driving. But she wasn't ejected for tweeting while eating. She was ejected because she insulted the restaurant's staff in a public venue. Which is a horse of a different color, and not as remarkable as the title would lead one to believe.

There's a prominent news aggregator on the Web who does this crap all the time, and it drives me nuts, even though I find his overall news delivery valuable.

She was ejected because she insulted the restaurant's staff in a public venue.

Irony alert...

Her tweet was about the restaurant staff insulting folks who work at another restaurant where they could be overheard by customers.

I agree with both Jeff and Steve.

Honestly, if I were in charge, that GM would be fry cook for a few months. (or bus-girl...whatever)

Since when is a person named Forrest perceived to be a woman?

Since when is a person named Forrest perceived to be a woman?

My bad! I did think it was a woman...I'm not sure exactly why.

My opinion still stands. It was a dumb thing to do.

Me too, Christina. Do you think if it were a man tweeting he would have done the same thing?

Yes, I do. I think this person was rash and did not stop to think about anything before he did what he did. He saw red and someone was gonna pay. (imo)