Their meal should have been comped, and each given a free dessert. Yeah, that’s it.
A grudging of half-off on your meal accompanied by a smirk from the manager doesn’t exactly spell contrition. Customer service: it’s not that hard.
:thumbs up:
Ducati buddy, an asshole that vile would have said it from a Saturn, etc. Twern’t the car talking. As an owner I’m naturally aware of the behavior of most other Porsche drivers. My sentiment is that 95% of them are comparatively conservative. Don’t typecast us, bro! We’re there for the parts, not the paint. 
As for the 3 women in question, I think I’d be far more offended if I was marginally overweight and at least trying to maintain. But in their case it doesn’t appear they’re making much of a concentrated effort to combat their obesity at all so I’m a little confused as to why they’d be surprised at a stranger’s perception. Sure, it was an stupid thing to put in print anywhere, but I don’t see it as having been intentionally malicious.
Exactly.
Leonard Gardner’s novel FAT CITY is set in Stockton.
That reflects a blindness as to how the word “fat” is used in our society and the ways in which fat people are routinely degraded and marginalized. If “fat” is a plain descriptor, then so is “big-tit babes.”
Yes, it would. Plenty of short people hate it when their slight stature is pointed out.
Who is going to charge them? The restaurant decided to apologize instead of pressing charges.
Maybe I’m feeling particularly insensitive today, lemme ask you this: Do fat people think it’s ok to be fat? If yes, then it shouldn’t bother them to be referred to as ‘fat’. See the whole ‘big is beautiful’ movement.
Then they need to lighten the fuck up. Seriously. If I refer to two women in the same group as ‘short Jane’ and ‘tall Jane’, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. If ‘short Jane’ gets annoyed, that’s her problem.
If I walk up to ‘short Jane’ and rest my elbow on her head, and ask what it’s like to buy children’s clothes, she deserves to punch me in the balls.
There’s a huge difference that I don’t think you’re allowing to be taken in to account.
Yes, the difference is between people you already know and have a degree of intimacy with, and strangers or people in a workplace/business context. It’s always rude to bring attention to a stranger’s physical attributes.
I think it’s fine that I’m jewish. Maybe I even wear a stylish kippah on my nights out. But if I start seeing “Jew” on all my cafe receipts, you’ll forgive me if I get a bit cagey about it.
We’re not talking about all receipts, we’re talking about one instance. But why? Are you? Does what you are wearing visually set you apart from the other patrons, in a way that a server might use to tell you apart?
What if there was a priest wearing…I donno, whatever priests wear. Would ‘priest’ at the top of the slip be offensive?
What if I donned a fez for a lark…would it be ok for the receipt to say ‘funny hat’?
Have one arm? Server notes ‘one arm’ on the ticket. Ok, I think.
But people do it all the time. I wonder if any of those three women ever call slender women sticks, boney, scrawny, skinny bitches, or claim that women with a low to normal BMI aren’t"real women"? I’ve always been tall and thin, and strangers and coworkers think nothing of commenting on my appearance and it’s rarely nice or flattering. And I’ve never been offered a meal discount or a news segment.
Has it been done to you by someone who’s offering you a service that you’re paying for? What did you do about it? What if they had called you “ugly” or “stupid” or used a racial epithet? It’s up to you to complain or go to the press. No one’s going to do it for you.
You honestly don’t see the difference between a note of ‘Dirty stinking (racial epithet’ and ‘Fat girls’…? Will you at least acknowledge that they are at different places on the offensiveness scale?
And plenty of us don’t give a shit, because, you know, it’s not like it’s a big secret that we’re short. It’s more annoying when people strive NOT to point it out.
Sure it has, I have a big appetite which servers mention. But I like to eat far more than I like to complain. What I’m getting at is it’s obviously socially acceptable to comment on weight, height, eye and hair color, and nearly every physical attribute but fat. No one ever produces a rational reason for that double standard, and the outrage in the media today over this isn’t doing anyone a favor.
“He called us fat!!”
“Are you fat?”
“Obviously!” storms off in a huff
What is the purpose of bringing national attention? What will it solve?
Yes, referring to my faith-based headgear would certainly help servers tell me apart. And yet, using Jew as an identifier on a receipt would still raise major alarm bells. Even if it only happened once.
As for whether a fez-wearer or priest or one-armed man would feel upset about being called so on a receipt, I sure don’t know for sure. You’d have to ask them. But here’s a good rule of thumb for addressing people respectfully: don’t draw unnecessary attention to characteristics they posess that society at large perceives to be a liability. Maybe you don’t mean any harm, who knows? But once it’s out of your mouth, it kind of doesn’t matter what your intent was.
Look, nobody’s going to call the cops on you for commenting on a mother’s ugly baby or for telling a crippled WW2 veteran that he’s a pee-reeking crippled old gimp. You’re allowed to say pretty much whatever rude stuff you want. But if people get upset about it, well, that’s allowed too.
The word we are looking for is “unprofessional.”
We all use potentially-offensive shorthand in our internal dialog (“Okay, I have to give the report to the bird-looking lady with the funny hair, and then have it signed by the slow guy with the unibrow…”) but it’s bad professional practice to write these things down or say them where they have any potential for being overheard.
Waiters usually aren’t compensated professional wages, so it’s not surprising that they sometimes act unprofessionally. But sometimes you get caught and have to take the fall. A lost waiting job hopefully won’t ruin this guy’s future, and he’s learned a valuable lesson about professional conduct.
Puella quoniam pinguis pro totus , non iustus pro desumo.
Agreed. But blowing this disagreeable situation into a national media blitz isn’t going to advance fat acceptance or whatever the diners hoped to accomplish.
What they had hoped to accomplish were paid appearances on Oprah.