An extraordinarily negative experience due to an astoundingly rude employee.
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About a week ago I posted a review of this place that the owners of Franklin Park complained enough to have Yelp delete it. That review will have undoubtedly been vastly superior to this one because that review describing in detail exactly what happened in a fashion that reflected how this experience and employee made me feel, which was mad, flowed freely. With this review I have to tread carefully to keep from violating the arbitrary Yelp guidelines. One little slip up, and BAM! The bar owners will complain again, and Yelp will wither quicker than Anthony Weiner's career prospects, and all this hard work will have been for nothing!
You see, I went on down to patronize the Franklin Park bar on a date, and bought a few rounds of overpriced beer because that's what paying customers like myself do. It was a slow night and my date and I were sitting in a booth off in the corner minding our own business, not disturbing anyone else. When I went up to the bar to order the next round, the bartender tried to kick us out.
Yelp said that the last review review had been deleted because it contained personal attacks. Apparently, Yelp considers a description so general that it makes note only of gender (for example Female is a gender, but not necessarily the gender of the bartender in question) and hair color (for example, Blonde is a hair color, but not necessarily the hair color of the bartender in question) sufficient to identify a specific individual, so I'm not going to mention this bartenders gender or hair color. At all. I'll just use the gender neutral pronouns and indefinite articles. That oughta keep me on the right side of the arbitrary Yelp guidelines. I hope. Anyways, if I'm not, Yelp, please get in touch and tell me what the problem is and I'll revise the review. You have my email address.
Anyways, the bartender said we had to get out, and I asked why because I couldn't think of a single reason, and that bartender said because she or he said so. Now, I've been kicked out of plenty of bars before, and if there's a good enough reason I don't question it. But "Just because I said so" isn't a legitimate reason to kick a patron paying cash for overpriced beers out. And the bouncer agreed with me, because when the bouncer came over and sat with us for a bit, he or she did not ask us to leave, merely invited us into the back room.
So anyways, the bartender was a stuck up little princess or prince, and felt like she or he could kick customers out at her or his discretion. With or without a legitimate reason.
When I originally posted this review, the objective was two fold:
1) Leave a public record, so when a similar thing happens to others, they will know that the policy of this establishment is to treat their customers like garbage.
2) Notify the business owners that they have an employee who is treating their customers like garbage. In case they didn't already know.
The review closed with an invitation for the owners to contact me directly if they wanted feedback.
Rather than get in touch with me directly, they chose to try to cover up the terrible attitude of one employee, as well as their deficiencies in management that permit this to occur.
Maybe the bartender read the review, was able to identify her or himself, and her or his feelings got hurt, but guess what. That's the whole point. You acted very, very poorly and should be embarrassed.
Publicly shaming an individual for inappropriate conduct is a tool of influence present in every society. Because it works. Unless it's pointed out that someone is a jerk, and explained why, they're just going to keep on being a jerk.
So, there you have it. There is at least one ridiculously rude bartender with an unwarranted sense of self importance working at Franklin Park bar, and rather than address the problem in an appropriate way, such as apologizing to the cash paying customer who bought a few rounds of overpriced beer, and taking it up with the employee, the owners successfully tried to cover up the negative publicity. I would speculate that it is because one of them has more than a passing romantic interest in this employee. That's usually how these sorts of things go. read more