Complaining About Us on Twitter? Leave Our Restaurant!

The headline that a Houston restaurateur kicked a female patron out of the establishment for a negative Tweet likely had social media enthusiasts seething and customer service professionals cringing.

A further inspection not only questions whether those reactions are justified—it raises significant question about how business owners should handle inflammatory social media comments as online conversation increasingly becomes real-time.

Though the two sides disagree on the specifics, the gist of the story is straightforward—Allison Matsu, who popularly Tweets with the handle @AllisonHiromi, was dining at Down House in Houston, Texas. Provoked by a bartender’s comments about a worker at another restaurant, Matsu posted a Tweet that labeled him a "twerp" and "jackoff."

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Shortly thereafter, Down House manager Forrest DeSpain, who had seen the Tweet at home, called the restaurant and asked to speak to Matsu. The conversation ended with DeSpain asking Matsu to leave the establishment.

Using an at-first-glance approach, many media outlets and commenters chastised the restaurant. In an era that promotes candid, public conversation about restaurants via Twitter, Facebook and industry-specific tools like Yelp "Quick Tips," DeSpain came off like a tyrant. Social conversation, positive and negative, has become a fixture of the hospitality world—how can you so rapidly and harshly penalize a customer for voicing her opinion?

But to so blindly fault Down House requires a conflation of what Matsu wrote and actual criticism of a restaurant. It also requires, ironically enough, turning a deaf ear to the evolving role of social media in communication.

In Tweeting during her restaurant experience (rather than about it after the fact), Matsu was blatantly seeking to spur real-time conversation about the happenings at Down House. She was not letting her friends know about questionable customer service in a retroactive review; she was calling immediate attention to a staff member she disliked, seemingly with the hope of generating an immediate reaction.

Further, her Twitter account proudly displays her picture, therefore eliminating any possibility that she was putting forth an "anonymous tip" about her experience at Down House. She wanted followers to instantly be aware of her comment, and she wanted to know that it was coming directly from her.

In that sense, it is not entirely inappropriate to consider what would have happened if Matsu had verbally (and loudly) called the bartender a "twerp" and "jackoff" to his face. As thousands of individuals who have been "bounced" for insulting, groping or otherwise-harassing bouncers, bartenders and wait staff can confirm, getting asked to leave would hardly be out of the ordinary in such a situation. A restaurant’s willingness to tolerate bad reviews does not imply a willingness to tolerate mistreatment of its staff.

One opposed to the analogy would likely point to the different "disruption" created by a Tweet versus a verbal, in-person confrontation. If one subscribes to the belief that ejections from a restaurant should be about disruption rather than feelings being hurt, then the fact that the Tweet likely produced a more subtle reaction should warrant separate consideration.

Yet that counter seems committed to playing both sides of the coin. On the one hand, those advocating for the ability to Tweet insulting remarks about restaurant staff are advocating for the ability to spur real-time discussion about the restaurant with their friends, fellow patrons and potential patrons. To then defend that communication by using the fact that social media dialogue is not yet as prevalent and/or actionable as in-person dialogue seems unfair—one Tweeting in real-time clearly believes he has an attentive audience that also wants to communicate in real-time.

While it is unclear Matsu possessed this motivation, it is conceivable, in fact, to argue that one aspires to create more disruption by posting his insult to social media. Disruption caused by confronting a bartender is often incidental, fueled by people overhearing the exchange between the patron and the employee. On social media, the patron is actively trumpeting his complaint to others.

Regardless of how one evaluates the Down House controversy, his analysis should escape the shackles of this individual situation, going beyond, "in this case, was the impact of Matsu’s Tweet enough to warrant an ejection from the restaurant?"

Moving forward, hospitality businesses and social media advocates are going to need to more fundamentally agree on the extent to which real-time "social" conversation mirrors real-world conversation. This is not to say Down House’s reaction was justified or that all restaurants should behave in such a fashion going forward—only that determination will be made as to how much social chatter resembles in-person dialogue.

We already know that Tweets and Yelp reviews about restaurants can spark real-time impact. Will we soon reach a point at which Tweeting "FIRE in theatre 3 at the Downtown Cinema" becomes just as taboo as yelling fire at a crowded movie theatre? Should we at least approach it as such?

Social networks are pushing for patrons to comment on their meals and dining experiences in real time, and restaurateurs (along with friends and other patrons) are monitoring these conversations in real-time. This level of active conversation, for which the business impact can be instant and more direct, cannot simply be written off as static "print" commentary just because it so happens to exist in a "written" online realm.

Consider two forms of negatively reviewing a restaurant—submitting a commentary to the local paper and actually standing in the foyer of the restaurant and screaming negative thoughts about the food, drink and service. While consumers would be up-in-arms if the restaurant tried to force a newspaper to block a bad review, few tears would be shed if the restaurant asked the latter, screaming customer to leave its premises.

As the level of active social media discussion becomes more like that latter example, is it still fair to defend the dialogue as if it is as static as the former?

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