A viral TikTok shows a food service employee clapping back at a customer whose bad Google review apparently left out a few key details.
The video, posted to user @yaofomo’s account, has more than 320,000 views and tens of thousands of likes in the 24 hours its been up on the platform. Viewers shared their horror and disgust in the comment section after Yao clarified the details behind the negative Google review.
The video sees Yao sitting in the back of the house at a restaurant, in front of a computer. From here, he reads a negative review that his unnamed restaurant received a few months back. The reviewer’s name has been censored, but their brief one-star review is displayed clear as day.
“Worst service I have ever had,” the review starts off. “My server called me a bitch straight to my face in front of everyone.”
The review leaves off there, but the screenshot shared to the video also displays a portion of the response left by the restaurant’s Business Manager, Wesley Y, who appears to be the same man in the video. Yao notes, in his response, that the restaurant staff remembers the customer—who he refers to as Julia—and references a “sanitary” issue that arose during her visit. Yao provides some details about this response in his recorded retort to Julia’s review.
Noting that the server “probably didn’t” actually call Julia a bitch, Yao notes that staff “did call her out” for “drinking straight from the bottle.” He holds up a clear glass bottle as an example. It looks like the bottles that are typically used by restaurants as water pitchers, to be left at a table for customers within a group to refill cups.
Julia apparently drank from the bottle as though it was for her personal use, rather than communal use. She was also “licking the tip of the bottle,” according to Yao, which he notes is “just unsanitary.” He notes that the bottles are commonly shared between tables and groups.
Commenters were horrified at the revelation, and called Julia out for her “Karen” behavior. Calling the unnamed location “my kind of restaurant,” people flooded the comment section with Karen jokes and support for the staff.
Several people pointed out that the tired adage of “the customer is always right” should only apply to “well behaved people.”
“Guys… just because they clean stuff in between users doesn’t mean you can just go around licking everything,” another viewer noted.
The dilemma soon became a talking point, as people debated the usefulness of the crowd-sourced review website. Pointing out how often irate customers misrepresent an experience, numerous people noted that: “this is why I never trust Yelp.”
One viewer’s truly stellar idea could be a game-changer, after they pitched a “website where we review customers.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Yao via Instagram.
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