Dodge City: Hubby enters the tiltyard

So, night before last I received the nastygram below from the Dodge City owner:

Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog.

Dodge City staff mentioned that you were engaged in a loud verbal altercation with your husband outside the store before entering. Their impression was that you were being unreasonably abusive towards him. I would have thought that, as an objective and balanced critic of human performance, you would have added this snippet of information to your account of events - or is that you take pleasure in finding fault in everyone around you but are blind to you own deficiencies.

I would appreciate you amending the blog to add the objective opinion expressed above.

My response was:

Thanks for amending the service times recorded in your revised blog.
You are welcome.

Dodge City staff mentioned that you were engaged in a loud verbal altercation with your husband outside the store before entering. Dodge City staff is incorrect. My husband and I seldom quarrel and when we do, it is always in the utmost privacy. Their impression was that you were being unreasonably abusive towards him. There is such a thing as “reasonably abusive”? Has it occurred to you that the staff is trying to shift focus from their dismal performance by casting me as a querulous and abusive individual whose complaints therefore need not be taken seriously? Do you doubt the evidence of your own video footage?

I would have thought that, as an objective and balanced critic of human performance, you would have added this snippet of information to your account of events- Even if this slander was correct, exactly what bearing would it have on your staff’s appalling performance? The topic here is the performance of your staff, not my behaviour, particularly behaviour not directed to the staff. or is that you take pleasure in finding fault in everyone around you but are blind to you own deficiencies. Are you now saying that your staff’s performance was above reproach, that there was no fault in their service delivery? Or it is only people who are, themselves, above reproach who have the right to complain about substandard service? I asked you to provide me with examples of how your video footage differs substantively from my blog, since amendment is impossible if I don’t know what needs to be amended. Instead of providing the information I need in order to comply with your request, however, you respond with an ad hominem attack and gratuitous insults.

I would appreciate you amending the blog to add the objective opinion expressed above.
The opinion expressed above is far from objective and is, in fact, based in slander. I would appreciate your forwarding to me the names and contact information of the persons who have so egregiously misinformed you so that I may explore my options with regard to a defamation suit against whoever made these statements.

Hubby is out of town, but he does have email, so I forwarded the nasty email to him for comment. This morning I received the following message from my husband, a copy of the email he sent to the restaurant owner in response to the nastygram:

Dear Mr A________

I must profess to being quite astonished by your email…to my wife. A few things are clear from your message…:

1. Not only are your staff bad at delivering good service, but they are obviously hard of hearing and lacking in visual acuity to boot. I experienced no "verbal altercation" nor was my wife "unreasonably abusive" towards me. As an aside, I'd love to hear your definition of "reasonable abuse" - perhaps it’s what you subject your employees to to make them surly and unresponsive to customers? Or maybe it’s just the kak* service that you deliver to your customers? Or maybe it’s the sort of nonsensical email you have written below?

2. Your inference below is that one has to be an "objective and balanced" critic of human performance in order to have a valid complaint about service and that my wife's alleged "abuse" had some sort of bearing on your bad service. This is grade A bulldust. It’s quite obvious that you have no intention of taking note of the feedback, let alone acting on it. In other words, STOP avoiding the crux of the issue, which is that you need to improve your service!

3. I fail to see what my wife's deficiencies, whatever they may be, have to do with the basic facts of the issue which is that the service you delivered was sub-standard.

Thank you for confirming our decision not to patronize your establishment ever again. The memory of your bad service (including your missive below) is going to last far longer than the good taste of your hamburgers and milkshakes.


Kind Regards
N G________ ([Sweet Violet]’s un-abused Husband)

P.S: Please feel free to tear up your R50 "courtesy voucher". A free meal is too high a price to pay for your "reasonable abuse"

P.P.S: I will be recommending to my wife that she publish your response… and my reply thereto on her blog. I think it’s in the interest of diners to know what they can expect if they complain about service levels at Dodge City diners.

* “kak”: Afrikaans word for “shit” or “crap”

Whew! Like me, Hubby has a long, long fuse. He’s much more laid back than I am and it takes a lot to rile him up….but this did it.

I wonder if the restaurant owner gave any consideration to the subtext of his insulting little missive. Hubby and I each caught the “unreasonably abusive” comment: does the man really mean to imply that there is both reasonable and unreasonable abuse? Having already assassinated my character, what of his insinuations regarding Hubby’s? My sweet, reserved, good-tempered, well-mannered husband has been cast as a boorish lout who engages in loud public squabbles with his harridan of a wife rather than the man he is: one who would bite off his own tongue rather than publicly humiliate himself in such a manner. Paradoxically, he is concurrently portrayed as a pitiable character, a hapless wimp subject to public browbeating from the quarrelsome shrew to whom he is married.

The further subtext is that only those who are without personality defects of any kind are entitled to complain about poor or neglectful treatment: only those who are “objective and balanced critic[s] of human performance,” it seems, are entitled to take exception to less-than-perfect service. This, of course, is nonsense…as one of the comments on an earlier blog entry on this topic says: “Even if you and your husband had had a full on physical altercation outside their restaurant, what does that have to do with their service?”

The commenter, Kerryn, further observes: “It seems that demanding reasonable service, and getting annoyed when your waitron is inept is 'over reacting' and being 'unreasonable'.” It is interesting that she should bring this up…the next instalment of this saga (yes, there is more!) veers in that direction.