This weekend started off rather normal. I was doing my normal roundup of checking social media. I saw the normal stuff, people posting their beautiful pictures of the beach. A friend showed off his Captain America birthday cake (and yes, he’s older than me).
I saw a bunch of rally bananas, as Mississippi State was preparing to play a winner-take-all game against Oregon State. There were a couple of “woo-pig-sooey” posts from those #OmaHog fans of Arkansas.
However, one tweet caught my attention. President Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, posted that she was denied service at The Red Hen restaurant near the D.C. area of Virginia.
“Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” Sanders said on the social media giant.
As of Monday evening, the tweet had 172,000 likes, 160,000 comments (not counting quoted tweets) and 49,000 straight retweets. I initially saw the tweet when it was only a few minutes old. And that got me to thinking about what was going and why this happened. Did it really happen? What is The Red Hen? Was Sanders telling the truth about why she was denied service or was it for some other reason?
Come to find out, it did happen, and the owner confirmed the reason.
It began around 8 p.m. EDT Friday. According to the Washington Post, owner Stephanie Wilkinson got a call, and her staff told her that Sanders along with family and friends visited the small, yet crowded restaurant. And it was causing a problem for her staff, several of which she said were gay, because she was a part of an “Inhumane and unethical” administration.
“I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals,” Wilkinson told the Post.
So, Wilkinson asked the staff if they should refuse service, and they said “yes.” Then she met about as privately as possible with Sanders and discussed what they were doing.
“I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” Wilkinson told the Post reporter. “I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.’ ”
About 12 hours after the incident, Sanders posted her story, and there have been numerous glowing and horrible reviews, so much so that their Yelp rating averages about 2.5 stars, and that’s continuing to change.
I can understand Wilkinson’s position. She was in the position do I try to treat her party just like any other customers or should I listen to my staff and ask them to leave?
That’s probably one of the hardest moral questions you can get. You could tell your staff to serve them just like you would anyone else and risk your staff walking out on the spot.
Or you could do what she did and ask the party to leave and become the target of every Trump supporter. By doing this, you forever typecast your restaurant as a blue-plate special, and conservatives are not welcome.
To be honest, I can see both sides of the equation. My first inclination was to go ahead and serve the party just like they would anyone else. To me, that make good business sense. The problem is that you’re going to lose great people that helped you build the business you have.
But then again, if you have a great staff and you want to stand up for them, then you have to refuse service. And when you do that, be prepared to lose business from people.
If I was in that position, would I do the same as Wilkinson? I have no idea.
But before you make an opinion, put yourselves in the shoes of the owner. The decision is always much harder than you think.
Contact Brent at bmaze@-newtoncountyappeal.com.
