Food (including Water) if the single most essential element of life as we know it. We can get along with deficiencies in all other areas of our lives, but not without food. Maybe that’s why growing stress in western society is reflecting itself in increasing violence at restaurants..
A woman defecated on the floor at a Langly, B.C., Tim Horton’s when staff told her she
couldn’t use the washroom. A recent, but not the latest, incident in which
the public has shown its disapproval to restaurant staff.
Remember the story about the guy who calmly stood at his McDonald’s ordering kiosk, punching-in his request, as a brawl broke out around him?
Then, there was the one about the woman who was so angry with a Tim Horton’s outlet that she defecated on the floor and threw some her own human waste at the staff! Seems she needed to use the bathroom but they staff wouldn’t let her unless she bought something, first. But, really!
The latest such nut-case outbreak came just this past week, when a Michigan women went bonkers at the Chinese1 resto in the town of Mount Clemons. The Macomb Daily reports that 24-year-old Jade Anderson, completely lost it when she saw her food order, flying into a rage that culminated in her biting the ear of the resto owner. That got her charged with one count of assault with intent to maim, a 10-year felony, and one count of assault or assault and battery, a 93-day misdemeanor. The judge set bail at (US)$20,000 cash or surety bond and she is currently lodged at the Macomb County Jail.
All over a Chinese meal she found unsatisfactory? What ever happened to just sending it back to the kitchen? I may be Canadian, and over-polite, but I just can’t see any justification, anytime, anywhere, for such an extreme reaction to disappointment over food.
I could go on and on. In fact, Google ‘fight in restaurant 2018’ and you’ll get more than 8.4 million returns…
Why?
I think it all has to do with how personal and fundamental we regard our food the places we get it. Would the pooping woman have reacted so crazily to the denial of washroom services if the locale had not been a restaurant? I’d be upset if a restaurant denied me the use of the ‘facilities’. It’s a place where they serve food, after all. They should be more understanding, yes?
Starbucks is at the forefront of what may be a new movement (no pun intended) in restaurant policy. As a result of the kerfuffle over the arrest of two black businessmen who were waiting for an associate in one of their shops and hadn’t ordered anything, yet. Now, anyone can, officially, sit in any Starbuck’s without buying anything. You can even use the washroom.
I have to wonder if the woman in Michagan would have started a fight and bitten the ear of, say, a mechanic who had worked on her car, or a plumber who had fixed her pipes? I have no proof, of course, but I suspect she would not have gone to the same extremes that she did over what she deemed unsatisfactory food.
Why the elevated emotions over food?
First of all, food has risen in price precariously over the past few years. How many of my readers are old enough to remember when McDonald’s first burst upon the land? If you had a spare buck, you could buy a burger and fries and a 7-oz. drink for yourself and a friend, and have change leftover. Now, you can just barely get out of McD’s with the same purchase for under $10.00. I’ll admit that I expect perfection in my resto order, even if it’s ‘just fast food’, if I’m going to fork over that much cash!
And I think that, overall, many folks, especially older ones who could be classified as pre-millennials, are acutely aware of the portion of their overall budget that food purchases of all kinds account for. It’s grown alarmingly.
Food choices are gravitating toward the cheap and unhealthy
As we’ve posted her before, the steep increases in food prices over the past decade have changed the eating habits of those in the middle and lower income strata of society. The experts say we’re tending toward buying more cheap, but filling food, rather than making an effort to continue to eat healthy. The price of all types of protein has sky-rocketed just in the past couple of years. Fresh produce has also increased markedly in price, to the point where a $2 head of Cauliflower famously soared to $8, before falling back to around $4.50, where it sits today, ‘specials’ aside.
My take…
We’re all secretly afraid we’ll soon be unable to afford food at all, let along cheap food that’s nowhere near as healthy as the stuff we’d like to eat, if we could afford it. Restaurant patronage has dipped among middle- and low-income families in the 35-and-up demographic. Not a good time to open a sit-down resto.
QSRs (Quick Service Restos) are struggling to maintain their traditional market shares as revenues falter. I’ve predicted that a shakeout in the QSR sector will come sometime between now and 2025, resulting in come chains closing down, others merging, and most cutting back on the variety in their menus to streamline operations and save money.
Get ready for a bumpy ride. The future is just beginning!
~ Maggie J.