June 26, 2008
Yelpers vs. Service Industry Workers
Yelpers are unfairly critical. Or are Bay Area service industry workers notoriously rude? Really, it's the Hatfield-McCoy feud of our time. Rumors of Yelpers throwing the Y-word at servers is stuff of legend. (Not to mention reprehensible.) As is the loogie-in-your-entrée myth. Who's right? Who's to say ? (Hint: the waiters). But Eater is having a "Who's The Bigger Dick?" discussion that is most delicious (heh). See, Amy Blair picks a few choice Yelp reviews, and then you, the reader, decides just who the biggest dick is -- and not in a good way -- the Yelp reviewer or the sever. Check it out. Now.
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People actually working for a living get the benefit of the doubt IMHO. Putting up with the douchebaggery of the freaking Yelpers should result in a quantitative pay increase to the level of said douchebaggery. And if someone gets "dicked" on some Yelpers review they should get a freaking badge of honor.
I'm an active Yelper, and I'm kinda sick of people complaining when staff doesn't offer oral sex to everyone who comes through. When I go somewhere, I I just want decent service and my order correct. As long as nothing is thrown at me, I'm generally cool with it.
That said, Yelp has a lot of annoyances but if you take the time to read through the reviews, you can get a lot of good information.
Yelp! has replaced the phone book for me. If there are a good 20 or so reviews for a place, you get a good sense of whether or not it is worth your buck or not. It is like free (though also public) focus group research. Smart entrepreneurs would either take the feedback to make changes or decide that the people providing feedback don't fit his/her establishment's demographic and can go to hell. Either way, Yelp is a useful reference IMHO.
"Someone who is nice to you, but is rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." - Dave Barry
Because I'm way behind the times, I only joined Yelp recently, and I was just shocked at the overly-critical hyper bullshit on that site. The place is overrun by assholes who give a place one star because "I asked for orange juice with low pulp and they brought me O.J. with medium pulp!!1" nonsense.
I was a waitress for 5 years, so I know firsthand how hard the service industry is. This doesn't mean all service is perfect, but Jeebus, Yelpers, if your food is warm and your server doesn't pee in your lap, RELAX. It's hard enough being a small business owner in SF without spoiled dickheads ruining your business' reputation online.
God damn you filterless internet! You are so full of paradoxes!
I also use Yelp as the yellow pages which is how I found out there are no butchers in the southern half of San Francisco, and only one fresh seafood shop, on Mission St.
Which is not actually true.
Someone should really update Yelp about this.
BK: how come I don't see the info line in the normal sfist view? This thing:
By Brock in Miscellaneous | Link | Comments (3) | Recommend this!
"southern half of San Francisco"
aw.
i see you noticed our brand new headless posts. they're adorable, aren't they?
Yelpers: Suck ass
New headless posts: Suck ass
Yelp sucks ass.
Conveniently, Firefox extension NoScript basically allows me to ban Yelp. Good riddance.
I blame those "hotels.com" commercials.
I truly feel bad for some of the businesses on there, as the legitimate reviews of their services get buried by an avalanche of narcissistic garbage.
Therein lies the rub.
It's not that Yelp totally lacks any worthwhile content. It's just that the few thoughtful items are buried under that avalanche, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio to nearly zero and rendering the site an almost complete waste of time.
All community sites on the Internet are threatened by worthless contributors; this negatively affects scalability as newcomers don't know who to ignore.
Blame Yelp's operators for letting their site get out of hand. And it's not even well adopted outside the SF Bay Area.
F-ck Yelp.
I work at a ribs and steak restaurant in SF. We have a Yelp review complaining about our lack of vegetarian options. Thats like going to a vegetarian restaurant and complaining about the lack of meat. Its not that they're aren't legitimate complaints or reviews but I think most of them are bullshit.
Cheers,
Greg
I suppose it's hard to hate on yelp when I still use it for finding new places. It makes me feel very passive about things, but I guess I never notice those small things that can make people pissed. I just feel sympathy for people that work retail and in the service industry, because it sucks :(
The problem with asking random people what they think: they'll tell you. I can usually tell when Yelp reviews are being written by a twerp, though. They tend to want you to know how petty they're being as some badge of klass.
I guess I wouldn't expect any less of folks who are used to a grade point scale that was inflated to 5.0 or whatever .... such precious egos, how dare anyone write a critique? Jesus ...
If you put too much credence in Yelp, then you're the type of guy to buy a Ford Taurus because it was the most popular car around.
The Yelp phenomenon explains why GWB got elected... twice!
Yep. The majority of folks are pretty uneducated.
bitterwaitress.com
check the "shitty tipper" database and the war stories. Priceless.
Yelp can be very useful at times, but, like with anything where you're dealing with the unwashed masses, you need to read a lot of reviews and form your own opinions. Check out what, exactly, people like or dislike, pay attention for obvious biases from the people obsessed with saying gushing things about the latest trendy whatever, watch for the yuppies and hipsters who bitch about any number of perceived problems and assign knee-jerk, extreme ratings as a result (I had a good meal there this one time 5 STARS!!!! my food was cold once.. WORST EVER!!!). You want the worst though? Idiots near me bitched when the Alberton's under their condos closed and it was replaced by an Asian market. They complained that it's too Asian and not American, they complained that the American food there is overpriced crap (it is, but they bitched like you wouldn't believe), they even complained because they have a live fish tank and they think it might smell. Just like everywhere in this city, there are assholes on Yelp. Big news I'm sure.
On the flip side waiting can be a tough, demanding, thankless job. It can also attract a lot of entitled assholes who feel that everything they do is perfect and they should be tipped 40% because they dropped off my food and refilled my water once. A lot of waitstaff have developed the idea that they inherently deserve a tip and get really pissy when they don't get what they want. Tough job? I bet... I'm unemployed, but I'd never work something where the majority of my wages are based on the kindness of strangers conforming to a bizarre social ritual of patronage and pity.
The guy who bitched my girlfriend out for a standard dollar tip on a pizza delivery because it wouldn't cover the cost of gas in his giant SUV, the girl back in college who apparently felt my cash tip on the table wasn't good enough and ripped me off for a 25% tip on my debit card, the waiter too busy talking with his friends at another table to bring the check for a good twenty minutes after we'd all finished eating... these people exist too.
Personally, I don't really care much about service at restaurants. I rarely think less of a place for bad service unless it's very consistent or extremely poor... that's the point of tipping: to correct poor service by paying the server less directly. Still, I dislike the concept of tipping. We should be paying a flat rate and get rid of it like a civilized country. As for serving. I'd usually just prefer to serve myself. It's no big problem for me to tell someone my order, pick up my food, and fill my own glass. I don't need to pay extra to have a servant perform such simple and basic tasks.
For every idiot on yelp whining about something completely superfluous there's probably a server complaining because they didn't like their tip. This is something that cuts both ways.
Perhaps I'm too much of a narcissist but I rarely read reviews on Yelp that I haven't personally written. Ok, that isn't completely true. I skim all the bitter posts, and there are a lot of bitter posts, just to find ones that are quirky, clever and all around funny.
Some people have nothing better to do with their time than complain and act like jagweeds. You know, like the commentators on this site. Just kidding, I love you all, I really do, most sincerely.
There will always be a place for people to review anything - from restaurants to ex's- on the internet. Unfortunately, with the informative (and often rave) reviews, come the dumb asses who just like to hear themselves bitch and whine.
I can tell you that there are some restaurants out there that deserve to get poor reviews, and if the owners and managers aren't reading them, then the health department should be. But that's a different story.
Just like everything else (SFist??), Yelp should be taken with a grain of salt.
travin: thx for the bitterwaitress tip. i also enjoy waiterrant.net
belgand: tl;dnr - just kidding. good luck with the job search, good thing you don't deliver pizza, eh?
I've always loved bitterwaitress (being a former one myself), but hadn't heard of waiterrant, so thanks HQL.
As for Yelp, maybe it's the "unwashed masses" but I think the service is invaluable. I just used the site yesterday in search of a dog groomer, and the reviews really opened my eyes (and quite frankly, scared me into just taking my dog to the vet instead).
Sure, some people are ridiculously over-critical, but it's pretty easy to spot them and scroll past them/take them with a grain of salt. Maybe it's just the particular spots I'm wanting reviews for, but for the most part, the reviews I get seem legit and are helpful. I figure every server has a bad night occasionally, but if I see review after review citing bad service, well, that's not a place I want to spend money.
And I hardly think being a person who reads Yelp makes you the kind of person who got GWB elected.
Also, the Carnelian Room has a dress code? I am SO there. I only had to get three lines into that dude's review to know: DICK.
(right? dress-coded clubs fascinate me.)
So this is bitching about someone else bitching about someone else bitching. Metabitch?
As with any online review, you have to ignore the total ratings and read the reviews. It's usually very easy to tell which are the thoughtful, useful (positive or negative) ones and which ones are from people who clearly don't understand the product or service in question or who are just plain assholes.
"The customer is always right" is a great attitude for the service industry to have, but a terrible attitude for the customer to have.
So douche goes to a douche restaurant and has a douche time.
The guy's an ass, but I'm not rushing to the Carnelian Room either.
Ciaran - lets go shopping, get you an outfit worth of the Carnelian Room and then get douched!
This is really reading like the typical argument/angst between car drivers and cyclists.
A patron is presumed to be hapless morons, the serving staff stupefied victims.
These situations certainly don't arise due to the parties in question possessing superior social and diplomatic skills. And having been on both sides of the table - 12+ years in f&b, starting at age 10 - I can comfortably add that both groups are often dicks.
Perhaps instead of passively complaining serving staff can get onto yelp and start defending themselves. It might not be professional but it may prove to be therapeutic.
The Carnelian Room review was hilarious. Only an asshole would spend $230 on a t-shirt and then brag about it.
"Perhaps instead of passively complaining serving staff can get onto yelp and start defending themselves."
Or they could just focus on all the positive reviews. Every restaurant has its douchebag reviews, but if most of your reviews are negative, you probably suck. I also think most people are smart enough to ignore the douchebag reviews.
Seriously: check out most of the reviews for decent restaurants on Yelp. They're mostly positive. Stop focusing on the couple of spoiled assholes.
what crazy planet is begland from where $1 is the "standard" pizza delivery tip?
i tip $3, but only because i don't know how much and i don't want the pizza guy to hate me. sad, i know.
I tip the pizza delivery guy around 20% which I think is kind of high since he's my boyfriend and coming over to my place anyway. Ok, so he isn't really a delivery guy and what I pay to him is actually more like a bribe, which I call a "boyfriend-tax", to go get the damn pizza in the first place.
for restaurants, the best way to use yelp is to see what dishes the five-star reviewers ate, and what dishes the one-star reviewers ate. They are almost always different dishes. And then you know what to order, or if your favorite dish gets the negative reviews, then don't go there.
A dollar tip on a pizza delivery IS standard.
Standard for cheap bastards.
Yes the $1 tip for pizzas was fine in 1992. Some peoples tips for things like that are set when they are young, and never change.
The one I am finding tricky is bartender tips. Ever since I've been 21, $1 has been my standard tip. But upon thinking about it, even in normal economic times inflation has widdled away value of that tip. So my tip has actually decreased in value by 10-20%.
Do I wait until inflation makes $2 appropriate? or do I bust out some change?
I wonder if bartenders are feeling this pinch?
www.tipguide.org
Bushy Hyde wrote: ... Yes the $1 tip for pizzas was fine in 1992.
>
Where? In Morroco? I was working a pizza place in 1986 and that wouldn't have been at all acceptable.
There's no such thing as a "standard tip", aside from the 15% minimum.
It's true, I grew up with $1 being standard for pizza. At the same time most of my friends have usually also tipped the same amount and I've had friends who delivered who reported that it was the normal tip that they received. Of course, many of those friends also live back in the Midwest, but in the suburbs you're also driving a hell of a lot further every time you go out. Unless things are different every delivery person I've ever known has been paid a regular salary as well (not some below-minimum server salary) and most get a pittance on top of that for gas.
belgand, not to mention the wear and tear on their own car, tickets and insurance.
Tickets and insurance are things they'll have to deal with anyway. Increased wear and gas are about the only business-related expenses and while it sucks and won't even come close these days everyone I've known has been given some form of bonus per delivery by their employer. I can accept that maybe the average has gone up a dollar or so, but 15%? No way. It requires exactly the same amount of effort to deliver slightly more food to me that doesn't warrant an increase in tip. Delivery tips are definitely something that remain flat and not a percentage. I mean, I have serious issues with the idea of percentages in other tipping contexts, but for delivery it's not even remotely relevant unless I'm really ordering a ton of stuff.
Frankly most of places that deliver, I've found, only deliver to you if you live so close that you might as well walk there anyway.
tipping on pizza delivery is one of those gray areas for me, along the lines of semi self-serve places (e.g. taquerias, Naan N Curry), and then there are cafés. Do you tip 15% when you're ordering a regular coffee and the counter person pretty much just takes your money and hands you a cup for you to fill with the coffee of your choice?
I generally tip at least 20% if I'm the last person at a restaurant, especially if I'm with a group, and we got there shortly before closing.
I tip even when it is delivery. However, I believe you should earn your tip. If you're an asshole to me, then I'm not tipping you.