Pizza Madness: Another Valuable Social Media Lesson

I suppose the lesson you take from this incident depends upon your perspective. But one Charlotte restaurant is taking a great deal of heat from customers for… defending its customers? In these situations, there’s often an obvious right and an obvious wrong. This seems to be a little more of a gray area, however. The Huffington Post reports:

A North Carolina waitress is out of a job after griping on her Facebook page about the $5 tip she got from a couple who sat at their table for three hours. The waitress says the customers kept her at work an hour after she was supposed to clock out.

The Charlotte Observer reported Monday that 22-year-old Ashley Johnson felt slighted after waiting on the couple at Brixx Pizza.

So she blasted the couple on Facebook, calling them cheap and mentioning the restaurant by name.

Brixx officials told Johnson a couple of days later that she was being fired because she violated a company policy banning workers from speaking disparagingly about customers and casting the restaurant in a bad light on a social network.

Johnson says she has apologized to Brixx and is looking for a new job.

Obviously, there are many who believe Brixx was too harsh on its former employee, and are airing their discontent on its Facebook page. But Brixx fired back with a statement of their own, explaining their ongoing intent to respect their customers:

Brixx Wood Fired Pizza Brixx appreciates your feedback! Please know we value our employees very much, which is why we are one of the few small restaurant companies that offers benefits. Brixx also values our customers and has a policy against making negative remarks about them.

As an employer, it is necessary to enforce policies for the benefit of all our hardworking employees and valued customers. Our policies ensure Brixx is an enjoyable place to both work AND dine. We welcome your comments, but please keep it clean!

So, who’s right here?

2 thoughts on “Pizza Madness: Another Valuable Social Media Lesson

  1. The employer’s responsibility is to define the policy and communicate it to the employee. It sounds as though Brixx Pizza did that, and the waitress blew it. Her anger with the customers was justifiable, but publishing it wasn’t.

  2. Thanks Penny. I think I’d be inclined to agree with you on this. Sounds like Brixx has a policy in place, and it’s there for a reason. Like you, I certainly would not defend jerk customers who have no consideration for wait staff, but there’s a professionalism that employees must show when representing their employer. I think had she even posted it without naming the restaurant by name: (“Still at work (sigh). These lame customers only left me a $5 tip and I was supposed to leave an hour ago!”), I’d say she’d be ok, or at worst get a talking to from her boss.

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