You know what low-wage restaurant workers in Manhattan love? Being told by “Business Insider” writers that their job position should be eliminated.
Last week, “Business Insider” editor Henry Blodget wrote a whiny article about the bathroom attendant service offered at Balthazar, a brasserie restaurant in New York City. He didn’t complain about the quality of service; rather, he called it “extortion-by-guilt.” Basically, he didn’t particularly feel like tipping the dude a dollar for turning on the sink.
At the end of the article, he wrote, “So I am hereby appealing not just to the bosses at Balthazar, but to restaurateurs and hoteliers all over the world, to eliminate this service.”
The owners of Balthazar responded by doing just that.
As an update to the article, Blodget posted, “Good news! The boss at Balthazar, Keith McNally, apparently agrees with me and also doesn’t like the bathroom attendant service he has asked his employees to provide. Hopefully, as he phases it out, he will reassign the talented employees who provide it to the dining room.”
Take a careful look at that language. Blodget doesn’t know that the bathroom attendants will be reassigned. After all, the skill sets required by a bathroom attendant and a server or busboy are different, and he’s naive to think that a restaurant owner will bother to train new workers.
Nope; the most likely scenario involves some newly unemployed workers in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S.
The whole situation is just icky. In a section of the article, Blodget complains that he doesn’t need someone to turn on his water for him and writes, “Thanks, but I actually don’t need someone to turn on the water for me. First of all, it wastes water. Second, it makes me feel like I’m the kind of guy who dreams of being rich enough to be able to pay someone to turn on the water for me.”
Look, dude, I hate to break it to you, but you’re already eating breakfast at a place that boasts a $20 French toast plate. But, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and thanks to one pretentious writer who doesn’t have a background in restaurant management, some innocent workers are out of a job.
The article is absurdly long. Like, this guy actually took time out of his day to write an opinion article for a huge publication about a service that minorly inconveniences him — real hard-hitting journalism. It’s easy for Blodget, however; while he gets to continue chowing down on $22 eggs Benedict and writing crap articles, real people are out of a job.
To top it off, Blodget took to Twitter to try to explain himself. The people of Twitter didn’t disappoint, however.
Wrote one user: “@hblodget If you were an ice cream flavor, you’d be pralines and d**k.”
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 11/5/2013 under the headline "Keep It To Yourself: On eliminating bathroom attendants"
