Apparently, the same Boner’s BBQ that I was fascinated with a few months back, is under a ton of fire recently. Mostly, due to the fact that the owner of the company took too personally, a negative review of their business on Yelp. So he did what, well, nobody else has really done, as an actual business owner, and proceeded to go on the company’s Facebook page, post a picture of her (she’s fat, big surprise), tell her to go fuck herself, and to Yelp that, bitch. Pretty much everything has been redacted at this point, and as of my typing this right now, is a whole lot of back-pedaling, damage control, superficial apologies, and naturally because this surfaced on the internet, a whole lot of people trumpeting superficial righteousness.
Firstly, I think that everyone who is condemning Boners is full of shit. There’s a lot of fake righteousness and “that’s now how you run a business” rhetoric being flung around, because other people are watching. Deep down, I have a hard time believing that anyone who has worked in the food-service industry at any point in their lives (which are most, hard-working, had jobs as teenagers), believes for a second that Boners is in the wrong for actually acting on impulse and anger and ripping this heifer a new asshole on the internet. Not tipping is the worst thing a customer can do to an establishment, because someone ends up getting boned in the end (no pun intended), and pretty much everyone who’s ever worked food service has been stiffed somewhere down the line. To these people trumpeting condemnation and wishing for the business to go under, I say you are all either full of shit, or have never worked in the food service industry before and should also go fuck yourselves for being too spoiled to have to.
Secondly, love Boners for doing this, or hate Boners for doing this, the bottom line is that they’re getting a monumental amount of free publicity out of it. The local rag at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is covering it, as well as snarky self-righteous bloggers thinking their opinion is really influential, among several other outlets, such as juggernauts like Reddit. If people didn’t know about the existence of Boners BBQ before, they are learning of it in mass numbers now. Sure, there is some percentage of bad publicity that will stick with the self-righteous, but to a lot of people who know how to mellow out, keep an open mind, and aren’t so uptight about life in general, they now know of a restaurant called Boners, that might be kind of funny, and might be worth a visit in the future. If these people are regular tippers, then they’ll have no worry about this kind of backlash, because they’d be considerate enough to tip in the first place.
Regardless of all the facts, responses, and the ongoing battle, I have to suspect the possibility of a conspiracy that this is all deliberate. I liked Boners when I went back in October, but the reality is that the place doesn’t have a ton of business. If I had to guess, it’s pretty clear that the place is probably operating in the red, and they’re probably struggling to pay the bills let alone their employees. Their location sucks, and it not being baseball season can’t be much of a help. The conditions dictate that a risk like trying to create a controversy to go viral, might be a risk worth taking, if there’s nothing left to lose.
Additionally, my suspicion lies in the fact that the broad who blitzed them on Yelp, the negative review of Boners was and is the only review she’s ever written. How many times have we as consumers been jilted, and we’ve felt the impulsive compulsion to sign up for a consumer review, just to slander them? It happens on the internet with regularity, and the fact that in spite of all the other less-than-stellar reviews that already existed, this one-time Yelper was the target of all the ire, is a little skeptical to me. For all anyone knows, the fat chick, if it’s really a fat chick, because any old photograph could have been allegedly claimed to have been this person, could be someone that the owner knew in the first place, to collaborate this forced attempt at going viral.
Well, regardless of the truth, the fact of the matter is that this incident has indeed gone viral. Personally, I like Boners BBQ, so I’m hoping all the negativity blows over, and that Boners’ business improves in an ironic manner, and they begin to improve, much to the dismay of the bullshit naysayers. If it was deliberate, it was a ballsy move to play on the notion that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” but as a fan of the joint, it takes a little bit of something out of it for me, but as long as the place is still standing in the aftermath, I guess I can’t be too disappointed.
