Not cool.
Part of the experience of dining out in a restaurant is the ambience and atmosphere that’s offered by your venue of choice but the rowdy behaviour of these Taylor Swift fans was very difficult for the staff of a restaurant in New York to shake off.
Denyse Santoro is the owner of the wine bar & tapas restaurant Ballaró in the East Village but she recently had to explain to all of her neighbours why they woke up to find the message “We do not play Taylor Swift here you c**ts Grazie” written in chalk on the path outside their homes.
According to Santoro, 15 Taylor Swift fans came into her restaurant and instantly started to hurl abuse at her waiting staff simply because they weren’t playing any songs by the Bad Blood singer.
In an open letter to her neighbours, the bar owner says “I know that I was offended, degraded and treated like shit by a group of 15 drunk people without any valid reason. They were screaming “BOO, YOU SUCK!” at me and my wait staff because Taylor Swift wasn’t playing on our sound system. I then played two Taylor Swift songs for them to placate them and they were dancing and singing all together so I assumed I had made my customers happy.
She continues “however, after the two songs ended and the playlist moved on to other artists, they started complaining even more and it escalated. They started screaming that the songs I played weren’t the right one and I was told that, “this place is shit, the music and the people here suck.” I was then told to, “Go back to your country with that fucking immigrant face.”
Rather than just stand there and take the abuse, Santoro asked the group to pay their €500 bill and leave but they ran out without settling up the tab.
To Santaro’s credit, she hasn’t let these obnoxious and rude people deter her from offering the best service possible to her patrons. “My mission is to make everyone who enters through the front door feel like they are at home, because sometimes New York hardens even the best of us and we forget the true values in life: community and peace.
It’s nice to see that her attitude towards people hasn’t been altered but I’d wager that there’s plenty of bad blood between her and those incredibly rude people.
Hat-Tip to Gawker
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