To not understand snobbery against Wetherspoons?

[CatsArePeople]

They're really ok. Certainly not worse than McDonalds or your local greasy spoon.

saraclara You know it's pub that happens to also sell food , right? Not a restaurant? So why do people only drinking deserve that emoji?

They are licensed to sell alcohol from 9am which isn’t the norm for most people.
I also wonder how people manage to start drinking from lunchtime in the week.
Yes, maybe it’s their day off or they work shifts but don’t they drive or have DC to look after? If you down 3/4 pints at midday you can walk home I guess but then what? Just go to sleep in the afternoon?

If I want a drink I’ll go to a local pub or bar. If I want a meal out I’ll go to restaurant (local or otherwise, cheap or expensive), if I want breakfast I’ll go to a cafe, I just can’t think of what it offers that I can’t get better elsewhere and also want to give my money to an independent business. I may be spoilt due to the amenities where I live, but having visited other places I can always find what I want and prefer over Spoons. It served a purpose at university when we wanted some cheap drinks before going out and we didn’t care about the lack of atmosphere.

There is nothing snobby about wanting to shun any establishment with which Tim Martin is associated.

Our local one is nice. Before lockdown I went in on my own regularly for a bit of peace by myself. There are regulars but they sit quietly at tables by one end of the bar usually. It's always clean and not sticky like I've seen others say so we must be lucky with ours.

The food can depend on who's in the kitchen, especially with steaks but I stick to the same few things usually. The loos are even on the same level as the pub which I think is rare.

There are two in the city near us. One is even nicer than ours. The other I wouldn't go in again as it didn't feel friendly like ours is and definitely feels more like a drinkers pub than the mix of customers you get in our local one.

We also once went to one in a city a bit further away a few years ago, walked in with my DC and we were stared at like children weren't normal there at all. We left very quickly after our meal.

Not really snobbery, its called having taste. The food is pretty bad, why pay to buy something that should be simple and easy, but they manage to cock up and pay 3-4 times more than it would cost me to do at home?

Spoons!

I've never darkened the doors, because my mutant DC frequent our local one. They laugh about it. I think it's kind of ironic, and they kind of love it.

But it's definitely for teens/students IMO.

I think theyre arseholes. They treat their staff terribly. Helped fund the brexit campaign and the way they were in the pandemic, i vowed to not use them anymore and to use indepemdent pubs instead. I think theyre worse than mcdonalds

@Notoironing

Wetherspoons have some really great pubs in terms of the buildings. An amazing one in Ramsgate which backs directly onto the beach.

Agreed the Ramsgate one is lovely!

Things to like about Spoons:

1. A single women friendly space.....it wasn't that long ago that unaccompanied women did not go into pubs.....they just didn't.
2. Workers on the board.....a policy straight out of the Jeremy Corbyn songbook....and a first for any FTSE 250 company. 14,000 of the 39,000 employees are shareholders in the company (July 2021).
3. Won a 'top employer award' (sponsored by the Guardian) for 17 years running.
4. Have preserved (working in with English Heritage) so many fine buildings, churches, chapels, opera houses, theatres, cinemas. My favourites, the Royal Victoria Pavilion, Ramsgate, which cost £4.6m to restore, and the Opera House, Tunbridge Wells, which still hosts live opera once a year.
5. Have raised more than £17 million for Clic Sargent the children's cancer charity they sponsor.....went into my local Spoons recently and a large part of the floor space was given over to a fund raising cake sale.

1. Every Spoons serves as a local history museum with wall display/photographs about local history, and famous people connected to the locality. The company employs a historian to research the displays.
2. Every Spoons has original artworks - tapestries, sculptures, paintings etc. - the company is one of the largest sponsors of original artworks in the UK.

1. The 'no music' policy. Inspired by Orwells's description of his favourite (fictional) pub The Moon over water.

Is it just me, or are there a lot of people on here from Wetherspoons HQ tonight?

A single woman friendly space? Would strongly disagree with that

Our local one is find but one nearby has a carpet that you wipe your feet on the way out and stinks to high heaven.
Dd and I went for a meal , sat down , thought "Nope" and went for pizza

@balanceo

7. The 'no music' policy. Inspired by Orwells's description of his favourite (fictional) pub The Moon over water.

The no music is because they don’t want to pay for a music license

Used to eat in them around once a week about 20 years ago. I haven't set foot in one since the referendum though.

I used to love a ‘cheeky Spoons’ as a student, i.e., go out for food with the flat mates and end up walking home at 12am hammered. I’d like to it it again one day for nostalgia.

@Oneborneverydecade

There are fewer alcoholics in our local McDonalds and greasy spoon

They queue outside our local one from 8.30 in the morning. I believe they are renowned for their sticky carpets.

I’m quite happy to go there it’s cheap food is ok not fantastic but not terrible and lots of choice

I prefer it as it’s good value to some more expensive chains where I have expected there to be much better food for what I am paying - Leon especially and GBK

I ate there once. Not in a hurry to do it again.

Ugh.

Cheap and nasty food. The owner is a steaming pile of shite.

The layout of most of them is almost as if someone took it from a design book called 'How to Encourage Fights, Riots and Glassings' quite frankly... big open spaces with stand up tables, huge areas around the bar that allow deep queues... results in aggro every time.

Nah.
Sticky carpeted hell-holes full of alkies, run by a sociopath Father Jack lookalike.
I’ll stick to proper pubs, thanks.

It's cheap and provides much needed job and importantly decent hours. None of this four hours contracts crap.

Ours does fish and chips with a drink for £3.99, its absolutely rammed with pensioners on a Friday, having a bit of food and seeing their friends..... I honestly don't see the issue with the place. I mean the owner is a dickhead, but lets face it the owners of a lot of multi million pounds businesses are dickheads too. I'm not about to hold him up as some pariah.

It's not snobbery against Wetherspoons, it's not wanting to support that cunt if an owner!

I like Wetherspoons. The food is generally good enough and it's cheap.

And they've got loads of space in the toilets!