CF Tourists - is it worse ??

[WeWillLookBack]

We have just got back from a few days in Cornwall - we live in Devon, so spend a lot of time in both counties and are very used to tourists and holiday makers. We stayed in a 'pub with rooms on the beach, which was lovely. However - I am utterly gobsmacked by the level of CF we have witnessed in the 3 days. It feels like peoples entitlement is off the scale. I don't know how those in hospitality are dealing with it.

Wednesday - Woman went mental at the poor young lad serving in the beer garden - insisted she had booked a table outside. Very politely told her that they do not take reservations for the garden, just the restaurant. Screaming ' Are you calling me a liar'. He went in, and didn't come back out.

Friday AM - they serve breakfast for guests 8am-9.30am, then open for breakfast at 9.30am (lots of signs saying open at 9.30am). At 8.30am a group were outside - rattling the door. Member of staff opens the door, and lets them know they open at 9.30am. Lots of moaning - insisting they can have breakfast now etc. She says no - very polite. So he tells her it is disgusting that they allow guests to sit in the window eating when others can't ! ( and to make up for their error, they should serve them breakfast too)

Friday evening - Family of 6 rocked up - no space in the beer garden. Started shouting - so the owner came out. Man very angry - they had driven for 6 hours - and the kids needed feeding. The owner was great - polite but firm. The man actually suggested the owner walk around the beer garden and checked when people were leaving so they could secure a table. He said no. A lot of swearing. Asked to leave.

Drive home Saturday morning. Along a winding road along the coast - car in front just stops. Man gets out and stands looking at the sea. Single lane - so I cant go around him. After a few moments I beep - he stomps over to my car and says 'Can I help you' ... I say you have blocked the road - could you move please. To which he responds 'I am looking at the view - maybe you could just be kind' FFS !!!

love it!!! that would be exactly my attitude too.

It’s like some kind of uprising I mean, is there any thought process at all attached to this kind of behaviour and it’s everywhere. I couldn’t think like that if I tried.

Sadly, I think it's being drummed into people that if they aren't being squeaky wheels that they will be ignored/disrespected and, even worse, not be advocating as they should for dependents. I don't know how we reel back from this.

A couple of years ago I had a similar experience to a PP with a tractor and a narrow country lane, I had been sent up the Dales to see a patient and was trying to find the out in the middle of nowhere house without satnav or much in the way of directions other than a house name and a lane name, new patient so none of the usual 'first drive past the wonky tree, just after the post box' sort of directions. Young lad was clearly very annoyed with my non local, looking for a needle in a haystack driving, so was practically in the boot. Then it dawned on me that he was probably a local lad, so I stopped the car and switched my engine off. Cue much irate hooting on horn, revving etc followed by him flinging himself out of the tractor and marching up to my car in absolutely fucked off mode. When he got to me, he saw my uniform and paused slightly, I took this opportunity to thank him for taking time out of his busy day to help me and asked if he knew where the house was I was looking for, turns out it was his Grandma's house so he knew exactly where I needed to be !

I wanted to do the NC500, but just in the car and staying in hotels or camping. This thread has put me off now.

Just do the NC500 responsibly if that's what you want to do. We are still a free country where you are entitled to travel freely whilst respecting the law long may it remain so.

I've just caught up with this thread after a day driving up to Scotland at the start of a 10 day holiday, during which I will drive a lot, camp, stay in a rental, eat out, do local touristy things, and (not on purpose - its just part of the route to where I'm going) drive on part of the NC500 . I did something similar last year, and everywhere was rammed. This year, so far, rather less so, which was backed up by a radio programme I heard when driving, where tourist operators in both Lake District and Scotland said that bookings were down substantially. The reasons they gave were that people can now go abroad (which they couldn't last year), but also because people are already being cautious about discretionary spending as things start to get worse financially. So, much of the CF tourist problem might vanish over the next couple of years along with the tourists? Whether this will be a good thing or not, only time will tell!

There are still a lot of tourists on the NC500 this year. Booking will be down because most want to wild camp or rather park for free. But I am seeing fewer brits and many more europeans this year.

I worked in a budget hotel as a receptionist for a number of years in my late teens/early 20s. I was regularly sworn at/insulted and once I was even spat at when I said there weren't any rooms available. One time a guest planted drugs in their room and claimed they were there when they arrived and we should give them a refund and compensation(??). It really opened my eyes to how people react when things don't go their way and create elaborate lies to get a refund.

I try and be extra nice to every receptionist I meet as I remember how tough it is.

Having said all that, there were lots of funny memories- I guess that's why I stayed there for so long.

Ah! Be kind!! That lovely phrase uttered only by people who are never kind. I’d have rammed his car.

Although it has got worse in the last few years, it does go back decades, not just starting with Thatcher's "No society!"

Enid Blyton used to have her characters - especially the Famous Five - raging about the "trippers" who trespassed, played their transistor radios at full volume and left orange peel, paper bags, picnic remnants and smoking fires littering their wake.

"Five Go To Billycock Hill" also has this CF episode, though admittedly 'Toby' is a local :
"‘What’s all this! You’re trespassing on Crown property. Didn’t you see the notice?’
The dogs stopped barking and the five children looked round to see who was shouting. Their heads bobbed on the surface of the water as they gazed about to find the shouter.
It was a man in Air Force uniform, a big man, burly and red-faced.
‘What’s the matter?’ called Julian, swimming towards him. ‘We’re only bathing. We’re not doing any harm.’
‘Didn’t you see the notice?’ shouted the man, pointing over to it.
‘Yes. But we couldn’t see much danger here,’ called back Julian, wishing now that he hadn’t believed Toby.
‘You come on out!’ roared the man. ‘All of you. Come on.’
They all waded out of the cool pond, Anne feeling scared. The dogs splashed out, too, and stood eyeing the man grimly. He calmed down a little when he saw them.
‘Those your dogs I heard barking? Well, now, I see you’re all kids—though one of you’s big enough to know better!’ and he pointed to Julian. ‘I thought maybe you were trippers—thinking you could come wandering on the airfield and not get into trouble!’"

These days, no doubt the big, burly, red-faced RAF man would get a mouthful of abuse.

Perhaps we should start by abolishing the "good service" rules of the customer always being right, and start kicking them out immediately. I think there was an Atlantic article about how big department stores started the increased power imbalance as a way to turn shopping into an experience, rather than a chore.

The marketing was blatantly about the chance to "feel like royalty," and I think that's where it went wrong. We don't need entire countries of people who think they're royalty. We don't even need royals who behave that way! Unless you're a toddler, there's no excuse for allowing you to have a tantrum and then walk away without consequences.

Yes, welcome to how anyone that works with the public feels right now, I have done what I do for 20 odd years and I have never known the level of entitlement and CFery that I see today!

They sound like
Cheeky fuckers indeed

The steak one though.... that's just crappy service

Part of the problem is that service is actually shite most places and that it's all kids working there who haven't been trained properly and don't necessarily realise that steaks come cooked to order

We have lowered our expectations. Its not the staff fault personally just the way it is in the UK now

society has been rewarding the wrong kind of behaviour for years and increasingly marginalising those who balance it out.

Theres no mechanism within society to create a unified moral compass, individualism reign supreme. There’s an expectation the majority should pander to the minority

people have been allowed to forget rights come with responsibilities

this is the result

The car one is fantastic, would love to know how you responded!

Just back from holiday in Turkey, on the way out, at the airport, everyone standing in a queue waiting to board, CF woman toddles up to the other side of the line with her massive family ,no young children, no obvious disabilities)and demands to board first ‘because there’s a lot of them’. Tried the same at the massive queues to get through passport control. Same CF unfortunately on our coach to hotels, driver had a change in the route to what we’d been told so they weren’t being dropped off second after all- she had a big tantrum about it, going on about how she’d complain. FFS. Thank goodness they weren’t at our hotel.
On way back, airport busy, chaotic, nowhere to sit, our gate got moved so everyone had to troop downstairs. Flight already delayed, but they still have to go extra checks going through the gates. There are people sitting in the gate who aren’t on our flight and because of these extra checks they’re not allowed to be there so told to move, which they refuse to do, so we can’t get through the checks and the gates. So our flight is delayed because these arseholes won’t move seats. Entitled twats.

It is like social media, people trying to constantly correct others or put them down. I'm in an Agatha Christie fan site on social media and frankly it's weird to see a group of people all positive about one thing.

You have that generation of middle aged men who seem desperate to get one over everybody else, whoever they are. When I worked at Wetherspoon's I remember a man in his 40s with a group of about 8 people, sneakily informed them he was going to say the food was cold when they had finished so they wouldnt have to pay. He had a smug little smile on his face but the rest of the table looked at him with complete contempt.

It stuck with me because he really thought he was the big swinging dick in that situation and couldnt see that his companions saw him as a pathetic loser who was going to mess around a teenage waiter because he didnt want to pay for some shitty cheap food.

I think its these types who still respect Boris Johnson actually.

Nobody respects Boris Johnson.

To the people advocating 30mph on single track roads, you’d get pretty short shrift from locals if you tried that in Shetland!

I used to work in retail (Waitrose to be precise) and the level of rudeness and entitlement was off the chart. Please don’t think it’s a particular type of shopper that store attracts, it was from all walks of life who seemed on a mission to get you the sack daily. Humans are the bloody pits.

Def the 50+ men who are the worst. Pub where DS works when home from Uni is in a relatively affluent area but the lunchtime retirees are the worst tippers.

walkouts have all been men as well- generally the 20/30 age group.

If I can't go in a shop with it on my back, I just do not go in
Backpack CF here ^^
Just you maraud about whacking everyone with your bloody rucksack.

I have never whacked someone.

Yip the CF who insists that their way and only their way of living is right , who can't tell the difference between being whacked by a rucksack wielding idiot and not being whacked by a rucksack wearing normal responsible person