Random man in restaurant

[Theblacksheepandme]

I'm in a restaurant tonight with my husband and daughter. The restaurant ended up being quite pretentious and in hindsight we should have left and gone somewhere else. The manager made us feel unwelcome and was very unfriendly.

We went for a wine tasting with our food. Wine was excellent but the food was just ok.

There was a couple of obnoxious men in the restaurant which were quite loud. One was with his wife and spoke loudly on his knowledge of wine. In all fairness she was just as bad. He was even on his mobile for 10 minutes while in the restaurant.

We noticed that the manager that also attended to our table was fawning over them. We weren't asked if we wanted dessert or tea or coffee.

The bill came to €160 and when we were paying, the manager asked if everything was ok. I replied that the food wasn't great and that I didn't think they were as good as they obviously think they are. I told him service was terrible and while other people were asked if they would like dessert, tea/coffee, that we were not.

We got up to leave and the man that knows all about wine got up approached me and told me that I didn't need to be so loud in addressing the manager. I asked my husband and daughter if I was loud and they said not at all. Their table was behind ours. He didn't think once to go over to the man at the other side of the restaurant to tell him to stop being loud. He didn't even recognise that we could hear every conversation he was having.

AIBU that this random man had no right to tell me how to behave. I am so angry and upset by this and feel so stupid that I allowed him to ruin my night. He also walked away immediately once he had his say in order to not allow me to reply. I ended up calling after him to mind his own business and called him a pretentious idiot (not my finest moment). His wife looked at me when I was leaving and then looked at my husband and said good luck with that.

Definitely.

To be honest I’m cringing for all of you reading this a little bit. I’m of the slink-off-and-leave-a-bad-review variety, not complaining and bringing the mood down for people that are enjoying it. ‘You’re not as great as you think you are’ is a bit 😑. Random man sounds a pissed up arsehole.

I was just about to comment on @Rollingaroundinmud misogynistic comment but no need.

I'm interested to know as I've asked a few times and received no answer. Is my husband to ignore a woman that clearly spoke to him in a derogatory manner about me? Is my husband seriously to hang around to have it out with random man?

You can't be this dim. Are you pretending not to be able to read so you don't have to acknowledge your husband was a dick?

The point people have made over and over in simple words is that he berated her for the behaviour of her husband. Not berated her for her comment, but for what her husband did. Because he was too much of a coward to say it to the man.

You complained as I knew you would. Have a lovely evening.

Sounds like I hit a nerve! 😁Anyway, enjoy your €160 ‘fine dining experiences.

Generous of you to provide the entertainment😂

I didn't actually. I had a whole load of a reply to you written and realised it had been reported but not by me.

You were being racist.

You’re a deeply unpleasant, snobbish individual who appears to be semi-literate, at best.

And, while I have not been myself, I do note that a quick google says that tasting menu price points for fine dining restaurants in Budapest start at about €55 per person.

You sound incredibly standoffish and were the one that four people had a problem with that evening. You were most likely giving off vibes completely unbeknown to you. Sounds like the guy was chatty and at ease, so got breezier service. You were likely giving het-up airs of someone who didn’t want to be bothered?

Why is someone chatting about wines in a …restaurant boorish? To me, ’you’re not as good as you think you are’ (lol) loud enough for a table to hear, after you have eaten your food, is the only obnoxious thing in your post.

You complain about your food when you are eating. Not after, in the style of a 12 year old.

Stick to bloody wahaca or Bella Italia if someone chatting wine pairings sends you into a rage of irrational dislike.

Lessons the daughter took from this:

1. Her whispering mother feels within her rights to ignore standard
   conventions of dining (feedback on poor food at the time, simply requesting coffee/dessert if it has not been offered)
2. Her whispering mother feels it's appropriate to make childish/churlish comments when concluding the transaction.
3. If a random man reproaches you for poor behaviour, you follow that up by hurling abuse after him as he walks away.
4. If a woman makes a derisive comment about your whispering mother, your father is entitled to reproach said woman not only about her own behaviour, but that of her husband too - all done in the heroic fashion of 'having the back' of the whispering mother.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. If I were that daughter I'd be demanding takeaway from now on, and only indulging in fine dining/foreign travel when I could do so under my own steam.

What a dismal experience for a young girl on a fine dining experience in a foreign city.

Where did the extra person appear?

Of all the comments I have read, I must say this upset me the most. I am not a bad Mother.

Do you have regrets about how you handled this, op?

OP, what you have to understand here is that there are a significant number of MNers who wear how nice they are to people in customer service as a badge of honour - to the point that they will tie themselves in knots to excuse bad service.

I once started a thread about bad service in a restaurant and received a response along the lines of “Obviously you’re far too important to listen to the advice of a mere
’waitress’, looking down from your high horse.” She kept putting ‘waitress’ in quote marks just like that, as if I’d used an insult rather than a job title in my OP.

Honestly, if you started a thread complaining that a waitress had taken a shit in your dinner, someone would have come along to say “Well how do you know she wasn’t suffering from IBS?! Maybe she’s so overworked serving people like YOU who complain about everything that she doesn’t even have time to go to the toilet. I hope you left a generous tip”.

You may not be a bad mother, but I stand by what I believe your daughter will have taken from that incident.

I thoroughly dislike anyone being rude to restaurant staff. If the food isn’t up to scratch or the service say it at the time. Telling him that they’re not as good as they think they are, is incredibly rude and probably upsetting and embarrassing to the manager. Its not even constructive criticism, just some bizarre way to put the manager down.

So while the man you had an altercation with was probably pretentious and annoying, I have many unpleasant memories of being a waitress and customers being rude to me. The times other customers said something were much appreciated.

Thankfully, I haven’t worked in a restaurant for well over a decade!

My husband was bot being a dick. He mentioned what her husband said in order to also address her comment. Her comment about me was obviously in relation to my reply to her husband. He then said her comment was rude.

My daughter told me what she took from this and it was none of what you described.

Grand. 👍

Thing is, you stirred all of this up, sounds like the obnoxious group were sticking up for the staff. It backfired and you and your family left with your tails between your legs. If you were there as tourists, I don’t know why you were so bothered, you’ll never go there again.

Oh ffs, the nit picking on this thread is outrageous. That is seriously the pettiest comment I've seen on Mumsnet and I've been here years. People are sooo desperate to join the pile on.

If you read my comments, I have said that my feedback to manager should have been more constructive.

In relation to random stranger, I shouldn't have shouted after him. I just felt so cross that he left as soon as he said it in order to shut me down.

I felt shitty yes and some of that was down to how I dealt with the whole situation.

Pathetic isn’t it! The desperate semantics people engage in to try to find something else to kick the OP over.