To feel like pub staff should not turn a blind eye to inappropriate comments?

[LaurenSw]

We have just returned from a great week away in the UK, staying by the coast and travelling to nearby areas each day.

We visited quite a few pubs, and a feature in almost all of these was local men stood by the bar making sexual/racist comments and then chuckling away.

The bar staff would usually roll their eyes and tell us they just let them get on with it.

On the last day, my DH said something to a man in one of the pubs who made a particularly vile comment. The staff who was present actually told my DH to cheer up!

Is it me or should staff do more to cut this sort of thing out?

The staff are there to serve pints not decide who says what.

Where was this! Weird that it was in every pub IME.

No. That's not their job and they definitely don't get paid enough.

He's their regular. You are just tourists.

Collective Yes — The Plough

Minimum wage = minimum effort.

The staff are there to serve food and drink, they are not the morality police.

🙄

Tricky one as I guess those locals are there every day and basically keep the pub going? And the pub staff don’t want to lose their business. Plus as others have said they shouldn’t police customers values

Every pub , Where did you holiday 1975 ? Good for your husband though I'm sure the "racist old men" have definitely changed their ways. As an aside bar staff are there to serve drinks not police conversations.

Do you think they would stop making the comments just because the bar staff ask them to?

Are you new to freedoms of expression?

if you don’t like the patrons of a pub, choose another one. That’s the genius of the system of pubs.

Staff aren’t there to police people except when they become too drunk.

So racist abuse should be allowed

Twas ever thus.
These types we used to call barnacles.

I don't think you can expect bar tenders, waiters and waitresses to be policing their customers speech. If you are going into pubs that appear to be full of old git racists & sexists, then you are in the wrong pub. Take your custom and money somewhere else.

It’s not up to minimum wage bar employees to stop it. If they attempted to police what regular paying customers say they’d very soon be fired.

The landlord at our local wouldn’t tolerate such comments.

There was one about Dover and snipers - I’m sure you can guess the rest.

He’s the landlord not an employee.

A pub that intervenes in its customers’ conversations to ‘correct’ them isn’t likely to stay in business for long. If it’s not to your taste, move on.

There’s a very blokey bar near my former workplace. Casual misogyny, sexism, crappy ‘banter’. I didn’t like it so I voted with my feet. I didn’t expect the bar staff to make a stand; they are just trying to earn a living.

YABU to expect staff on minimum wage to start picking battles with rude customers- they quite literally are not paid enough to care. Not their job.

Where were you staying OP?

Was it an area where the boats carrying immigrants arrive?

I think you’re asking a lot of, often very young, bar staff to tackle someone like this. It can be very intimidating being behind the bar when something unpleasant starts to kick off.

A landlord would tend to be older and be able to handle the regulars - plus regulars know they're at the mercy of the LL as he can ban them if he wishes to.

Bar staff are there to serve customers and not police what they are saying unless they were being loud and obnoxious towards a particular person, then they could ask the LL to deal with the situation.

Drink loosens tongues and there are horrible people everywhere, not just in the pub.

It's a bit like expecting retail staff to deal with shoplifters - why should they risk they're own wellbeing to deal with miscreants?

A new Workers' Rights Bill addresses harassment by third parties. Seems a bit dubious to me as women talking about their rights have been told to leave pubs because they are deemed 'offensive' by the bar staff. Slippery slope etc.
freespeechunion.org/pubs-could-curb-free-speech-to-avoid-legal-risks-under-labours-workers-rights-bill/

It depends on where you think freedom of thought and expression should end.

Do you want to live in a society where you are free to think and say what you're thinking; or do you want someone else to decide what you can think and what you are allowed to say?

I might not like way you have to say, but I would absolutely defend your right to say it. Otherwise, who gets to decide which opinions are "right"?

The Russians tried that in the past, it didn't work out. So did the East Germans, North Korea is doing a blinding job of it at the moment . . . .

In an ideal world, everyone should do more to call these things out!

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, we have to consider our safety and whether we keep our jobs/customers

Where it is safe for me to do so, I will; especially if I am part of a bigger group. But sometimes you have to weigh up the risk and if it could put you in danger, bite your tongue or just hard stare

A lot of bar workers are young and inexperienced so would not know how to deal with it (although when dd worked in a bar she would have said something!)

It would be good to see more landlords put up signs applauding freedom of speech, but reminding people any racist, ageist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic etc. comments are insulting to other patrons and not welcome

We were in the Lakes and the one pub we went to also had a chortling, offensive local!

Think they’re a staple of any pub. All the pubs I’ve worked in over the years have had them and I’d only ever intervene if they were being inappropriate. I think it depends on the circumstances. Our offensive local was plastered at 2pm and making sexually explicit comments to the guy behind me who had his daughter with him. That to me is not acceptable and if I were the barmaid & knew about it I’d have had a word. Staff know how to handle the regulars. If it was in the evening and someone had their kids in an adult environment and they overheard 18+ comments then that’s a different story.

Offensive people get away with it because people don’t want to get involved. Be offensive, just don’t do it around kids or at lunch time!