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?

Actually, repellent as it may be, people are permitted to be racist or sexist or homophobic.

Now that’s not my kind of place, but it’s not unlawful to be any of the above, and it’s actually a permitted opinion legally.

There are many places better deserving of your custom, choose one. Expecting the staff to police opinions is a non starter.

If I found someone really offensive I think I would just leave. But have you thought about, if people can't have a conversation in a pub where there are lots of different opinions, they might just go home and follow a racist site on the internet and be radicalised. What I am saying is that room for free speech, when balanced by differing arguments, makes for a more balanced point of view.

Well why didn't you call it out and challenge them every time you heard an inappropriate comment? You say your DH did it once, the implication being he ignored them the other times and you ignored them every time.

If YOU are not willing to face up to these people, you have no right to expect other people to. Perhaps they don't care, perhaps they don't get paid enough to want a confrontation. Their reasons for not getting involved don't matter - it's up to you to intervene and face the consequences if it's something you feel strongly about.

I love pubs. I visit a lot. I live in a part of Britain known for its Reform tendencies. I do not recognise what you describe. Plenty of blokes stand around the bar of my local. None of this nonsense. Mostly football chat, which I usually start.

hurty words 🙄

I disagree re your comment about minimum wage equals minimum effort. I know a lot of people on min wage who work very hard at their jobs and are very proud of the work they do.

However, I can understand bar staff not wanting to get involved in disputes like this but not because of how much they are paid.

Oh look the pub police are here to arrest and tell naughty locals off for hurty words 😂

PS where do I sign up to fund snipers?

When your visiting a destination your a visitor, so I suggest you stay out of pubs if locals offend you and drink in your sterile hotel room away from hurty people and hurty words..

It might not be nice to listen to, but the UK has freedom of speech which includes the right to be offensive.

Like it or not, it’s not illegal to make racist or sexist remarks here unless you are going so far as to inciting others to racial hatred, which goes beyond making nasty remarks.

There’s quite a debate on this here and the degree to which freedom of speech should be allowed, but the pub is traditionally a place where people do sound off.

I think you’re vastly over estimating your importance to the landlord.

Pubs are struggling to keep their doors open and it’s the regulars who pay the bills. If you want the landlord to upset his regulars by giving them a list of unacceptable topics of conversation, then you need to get in there and buy a bit more than a red wine and a half a Guinness once every six months.

Either that or find a pub where food sells more than alcohol, children are allowed to make a nuisance of themselves and it’s £3 for a bag of artisan crisps. The sort of men who sit at the bar and air their views on a Wednesday evening will not be found in those places.

Is it me or should staff do more to cut this sort of thing out? It’s you. If you find their opinions abhorrent then have the courage of your convictions and call them out the first time you hear it, rather than expecting minimum wage bar staff to lose their jobs over it.

I love pubs too, not ones with reform blokes dominating the bar though

So we should all be standing up to the abuser as it happens? Sure that's always wise?

Why is the person at hand an “abuser”. Having a racist opinion or a sexist opinion is not necessarily abusive. It may not be what polite society says is good, but the converse is not “abusive”

if someone insults you, uses a racial slur, for example, that is abuse. It’s directed at you.

IME, locals often like to try and wind up tourists in pubs. I've often had to listen to OTT swearing and crude talk from (basically, men) people who want to make a point to non-locals.

It's unpleasant but I wouldn't expect pub staff to police it unless it was very extreme. They're very busy and frankly not paid enough to take on nasty, aggressive people who are tanked up on booze!

It's not a happy situation, but it is what it is.

I didn’t say reform blokes dominate the bar. I said I lived in a county (albeit not in reform central) where you might expect to hear the sort of shit the op refers to. But I just don’t. Not in my very regularly frequented local pubs.

I can't take anyone seriously who uses the term "hurty words".

The OP didnt mention that anyone was abused. She mentioned racist comments, although I havent read the ful thread yet.

People may say unpleasant things about a range of people. Dont hang around them is my advice.

Nor me. Trivialising and minimising abuse is so big and clever. 😏

Inappropriate comment?

what would that be then, something you dont like, dont agree with, something offensive?

Its not for anyone to police someones conversation.

The word 'inappropriate' has lost all meaning anyway.

I work another minimum wage job.. if I heard a customer (and it does happen) make a racist or sexist comment I wouldn’t like or agree with it, but it wouldn’t be my place to say anything. The caveat to that would be if they directed sexist / racist abuse to another customer or member of my team.. then, yes, I would step in. But I’m also fortunate that my employer / union would back me up if that was to happen. Not everyone has that.

😆 🤣 😂 😹 😆 Reform mentionitus strikes again!

Realistically, you can’t tell people what they can and can’t say to each other in a pub. If they were being offensive to another person then that is different, but there’s not much you can do if they’re talking amongst themselves, however repulsive and ignorant their views are.

I would have possibly said something, not that it would have changed these obnoxious people’s opinions, but I would have left and gone somewhere else.

I hate to tell you think but if you imagine we have absolute freedom of speech here, or anywhere, you are very seriously deluded.

Freedom to speak does not mean freedom to do so without consequences and there are many, both handed down by the state and by society more generally.

I always mean to search the posts of the freedom of speech warriors who turn up on threads like this and see if they feel
as strongly when the speech involved isn’t racist. I suspect I know the answer.

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?

Spreading racial hatred is illegal. As is slander.

With freedom comes responsibility.

And also the possibility of someone else exercising the freedom to tell you to shut the fuck up or get out of their pub.

Why is that relevant?

YANBU OP but racism and Mumsnet go hand-in-hand.