It’s Rock Star Vs. Restaurant In War Of Words Over Rude Service

Was it a case of an entitled rock star who couldn’t handle hearing the word “no,” or was it all about a restaurant doorman who was incredibly rude and may have something against people from the ’90s? Depends on which side you take in the war of words between Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello and a Seattle cafe that stopped him and his party at the door.

Morello was recently in Seattle to play a benefit concert for 15 Now, the movement to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour. After the show, he and some others tried to get some late-evening eats at a cafe/bar that was apparently quite busy.

What the two sides agree on is that the doorman said it was crowded and that Morello couldn’t be let in right away. But that’s really about it.

On Twitter, the guitarist raged that the cafe is “the WORST. Super rude & anti-worker. Sh*ttiest doorman in the Northwest.”

But that doorman tells a different story, explaining to The Stranger that the restaurant was “really, really busy” that evening, that there was only “one bartender and one waitress” working and that by that point in the night the two “adamantly did not want to have anybody else in the bar.”

“I’d already gotten rid of everybody that was on the porch. We were already over-served,” says the doorman. “When Morello shows up with his group, maybe a little before 1 a.m., I had to say, ‘I’m sorry. We’re full right now. I’m not letting anybody in.’”

The doorman says the exchange didn’t really get heated and Morello wasn’t being a jerk, but there were questions being asked like “Does the owner like Rage Against the Machine?” (response: “Probably, but we’re full right now.”) and “Isn’t there someplace in the back you can put us, away from everybody?” (response: “No, man, it’s not that kind of place. We’re really small; I don’t have any room for you.”)

But on his Facebook page, Morello gives his own detailed account of the event.

He said he initially had concerns about going to this particular cafe because he’d heard that “while the owner was a good guy and treated staff well, the restaurant itself was on ‘the wrong side of the minimum wage issue'” because the owner has supported a longer implementation period for the higher wages, along with exceptions for businesses with primarily tip-earning employees.

“I am 100% on the side of an undiluted $15Now initiative which is in my view the only ‘pro worker’ position, but hey we were hungry so let’s give it a shot,” writes the Rager.

When his group of six people got to the door, Morello says the doorman told them it would be about a 10 minute wait. But after watching about 10 people leave the cafe, they started asking “Can we come in now? Those people just left,” but the doorman still refused to let them in.

Morello says they offered to order takeout and sit at the now-vacated patio seats. To which, the response was a “no.”

This inspired the best sentence we’ve read in a while (bolded for emphasis).

“Ok what’s really going on here dude? Some of us have traveled a long way. He’s from Kenya! I’m from the 90’s!”

When they saw their friends from 15Now actually inside the cafe, Morello says he told the doorman, “Hey look we don’t even need a table. We’ll just join our friends who are already inside?” Still a no.

“It was like a hipster version of a Studio 54 doorman,” he writes. “At that point my band mate made a flavorful declaration and we decamped to the trusty, attitude free, IHOP where we enjoyed a drama free stack of hotcakes.”

Morello says his group never asked for special treatment or for a private room.

So if anyone was in a Seattle IHOP at around 2 a.m. the other night and thought they spotted a world-famous rock star, you weren’t high. Or maybe you were, but you still might have seen that world-famous rock star.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist