Restaurant Enforces Rule That Requires Employees To Receive Multiple 5 Star Reviews Online A Month In Order To Keep Their Job
Their fate was in customers' hands.
Sergei Domashenko / Shutterstock / Reddit A restaurant manager is facing backlash after implementing an unusual job requirement on their employees.
People are claiming that it is an impossible standard to follow and it is unfair to hardworking employees who need to keep their jobs.
The rule requires employees to receive multiple 5-star reviews each month in order to keep their jobs.
Tommy’s Tavern and Tap is a restaurant in New Jersey where servers have to follow the difficult-to-maintain rule. Despite their efforts at work, their fate is determined by online reviews left by customers.
The rule was posted and shared on the Reddit forum r/newjersey with a photo of the policy printed on paper on a bulletin board at the restaurant.
“Every service employee for FOH (front of house) is required to get a minimum of five Google reviews per month to remain employed at the Edison location starting in February 2022,” the paper reads. “The review must include your first name and five stars in order for it to count.”
Additionally, management will award prizes to those with the most stellar reviews. “We will have monthly Google review contests each month to promote [healthy] competition. You must have a minimum of 15 reviews to qualify for the prizes.” The prizes include two free meals up to $22 worth of food, one clothing item from the company merch selection, gift cards, and specialty prizes.
While the rule may have been enforced to promote good service, many Redditors were quick to point out the unfair standards it carried. They noted that customers most often leave online reviews when they have negative experiences, and even if they claim to have had one, there is no way to confirm it is true. They are less likely to leave a review if they had a positive experience and it is difficult to convince them to take the time to do so.
“A server would have to devote an extreme amount of time and energy to convince guests to leave a proper review. And then some manager would have to read through all reviews and track all of this? It's incredibly poorly thought out,” one Redditor commented.
“As if serving isn't sometimes demeaning already, now they want their employees to beg for reviews too? Five stars with a name? Not everyone uses the Internet,” another user pointed out.
Others believed that the policy was impractical, especially for dedicated employees doing their best who now had to rely on customer reviews to keep their jobs.
Many Reddiors encouraged one another to refrain from dining at Tommy’s Tavern and Tap until they treated their staff better.
“On one hand, I want to help out the staff and write five-star reviews for anyone who wants them but on the other hand, I don't want to help any business that would be this sh–ty to their employees and deceptive to their customers,” one user wrote.
Others came up with the idea to spam Google with negative reviews, ensuring that the restaurant’s policy would backfire since they cannot fire all of their servers.
Thomas Bonfiglio, the CEO of the company that owns Tommy’s Tavern and Tap spoke out regarding the policy and debunked it as false.
“In the restaurant business, we’re not firing anyone, we’re still trying to hire people. So to think that we will fire people over this is a silly thing,” he said to NJ Advance Media. While he admits that they do monitor customer reviews closely, they do not fire employees over a lack of reviews with their names attached. “It would be an impossible policy,” he added. “I’d have to fire the whole crew.”
The employee who originally posted the rule has since been fired.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.