Yelp!

Many of you may already know that yelp!.com is an easily accessible page for both viewing and posting reviews of businesses, especially restaurants.  So lets take a minute to learn about the dangers of yelp! use.

First of all, try not to use yelp! solely as a means of complaining about a restaurant experience that may not have been up to your standards.  If you happen to have a great experience, if your server was excellent or at least put in an honest effort, feel free to post such positive reviews as well.  In this situation, there is nothing wrong with posting your server's name.  I guarantee his or her boss checks yelp! every day so why not name your server so my boss knows I'm doing a good job.

Conversely, in negative reviews, try not to name your server.  In all honesty, if a problem does arise during your dining experience, ninety percent of the time it is not the server's fault.  Consider the fact that you have this person's job in your hands when you post comments about them.  Would you really want someone to lose their job because you thought they gave you a dirty look after you sent back your chicken for the third time?  Even if you did recieve a scowl, remember that everyone has a bad day, and when a server is having a bad day they still need to keep a smile on their face.  Is it easy for you smile and be pleasant when you are having a bad day?  Quite simply, do you want to jeopardize the job af a person who most likely has a family or is paying for college over something that probably wasn't their fault?  Think about all of this the next time you you feel like criticizing someone elses work performance.

Finally, don't put too much into what you read on yelp!, especially restaurant reviews.  I've read reviews about "The Joint" that were either complete bull or were mistakenly about another restaurant.  And as much as you may not want to believe it, there are some shady restaurant owners/managers that find ways to use yelp! to falsely trash other restaurants and trump up the reviews of their own.  And you might not know that businesses, having paid yelp! for advertising, autimatically improve their overall grade. 

So be careful how you use yelp!.com.  Actually, you'd be best served to never even visit that site at all.  If you want a restaurant review, email me and I'll serve it right up.  Or heres an idea, use ZAGAT! It's only a reliable company that has been employing experts to objectively review restaurants for like, a hundred years.  They will also tell you that 20% is always accepted.  Until next time...........stay hungry, my friends (Not only am I not the most interesting man in the world, I'm also not the most creative).