Yelp Elite – The Hangry Life

If you answered yes to this question, please explain why in the comment section below. Clearly, if your answer was yes, I do not know about your culture or society and I’d love to learn more about it. It’s important for us to realize how ignorant we all are, but bringing us back on track, my answer is an emphatic, no!

Obviously, you can break this question down to make it a lot more specific. What do you mean by okay? What exactly are you smoking? Where in or around the restaurant are you smoking? No matter what loophole you want to try to pull, however, the answer is still no.

A restaurant is a place where meals are served. People pay for their food, and no matter how they got their money or why they are eating at that restaurant, they deserve to enjoy that meal. Except you if you’re smoking or having a greater negative than positive impact. By smoking anything, you’re most likely having a negative impact on their and everyone else’s experience, but let’s get even more back on track.

In the picture above, these two individuals stood up and walked away from their table to smoke (what I believe were cigarettes) in the corner of the deck/patio where our table also was. This was at a high(er) end Italian restaurant called Ferro in Idyllwild, CA. The servers and staff did not say anything to stop them, so we politely asked to sit in the back of the restaurant instead.

I’m not knowledgeable of the laws in Idyllwild, but I’m fairly certain you can’t smoke within 50 feet of the building, by law. If you have any manners whatsoever, you wouldn’t smoke within a distance that could carry the smoke via wind to where people are eating.

But they clearly lacked manners, common sense, or are from a cave in a very isolated part of the world. I love smoked food, but I prefer applewood to cigarettes. Thanks for taking care of these guys, Ferro! Also, thanks for taking care of the party of eight screaming throughout our whole meal in the back patio. Great customer service.

Don’t be a jerk at a restaurant. If you’re going to be a jerk, invite your jerk friends over instead and don’t grace us with your miserable presence. Cigarettes, ugh.

This really doesn’t have all this much to do with Yelp itself. This is more about the “Elite” and even though it is a system created by and facilitated through Yelp, they can’t take responsibility for these monsters.

I probably know or have dealt with the person in the one image in this post. I operated a large facility in West Los Angeles, not too far from this recycling center, and we probably crossed paths. Fortunately, I don’t remember her being overly entitled, if we ever did, which would have been nothing more than sheer luck.

Why? Well, for one, she is clearly entitled to a certain degree. Just look at the line that I highlighted. If you know anything about Yelp that really explains it all. Then you can look at her stats and see that her contribution really isn’t that significant. 124 reviews and 57 photos… that’s it? Sure, she admittedly hasn’t been Yelping for very long at all (although she was making the opposite point), but those numbers are hardly worthy of Yelp Elite status.

After writing over 900 reviews on Yelp, while there might have been one that looked something like her review here or there, my goal is actually serving the community. She should have put that review on her blog that I know she has; she is clearly a blogger because she loves to hear herself think, write, talk, etc. My reviews might be boring, but they get to the point and tell someone who is debating using a service what they need to know to make an objective decision. This is just wrong.

Now, I’m sure this woman is absolutely lovely in real life. She’s just trying to build a persona online like so many others do, but this really isn’t about her. It is about the low standards and issues with the Yelp Elite system. You can have pitiful stats on Yelp and still earn Elite status. Then you can “abuse” and flaunt that status to try to bring others down. Or you could just not be a jerk. Don’t automatically listen to the Yelp Elite because they applied for it themselves. Don’t feed the monster.

Disclaimer: There are tons of great Yelp Elite users out there and I will continue to use Yelp for my own good and to help the community.

Tag: Yelp Elite

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