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A manager who responded to an angry complaint has mixed feelings about the response on social media.
Chris Burton is the managing partner of Kilroy's Bar N' Grill. A customer named Holly Jones wrote a complaint on the bar's Facebook page, saying that a customer ruined her New Year's Eve dinner by having a heart attack.
"I will never go back to this location for New Year's Eve. After the way we were treated when we spent $700-plus and having our meal ruined by a watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose my night has been ruined," Jones wrote.
"The manager also told us someone dying was more important than us being there, making us feel like our business didn't matter, but I guess allowing a junkie in the building to overdose on your property is more important than paying customers who are spending a lot of money."
Burton corrected Jones, saying in part, "The 'overdosing junkie' that you speak of was a 70-plus-year-old woman who had a heart attack. Thankfully she was finally revived at the hospital and survived. It sounds like you were very concerned about her so I thought you should know."
"I'm glad to hear you won't be coming back to Kilroy's because we wouldn't want anyone as coldhearted and nasty as you returning," Burton said. "I appreciate anyone who chooses to spend their money at Kilroy's until they act like you. You can take your money anywhere else after that, and I won't lose a second of sleep over it. Happy New Year."
The complete response was met with praise for Burton.
"(I got) messages from servers and bartenders calling me a hero, a crusader for the service industry," Burton told The Indianapolis Star Monday.
Posts also poured in to the Facebook page of the hair salon where Jones worked. Commenters called for her to be fired. In a post, the salon responded, "We take our reputation seriously, and this does not align with our code of conduct or the expectations we have for our staff, booth renters or any members of our team."
But Burton said that he feels "slightly bad" for the former customer. "If I had any idea it was going to go viral, I wouldn't have used her name," he said. "When something like that goes viral, people on the Internet get a little mob mentality and start sending death threats, calling her employer trying to get her fired. That is completely unnecessary. But you know, you've got to be careful what you post online. It can come back and bite you."
Since the post went viral, Kilroy's shared a link to the GoFundMe page for the customer who had the heart attack. She is continuing to recover. The page has more than passed its goal of raising $5,000 for medical costs. $13,070 has been raised since the link was posted.
Burton's overall response to the viral post is, "Just be nice. People in the service industry are people. We all are humans that need to get along with each other. And everything will get handled a lot better if you are polite and nice."
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