Recently, a dining controversy has caused an uproar on the Internet. On Saturday last week, 27 students from the Department of Information and Finance Management of National Taipei University of Technology went to a stir-fry restaurant after a summer camp. Before being served the dishes they ordered, they wolfed down two pots of free rice, and asked the owner to bring more rice. As rice needed time to cook, the owner suggested that they order stir-fried noodles instead, which the students blankly refused. They left before the new round they ordered of rice was ready to eat.
Even though the students did not make a scene at the restaurant, they gave the restaurant one-star reviews, and wrote about their “unfair” treatment.
Their complaints triggered a serious backlash. Internet users started speaking up for the owner and excoriated of the students’ behavior on the department’s fan page with a flood of comments. Under social pressure, the dean and the students went back to the restaurant to apologize to the owner.
However, they later complained that they were forced to do so by the school authorities, and that they felt disappointed with the school for not “protecting them” or hearing them out. As the controversy did not die down, the owner suspended operations.
Although this was a minor incident, it exposes several social issues. The first one is that some Taiwanese tend to exploit restaurants’ free food policy, as the “salmon chaos” incident in 2021 showed, when people changed their names to get free sushi, or when customers got so much food at all-you-can-eat buffets that they left behind mountains of leftovers.
It is apparent that the students wanted to exploit the policy instead of opting for alternatives such as stir-fried noodles.
To say that a place is civilized means more than just displaying fine art or skyscrapers. It also entails people’s manners and behavior, and this kind of greed is a flaw in the Taiwanese character.
The other issue is the problem with the review system. As people are now living in the digital age, information such as ratings and comments are open to the public on the Internet. Even though the review system was meant for feedback and comments, it has become a tool to threaten service providers for any detail.
Although customers have the right to give ratings, they should remember that mutual respect and empathy are still required for good dining experiences, and that paying money does not automatically make them superior. For many owners, the one-star rating might be more humiliating and infuriating than customers not paying for their meals.
As those who were involved in the incident were students, school authorities should also have let them take responsibility for their own behavior, instead of compelling them to apologize or apologizing on their behalf. Their interference in the incident not only did not remedy anything, but also led the students to resent them.
In an age where people can enjoy trolling and trash-talking on the Internet without consequences, many users are more than happy to treat conflict and complaints as a joke, and make malicious remarks instead of offering solutions or discovering the truth.
To put an end to the vicious cycle, the most important principle is to show others the respect that they deserve.
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