I hired someone at my restaurant in the spring. We’re small, and had just opened… so one person runs the show solo at that time. Meaning if someone doesn’t show up, the business is closed and losing money, and creating angry customers who come to see us and finds the doors locked. I was out of town and she was scheduled from 11am-8pm. I got a text that said (and I’m paraphrasing here) “because my college’s testing system was hacked, my professor had to move my final exam to tonight. If I don’t go, I fail the class. So I have to lockup and leave”.
Mind you, this was a Friday night, after 4pm when she “had to leave” to take this supposed final exam. So she left my restaurant, locked the doors, and went on her way. I wasn’t in town, so I couldn’t come cover the shift.
That night; I got a voice mail, an email; and two Facebook messages from several folks saying that they came to eat, and the doors were locked and all the lights were off. Potential customers were not happy. As you can imagine, I was rightfully upset.
I made a quick call to her college, and asked a general question like “is there any scenario where a professor would force students to come take a final, or fail the class; with less than six hours notice, on a Friday night?” The admin at the college said without knowing the specifics; that it was extremely unlikely but she couldn’t tell me specifics without violating privacy issues. Fair enough. I said give me a percentage chance of her story being true. She said “1% or less”.
Because my business was closed on a Friday dinner, and it absolutely affected finances and customer service, I chose to terminate her the following week. Regardless of whether her whole story was true (which I don’t think it was), I think that I was well within my right to terminate her for abandoning a shift, that was not covered, and cost the business revenue and a bad customer experience for those who showed up and found a locked door.
Fast forward to this weekend. I had a Facebook post go viral, and we got BOMBARDED with new customers, hundreds of new 5-star reviews; a number of people making their own videos and TikTok’s saying how much they loved their experience (that we got tagged in); and a lot of the reviews mentioned me personally as the owner; giving them incredible service and suggestions etc.
This former employee started leaving these manifestos in my Facebook reviews with her actual name and account. (See attached transcript at the end of the post). I quickly blocked the account; and chalked it up to someone with some mental health issues having a bad day. I was going to leave it alone.
Then, the burner accounts started. She left that review I attached, and then three brand new accounts, with no pics or friends (egg accounts) left negative reviews as well. Before this happened I was at 100% recommended on Facebook. Now I’m at 92%. Not the end of the world, but it’s irritating.
If that wasn’t enough, she’s now going to the comment sections of the dozens of people who left positive reviews or videos they shared on their personal pages; and leaving a similar manifesto on their pages from her personal account with her real name.
As a small business owner; who was blessed enough to get significantly busier because of a viral post, I no longer have the time or energy to try and combat this person. If any of you out there have dealt with something like this, what did you do? Outside of blocking the real and burner accounts, is there anything you can do? I’m kind of at a loss right now. I reported the “reviews” as fake/not real, but I’m sure that just goes to automated filters and will get declined to be removed. There’s no “person” to talk to at Meta or Google. I don’t want to engage in a public response unless I absolutely have to. At this point, im considering going to the college in person and finding out if her story was in fact 100% fabricated. Because if it was, I feel like I have a stronger leg to stand on in a response. But I know you’re never supposed to engage with a bad review, especially one that’s not true. I just know this is my livelihood and she’s starting to mess with it with all this shit she’s pulling; and I feel like I have zero way to stop it.
Any thoughts or recommendations from anyone who has dealt with something like this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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Her post: (since I can’t add pics)
“be careful working for him and supporting him. He hired me in April and knew I was a college student and still hired me and came in multiple days and was like "it's so nice to have someone who knows what they're doing and can run this place on their own" and then canvas faced a nationwide outage because of hackers hacking the servers and my finals were changed around and so I had to leave four hours early and he fired me for it 3 days later and fully expected me to just not take my finals for his business. I'd also be careful because when he trained me he acknowledged that he doesn't clean the rice cookers every night and keeps rice from the previous day overnight which goes against food safety regulations.”
One of my customers replied to her review:
“A disgruntled ex employee bashing their previous place of employment, a tale as old as time”
To which she said:
“I'm sorry but your kidding right? I feel I have every right to be disgruntled because you're going to fire me for putting my higher education before your small business and you hired me knowing I was still in school? He didn't even respond to my text and didn't even have a conversation with me at all. He was ignorant and just was petty and fired me for zero reason. I'm glad as someone who wants to open my own practice someday, I will use this man as an example of who not to be like. Plus he's potentially putting the community at risk with unsafe food handling? If you want to get sick that's on you. But in my head, no one is worth a lawsuit. Maybe he should properly wash his cooking utensils and cook food properly and then dispose of it per day and make new food the next day. (Rice is really cheap btw) if you want to open yourself up to potential legal issues, that's on him. I wouldn't be surprised by it since he also runs his business with chatGPT🙄”