World's Shortest Boycott Ends as D.C.-Area Anti-Trump Waitress Fired

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When certain Washington, D.C., waitstaff pledged to “refuse service and cause other inconveniences for members of the incoming Trump administration” last week, my first thought was, “Fire them all. Every single one.”

That’s a silly idea, of course — local restaurants couldn’t fire that much staff without major disruptions, even for the customers they do like. I just like to vent my id before I sit down and actually think through a problem. “You just have to fire a few,” was my second thought. “Maybe just one.”

The story probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere had it not been for Democrats sympathetic to displays of incivility toward conservatives. Zac Hoffman, manager at the National Democratic Club, said, “You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?”

(That quote — and others — is from PJ Media’s own Robert Spencer’s full story about the boycott, in case you missed it.)

It didn’t take long for that “maybe just one” waiter to get fired. While the boycott story broke late Thursday, the New York Post reported Saturday night that a D.C.-area server was “fired after she spoke out about possibly refusing service to incoming Trump administration officials.”

That ought to return service to normal citywide.

“I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,” Suzannah Van Rooy, a server at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, told the Washingtonian this week. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans.’ It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”

Beuchert’s Saloon told Fox News Digital that Van Rooy’s remarks were “reprehensible” and she had been fired for violating their “zero-tolerance policy on discrimination.”

Well, good — but talk about ingratitude.

“I think my tip average from Republicans—at least ones that I or a coworker has recognized—is close to 30 percent. With Dems, I’m surprised if it’s over 20,” a D.C. bartender named Joseph told Fox News. Joseph also said he’ll give the same service to everyone.

Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail earlier this year to stop taxing waitstaff tips, and it was such a popular idea that rival Kamala Harris almost immediately stole it. Tips are small gifts, after all, and so they probably shouldn’t be taxed. It was also one of those great populist wedge issues that Trump plays so well, putting struggling waitresses against the mighty IRS that Joe Biden had fortified with $86 billion — specifically to go after things like waitstaff tips and Esty side gigs.

Yeah, maybe Trump should just say, “Screw all that.”

But here’s the thing. “Screw all that” is a natural first response to the kind of self-destructive petty vindictiveness briefly on display in Washington. It would also be the wrong thing to do.

Remember: don’t let those id-based first reactions rule your thinking.

When Trump said he would “eliminate taxes on tips for restaurant workers, hospitality workers, and anyone else relying on tips,” he didn’t add, “but only if you vote for me and you’re nice to my people.”

Not taxing tips is the right thing to do, regardless of party affiliation, color, creed, or any of the other perfectly human attributes that the progressives use to turn us against one another.

Whether to tip… that’s a completely different question. And if someone delayed my entrée by 20 minutes (as another D.C. bartender threatened to do) just because I’m a conservative, they won’t be getting much.

Only tangentially related, but as many mistakes as I’m sure I’ve made as a dad, teaching my sons restaurant civility is one thing I know I got right. I don’t mean which fork to use when or what to do with your napkin when you have to momentarily leave the table — that stuff my wife and I taught them at home. I mean how to engage the entire staff with the same friendly courtesy as you expect them to treat you. How to be flirty with the waitress (friendly) without actually flirting (creepy for a married man like me, particularly at my age). And, yes, appropriate tipping.

Guess what? With very few exceptions, we always get great service — and my wife and I have almost (but only almost) become inured to all the compliments the staff give us about our kids.

I don’t know if either of my sons (ages 18 and 14) will ever wait tables, but if they do, I bet they’ll get good tips — from Republicans and Democrats.

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