One Star Review

A local Badger and chef had spent years channeling her passion into building a successful restaurant in her small hometown. She made the food she loved from her heart exactly the way she wanted to and was happy to serve her community.

The Badger was hell-bent, sometimes to a fault, on doing things exactly her way.

But the community rallied behind her. They liked what she was doing and made sure to come out and support the chef as often as their pocketbooks would allow. It was a wonderful relationship.

Recently, the Badger had seen her cache and recognition in the broader culinary community take off. Her restaurant was highly buzzed about and had even been awarded many prestigious recognitions and accolades from local, national, and even international press.

This increase in attention had begun to attract diners who were not the initial target of the restaurant. Diners came in with expectations as to what they should be receiving. People who considered themselves kings and queens who should have their whims exactly catered to since they were the ones dishing out the money for the experience. Worst of all these new diners were taking up tables and crowding up the restaurant so that the chef's regulars weren't able to enjoy the restaurant they loved as much anymore.

This didn’t sit well with the Badger, who had a notorious temper, short fuse, and firm ideas of what they wanted their food to be and how they wanted their restaurant to operate. It had been successful up till now and she was determined to keep the essence of her restaurant despite all the outsiders descending upon her home.

Fights with these new customers became commonplace. Someone wanted such and such addition to this dish, someone didn't like the way another dish was cooked, others demanded freebies with their meal because they claimed to be dissatisfied. The Badger was being driven mad by all this new attention. It was what she always thought she wanted but now that she had it, she hated it.

Too bad there isn't a phrase to describe such a feeling.

Often, dissatisfied customers would leave one-star reviews of the restaurant online complaining about service, or food, or the owner, or the lighting, or the drink selection, or the decor, or the location, etc. etc., etc. etc., etc.

The Badger felt obligated to respond to these reviews. These entitled diners were attacking her life's work after all. The restaurant she put her blood, sweat, and tears into (Figuratively, of course, she had a sanitation rating of 98.0, 2 points taken off because the chef liked to keep her pickles at room temperature instead of freezing cold in the walk-in. The health department can be such fun-suckers sometimes).

The Badger couldn't help but get upset over the one-star reviews. Often these reviews were left by people who didn't understand what it was like to create something with all your being only to have someone with nothing to lose disrespect everything you worked for. So she made a point to respond to all these dipshits. Usually in a snarky and mocking and put-downy way to make sure anyone who saw these reviews online knew that her restaurant was good and it was these reviewers who were bad.

This all weighed on the Badger who knew stewing in negative energy was no way to live. But she didn’t know what to do to stop this type of abuse.

“The rating online is important,” the Badger thought, “Without a good rating how will people on the internet know that my food is good?”

She stopped and repeated the thought in her head again to make sure she understood what exactly she was focused on. Her rating, or her food?

She went back to the online reviews and updated every single snarky review she left with one simple phrase --

"You're right, this place sucks! No one should come here because everything sucks and you're the one who sussed it out. Thanks for spreading the word!"

She even went so far as to encourage her regulars to purposely leave one-star reviews.

"But if we leave one-star reviews then the type of people who put a ton of stock in online reviews to decide whether or not to go to a restaurant or see a movie, or watch a show, or listen to a band or..."

And that's how everyone came to the perfect realization...

"Exactly!"