Food workers in Washington, D.C., pledged to refuse service and cause other inconveniences for members of the incoming Trump administration when they dine out over the next four years.
Industry veterans, bartenders and servers in the nation’s capital told the Washingtonian that resistance to the Republican figures in the progressive city was inevitable and a matter of conscience.
“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?,” said Zac Hoffman, a DC restaurant veteran who is now a manager at the National Democratic Club.
Bartenders and servers in the report promised to shun certain officials or employ other small acts of resistance against these figures to take their “power back.”
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“This person theoretically has the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entrée,” Nancy, a fine-dining bartender, said.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for us as workers to feel like we’re taking our power back, while not necessarily ruining someone’s life. Giving them a subtle inconvenience feels like a little bit of a win for us,” she continued.
Nancy said she would refuse service to certain Trump officials. If her employer tried to force her, she claimed she would quit “on the spot.”
“There is power in making it known that you’re not comfortable with a situation, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be this big dramatic show,” she said. “It’s just little bits of resistance that add up, and little bits of resistance that other people will see and hopefully feel empowered to stand on those convictions as well.”
Suzannah Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, also vowed to refuse service to Trump officials whom she felt held moral views that opposed her own.
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“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,” she said.
“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,” Van Rooy added.
One anonymous host at a fine dining restaurant said she planned to look up every Trump administration figure online so she could know who they were and give them a bad table if they came in.
“I’ll only give them a bad table but will otherwise guarantee decent and polite service,” she went on. “I feel like them getting a bad table is nothing compared to the harm they’ll be inflicting.”
Not every liberal worker in the report planned to protest the incoming administration while doing their job, however.
A bartender named Joseph said while he was disappointed by the election results, he was looking forward to higher tips with more Republicans in Washington.
“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,” he said, adding that Republicans tend to be lower maintenance patrons as well.
These comments beckon memories of Trump’s first time in office, when Republican Party figures were harassed while dining at D.C.-area restaurants.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of a Virginia restaurant and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled and harassed at a Mexican Washington D.C. restaurant in 2018.
A few months later, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife were also chased out of D.C. restaurant by left-wing protesters.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., encouraged supporters after the two incidents to fight back against the Trump administration. She said at the time current administration officials who defend Trump “know what they’re doing is wrong” and said they soon won’t be able to peacefully appear in public without being harassed. She later backed off from those remarks.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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