Comments

1

The call-out community is on that does not care about individual that gets hurt, unless it can be used to advance a political agenda. Don't believe anything they have to say about being "more empathetic", it's just a bullshit excuse to allow them to masturbate in public.

3

Eventually, sooner than later, The Left gets around to eating it's own.
You are today's entree.
Take comfort in knowing that your demise provided immense self-satisfaction to many pious Liberals...

4

I obviously don't know the complexity of the ownership arrangements of Meinert's businesses but in similar situations, offending owners have divested (sometimes with a quick rebrand) as to not bring the entire ship down with them. Hopefully, Dave will consider the option.

8

@6 I don't know how long you've been around, but there's been a strong editorial shift at the Stranger over the past year+

9

Nope, sorry. Not going to put money into a rapist's pockets. Wendy's in Ballard is hiring.

11

Outrage without thought of consequences and censorship seems to be the recipe for the new left.

13

@9 to what end? Who is helped by the author (and a dozen others) losing their job so that you can feel like you are making a difference (which you aren't)? Does refusing to patronize a bar turn back the clock of time?

14

Other bars, poach these employees away please!

Anyway it's not my fault, I was already staying out of Meinert's places because of his past advocacy and attitude (remember the road rage thing on 12th Ave)?

That was cool when he banned Google Glass though.

15

@13 Would you spend your money at a Trump Hotel?

16

Quit. You can get another job.

17

In a city (and a country) that worships money and insists we need no regulations, because people can make their voices heard through how and where they choose to spend their money, this is what happens. People have a right to choose not to spend money at his establishments. Do you truly expect people to behave differently?

I disagree that there is no thought of consequences. There is thought of consequences. And you and your colleagues are victims of Dave Meinert and his actions, just in a different way. Blaming people who don't want to spend their money where you work for affecting your livlihood is not really blaming who is responsible for your current predicament.

What it comes down to is people are going to choose what they want to do and you are going to choose what you want to do. Choosing to continue to work for an establishment that DM owns or co-owns is a choice - in a city where there are currently, what, hundreds of FT jobs looking to be filled (and that's just a cursory search of Indeed under FT "restaurant server" in Seattle, WA).

19

@15 i tell you this: I'm black and I still happily eat Papa Johns pizza. Why? Because mine is owned by this dude Mahmoud who works at the shop, not by whatever layers of holding companies are controlled by Papa John himself. I've stayed at a Trump hotel before - the staff were very nice even to a plebe like myself.

I don't understand the urge to punish people who have no power, impact, or control of the situation in ways that won't affect [Meinert] at all. He'll sell the bars. The money will have new owners, the employees may not ever notice the difference.

And c'mon, we're Americans. Our tax dollars have been supporting thousands of murders per year every single year of our lives. Trees, meet the forest. You cannot live a happy life without being complicit in global poverty and violence (which will continue unabated with or without your support)

20

You don't hate boycotts, you hate capitalism.

21

@19: Papa John's is shitty pizza.

22

I'm sure there are lots of great people working at Chic-fil-a but they will never get 1 penny from me.

23

Uh, NO!

My friends and I have cut you guys off. We're just a small part of your business. But, there are a lot of us who think the same way. We'll be back when dave sells his stake in all the businesses he has on Cap Hill. It's not you, it's us....and his victims.

24

Sorry it's affecting you but that doesn't mean I'll be giving him my money...

Frankly this whole editorial is monumentally self centered

25

Also it seems that just being at Lost Lake is making you upset and re-live past trauma, so isn't that even more reason to move on to a different job?

26

First chance I get, gonna walk in that bar, sit my ass down, and have a drink.

A nice, tall glass of water.

Bartender will (hopefully) get the biggest tip they will have ever got for my FREE glass of water.

28

@27 I thought the trauma was this part but what do I know:

"I stayed silent and thought of how I never came forward to press charges against my rapists. I stared at the ceiling to keep tears from falling."

31

Get woke baby. It's 2018 and there are no Individuals. Just Identities. You are part of Identity Meinert and must be punished accordingly. It sucks, but these are the times we live in.

33

You know back in the day when I was a republican one of the so-called principles of the conservative ideology was you should be able to do what you want with your money. That voting with your dollar was founding precept.

That’s one of the few things from that stupid brain dead philosophy that seemed fairly sensible.

But I guess according to the usual dipshit trolls you HAVE to go to a business that has ownership under some ethical cloud, or something. I guess. I mean their arguments don’t really make all that much sense.

I never went to these shit holes anyway. So it’s no skin off my back.

Personally, I think boycotts are extremely effective against businesses that act unethically- as a business. Like companies that pollute, exploit workers, or companies that fund violent extremist groups, etc.

Should you boycott a business if the owner themself acts unethically or illegally but otherwise the business itself is ethical? Maybe. Is not black and white.

If the profit taking from that business is being used by that owner to cover for crimes. Then yes. Sure.

Is that happening now? Or has it happened. Did Mienert use profits from Lost Lake to buy favorable press or suppress unfavorable press from The Stranger? Well. That’s a question I’d like answered.

All movements for justice will impact innocent people. That’s just the way it is. Ideally you want to minimize that impact. Ideally you want to be as fair as possible. The greater importance of an issue the more combating it will likely impact innocent people. The problem with the left in general is that it always wants these sacrifices/costs to come from some other more privileged group. And that’s why they lose. (Like the arguments from the gooey left against general strikes are that they hurt poor people. Which is a stupid argument since the the poor are already exploited. And now instead of actions that require sacrifice and work we have hashtags.)

So personally for me I don’t see this boycott as all that necessary unless it can be shown that Mienert is using that money and local power to dodge justice or impugn witnesses or victims or something like that.

But ultimately, outside of taxes, people have the right to spend their money where they want. End of story.

34

I have to ask, is it standard procedure for tabs at Lost Lake to be completely non-itemized, and just a total? Because the last two times I went in there that was what I got, not to mention that the total was quite a bit higher than I had expected. Glad I decided to stop going there before this story broke.

35

Meinert operates the bars at showbox as well. So boycott them instead of mourning them. You should’ve been already since they’re owned by AEG.

37

Call out culture is very, very, very fond of the concept of collective punishment. Didn't you know that?

38

People have been calling out Meinert for years for many other anti-human transgressions - why the hell were you working for him in the first place? Being a willing part of Meinertia is now another aspect of your intersectionality.

39

Hey don't allow your insecurity to dictate your job prospects. Believe in yourself and go farther in life than you expected. Follow your dreams.

41

Dear OP,

I'm sorry the fact your boss is probably a sexual assaulter has negatively impacted your livelihood. If it's any consolation, rest assured many former members or the Confederate and German military probably found themselves in a similar position.

42

41
As well as Hillary's staffers.
quantum of solace

43

So, thanks to a single report based entirely on anonymous sources, this author suffers a loss of income. Commenters here tell her she should just go work elsewhere, but offer her no help to do so. (They give her plenty of self-righteous justifications for why her income has been reduced, though.)

Makes me glad I no longer live on Capitol Hill. Back when I first lived there, it was known for tolerance and inclusion. No longer, apparently.

44

Won't somebody think of the Montgomery Bus Depot janitors of 1955 and cease this radical boycott!!!

45

This reminds me of the time you let Ed Murray publish his own editorial defense online.

He ended up out of a jog too. Are we collectively supposed to find him a new one...

46

This is the result of your boss being more radioactive than the Chernobyl elephant's foot. You are caught in the fallout zone of his meltdown. It sucks, it really does, but you are not the first to suffer as collateral damage and you won't be the last.

People will not stop boycotting even if they stop boycotting. It doesn't matter whether he profits or not. People can understand that intellectually, but emotionally, when they see these places, the first knee-jerk thought is "Meinert is a rapist." Every brand he's associated with is now also associated with rape. Find a new job just as fast as you possibly can.

Even the best-meaning and most understanding and worker-allied people will find some reason they don't want to go there to justify their emotional response. People feel before they think. The people who do continue to patronize these places are going to remain people you aren't thrilled with for the foreseeable future. Don't go down with his ship.

This must be clear; your job as you knew it is no more. Spend only as much time there as you need to in order to find new work, or face poverty and social scorn.

47

@24 look in the mirror. I think "I don't want to lose my job because some other guy assaulted a woman 8 years ago" deserves a pass.

48

@33 you punk bitch. no wonder you accuse everyone of being a Trumpistaner - you're fucking projecting. LAWL.

49

"Everything is fine until it negatively affects me, then it is a grave injustice."

Yeah yeah, same old boring, entitled, hypocritical bullshit.

50

The Stranger made money off the accused through numerous ads over the years. The Stranger apoarently had the chance to publicize this problem earlier but chose not to. When the KUOW report came out, the Stranger jumped on the bandwagon and ran several articles about the same thing. The Stranger still ran those same ads all weekend during their huge but basically stolen stories. Then they finally pull those ads. Meanwhile the people at the bars are losing business. Then, most recently the Stranger has a guest writer explaining the workers very unfortunate problems from the fallout. Who do you think should be taking some responsibility for all this? Take a wild guess. We are all reading it.

51

I hope you find a new gig soon Hannah, and I hope there's lots more people like @26 out there, they've got it right

52

I stopped patronizing Meinert's establishments when he was throwing his temper tantrums about the fight for $15. It was easy because they suck anyway.

I wanted to love Lost Lake, but the novelty of getting a chicken fried steak in a place where gallons of semen were spilled over the years was eclipsed by its bad service.

Sorry your tips are suffering, Hannah. Go work somewhere else. The job market is good and you should aim higher.

53

The Stranger peaked in 2002, 2008 maybe, but has since been a dying husk of a corpse of free media ever since. It thankfully launched the careers of the likes of Dominic Holden, Lindy West, Brownstone, Selling, the new food editor at the Times, etc.

Hey STRANGER STAFF. Remember when you used to mercilessly mock the Seattle Times (Christopher Frizzelle's first gig, with no prior experience, promoted to editor????) you used to mock them for dying out? Guess what. You're next.

54

OOOPS they used to mock THE SEATTLE WEEKLY. But I suppose the Times can be included in that.

55

The Editor Frizzelle's online master's degree in English lit is about to be as worthless as his decade at the Stranger and his half-finished UW degree...

56

I guess I should not be surprised that "tolerant" folks embrace the concept of collective punishment so damn hard. The practice is reviled by all civilized nations around the world. I know, I know...it only applies during wartime. But given the current battle cries of "resist" and "fight", it just might be an appropriate subject for contemplation.

To those not giving a shit about what happens to the author of this article - I am sure you'd be ok with the collective punishment being applied to you. If you find out a member of your extended family has committed a crime, you'll step right up for your punishment too...right? Even if you had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime, you'll happily accept consequences. And you'll accept your punishment with a smile, your committment to collective punishment is that deep.

57

@55 but they used to say Frizzelle has a large cock so that gives him some sort of pass.

58

@57: Even a big WooheesieWhatsit (as claimed) cannot save you from the social repercussions of negative choices...Well, with some size-queens perhaps, but that is a different issue

59

52: "I wanted to love Lost Lake, but the novelty of getting a chicken fried steak in a place where gallons of semen were spilled over the years..."

And now, like the rest of us, you're wondering..."what the hell did they USE to make the 'country gravy'"?

60

What @10 said: You could get a job at another place in a week or two if you tried hard enough. Lost Lake isn't the only employer around. You can stand up for what you believe in or choke back the tears at work and write an incredibly self-centered "woe is me" piece. I guess you've already made your choice.

And @35 - He no longer does.


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