So, I work for a small bakery. We rent space in a plaza. Our neighboring business and our business have had small altercations over the last couple of years over petty shit. Most of which are because of this wannabe macho boomer who owns a franchise of a national chain of stores that sell overpriced hams having a major Napoleon complex.
Today, our boss came in with a flag that was pride colors with an outline of our state in the middle. She put it up in our flag holder, knowing it would likely get a rise out of the boomer next door. She put it up and left. Not five minutes later, the guy came over and told us that his business was “apolitical” and the flag had to come down because he didn’t want it to look like his business had the flag out.
We informed him that being LGBTQ+ was not political, and neither was celebrating pride month, or supporting their rights to exist, and the flag was staying up. He got on the phone with the property manager and got him on his side (obviously. Landlords are trash)
On my way out, I walked into him, a teenaged employee of ours, and my (also pretty young) manager standing in front of the business having an argument about it. I hung around in case it got violent. It ended in this guy calling our boss and telling him the property manager said it had to come down. We took it down and replaced it with giant printed out posters of some cookies we decorated for Pridefest with the header “we do custom cookies”.
Looking for subtle, legal ways to poke the bear.
Update: apparently my boss is friends with the mayor and she talked to him about it. The current plan is to get the word out to get customers to show up with decked out vehicles for a free sample of bread. We take pictures of their vehicles and in September, vote on the best one and they win free bread for a year.
slowly filling the window space nearest the chud’s store with pride designs (even if it’s just customized cookies) is brilliant
if you do other poster designs, taking care to have Diversity (read: non white cishet men) featured could spike his blood pressure without recourse. or just call on friends to slowly drop bad reviews about the guy’s temper and shit
My boss is the Shakespeare of telling people to go fuck themselves. We are currently looking into how much of the sidewalk is ours so we can use chalk. We also have two easels outside that we put nice messages or specialties on that I think we can use for evil.
I had an idea to maybe hand out 50% off coupons to the bartender I know at the one LGBTQ+ bar we have in town to give out. The bosses would definitely be ok with taking a hit to the bottom line in order to outnumber bigots, but I don’t want to make it seem like we are using people as props. My boss is pretty textbook lib, but her heart is in the right place and she also doesn’t shy away from conflicts like this.
I did leave a review of his business saying I witnessed the owner berating a teenager over a pride flag…
My boss is the Shakespeare of telling people to go fuck themselves.
I sincerely hope you tell them this at least one time. That kind of compliment would have me beaming for days.
Hate to say this but watch out about getting sued over leaving negative yelp (or whatever) reviews. I had an incident with this recently when I was up to similar hijinks as you and I found out that it is indeed possible for this fucker to sue you and ruin your life over this shit, especially if he can actually prove that you left the reviews. If he has enough money he could probably keep you tied up in court forever. I’m not a legal expert so others please feel free to correct me.
beautiful, I’m really glad you have support
since you have sidewall space, putting up umbrellas or pennant banners with pride colors would both make the bakery cuter and piss off the chud. the coupon idea is nice (so long as someone starts a rumour at the bar about the awful neighboring business…) and could lend a cultural shift to the bakery that only a real bigot would be upset by.
Put up craigslist/facebook adds for free stuff with the phone number for the business
Hold his mouth open
Shit in his mouth
Uppercut his mouth closed
I’m sure the boss will be contacting the landlord about this in the morning. I’m waiting for him to break his own rule so I can storm into his business demanding the American flag comes down or something.
We are a really tight crew, so we are all on the same page which is nice.
Put up banners with the Bible quotes that prohibit ham.