Slope restaurants cited for underpaying workers

Jimmy wrote: The idea that business was "unchecked" under Bush, or at any time in recent memory, is ludicrous. And your second statement is laughable.

Um, no, you're pretty much just 100% wrong there. Perhaps if you made an attempt to back up your sweeping generalizations with specific examples you could enlighten us. But i guess we'll just have to stay in the dark.

i remain quite sad about bogota. about the fact that they treat workers like crap, and about the fact that one of their owners came here and acted like an imbecile.

need a new place for fish tacos

Fitzroy Sq wrote: [quote=Jimmy]The idea that business was "unchecked" under Bush, or at any time in recent memory, is ludicrous. And your second statement is laughable.

Um, no, you're pretty much just 100% wrong there. Perhaps if you made an attempt to back up your sweeping generalizations with specific examples you could enlighten us. But i guess we'll just have to stay in the dark.

Typical - you make a sweeping generalization without offering evidence or specific examples to back it up, and then expect me to do the opposite when I tell you you're wrong. How about you first offer evidence to back up your initial statements, and we'll take it from there.

That sweeping generalization was my point. Sorry Jimmy, I guess that was a little too subtle for you.

brooklynpotter wrote: i remain quite sad about bogota. about the fact that they treat workers like crap, and about the fact that one of their owners came here and acted like an imbecile.

need a new place for fish tacos

You're taking yourself entirely too seriously, my friend. Really.

No one here knows how Bogota treats their workers. Oh wait....someone does....I DO. Know why I do? Because the owners are my very good friends and I spend plenty of time talking to them and their employees.

Let's just take the gloves off here for a second....

From the very beginning, this thread had been about the most sad-sackest armchair quarterbacking i've seen in a long while on the net. You all found a list which was given as part of a press conference, took the bait, and went running with it. Where you all took it was ridiculous. You all made connections where they didn't belong and got on top of the same "holier than thou" podium you love to take down other blogs for. Slopemom ain't got nothing on this thread. In the end, though, all you have is a report with some names and, in this day and age where nothing is ever what it seems in the media, you all should know a hell of a lot better.

This board could be so much more than it actually is if it wasn't for things like this. People could come here for actual information, and some of us actually try to utilize this board as such. This could be a more real-time version of what sites like Brownstoner try to do. Instead, it's some bizzare social network in which people define themselves by what they don't like, or where they won't go, and no one, in the end, seems to actually know a whole lot.

So Farid came on here and riled you up. Maybe you shouldn't be so easy to rile up next time. I was laughing by butt off since I could totally see his sense of humor in it and how everyone else was just swinging and missing. They know they've never been the darlings of the blogosphere and, frankly, why do you need to be when you have a strong, loyal network of customers and friends who will continue to support you? Bogota treat their employees like crap? I beg to differ. Find me a restaurant in Park Slope with less employee turnover than theirs. Find me a place who put their delivery guy's name and face on a card put on every table there. Those are mostly the same faces that were there since the day they opened. They owe you an explanation? They're smart guys. They know who they owe explanations to. Brooklynian.com? Not at the top of that list. You think they're not worth your business? Fine....they can easily not be worth your business. From the looks of things, the rest of Park Slope, luckily, knows better, reserves judgement, and happens to disagree with you.

My apologies to those on here who've stayed above all this and are reading this self-admitted rant, but I'm not going to allow some passerby to this site to read this garbage and not want to give a chance to one of the businesses that, to me, a ten-year resident of Park Slope, represents the absolute best of this community.

legalalien wrote: Do you really believe that was them!? It's really not the tone of voice of their Twitter feed. Sounds like an imposter to me.....they seemed as real as the Pavilion bedbugs.

So the fact that it was him is now confirmed by a friend of his.

Honestly, Farid doesn't have to care what we think, and we don't have to patronize his restaurant. Seems pretty simple to me.

Carnivore wrote:

Honestly, Farid doesn't have to care what we think, and we don't have to patronize his restaurant. Seems pretty simple to me.

Who's "we?" Speak for yourself, meathead.

Carnivore wrote:
So the fact that it was him is now confirmed by a friend of his.

Honestly, Farid doesn't have to care what we think, and we don't have to patronize his restaurant. Seems pretty simple to me.

putting aside how i feel about the alleged mistreatment of workers, i'm quite appalled about the owner's comments.

we've had any number of accusations about businesses fly around on this board, the ones that have stood out in my mind are the threads where the business owners themselves come to engage (or shill themselves) in the conversation--animal kind, that liquor store on PPW, elementi, the restaurant that can't be named.

the former two were honest and cared enough to explain why they practiced business the way they did. the latter two were such shits that they did enough to make many of us avoid the places like the plague. readers have even been put off by the shills from athena. you think opinion here doesn't matter? don't kid yourself.

make fun of ths board all you want--J0518, farid, etc., certainly *i've* had my issues with much of the attitude in the posts and i've been quite vocal about it--but at the end of the day a whole lot of people will read this thread and avoid bogota.

Sorry, Danny, but you fail formal logic. You are still included in the "we" who have a choice about whether to patronize said restaurant.

You also fail at recognizing parody. I was mocking your own self-righteous tone when you preach about meat.

I haven't called for any boycott. I said I'm not going there, and I expect many others won't, especially (as BP said) when the owner came here and acted like such an ass. There are plenty of restaurants and bars that won't fold, whose owners know how to interact with the public, and I have no doubt that I'll be able to continue to eat and drink well in the neighborhood without supporting an individual like Farid.

Bogota is a tofu place If you look on menupages, the most recent comments all complain about poor service/attitude.

Boy·cott: to engage in a concerted refusal to have dealings with (as a person, store, or organization) usually to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions

A boycott requires an agreement among the boycotters. That has not happened here. If two or more people individually decide to refrain from eating at Bogota, that does not a boycott make.

Carnivore wrote:

So Danny doesn't find it funny when he's being mocked... What a surprise.

Nonsense. I'll be happy to laugh at one of your jokes in the event that I see one.

brooklynpotter wrote: [quote=Carnivore]
So the fact that it was him is now confirmed by a friend of his.

Honestly, Farid doesn't have to care what we think, and we don't have to patronize his restaurant. Seems pretty simple to me.

putting aside how i feel about the alleged mistreatment of workers, i'm quite appalled about the owner's comments.

we've had any number of accusations about businesses fly around on this board, the ones that have stood out in my mind are the threads where the business owners themselves come to engage (or shill themselves) in the conversation--animal kind, that liquor store on PPW, elementi, the restaurant that can't be named.

the former two were honest and cared enough to explain why they practiced business the way they did. the latter two were such shits that they did enough to make many of us avoid the places like the plague. readers have even been put off by the shills from athena. you think opinion here doesn't matter? don't kid yourself.

make fun of ths board all you want--J0518, farid, etc., certainly *i've* had my issues with much of the attitude in the posts and i've been quite vocal about it--but at the end of the day a whole lot of people will read this thread and avoid bogota.

Totally agreed!