Posted 10/15/2010 09:40:00 PM by Douglas

This next story is replete with things that piss me off. So let's get started, shall we?

So Coberly couldn’t help but laugh this week when a hostess at Wolfgang Puck’s Five Sixty restaurant told him and five other war veterans they didn’t look good enough to visit the high-end downtown Dallas eatery -- a rotating dining room atop Reunion Tower, 560 feet above the city.

She said the men’s unit baseball caps, POW T-shirts and shorts did not meet the restaurant’s “business casual” dress code.

“I figure if I spent two years in a POW camp, I could have handled the privilege of sitting in that fancy restaurant a few minutes,” said Coberly, a member of the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association and a bombardier with the decorated 8th Army Air Force, known as the Mighty 8th.

Well, not really. You got bounced because you showed up at a 5-star restaurant wearing shorts, t-shirts and ball caps. If they'd wanted to go to an icehouse for a beer or the cracker barrel for a chicken fried steak, they would have served them 'till closing time. That didn't happen, and that's where this story should have ended. It didn't.

“We weren’t dressed like hobos. We were just dressed comfortably,” said Coberly, a graduate of the Wharton School of business and a retired hospital administrator from Maryland.

Your status as a veteran, your graduate school or even your opinion of your attire has exactly no bearing on this situation.

But the men’s wives and children didn’t take the snub so lightly.

They confronted the hostess, reminding her of the military men’s service and sacrifice.

“Do you realize these veterans fought for your freedom and your way of life and you can’t see your way clear to let them up to get a view of the city?” said Michelle Northrop, Coberly’s daughter. “I mean, we weren’t going to be there longer than 45 minutes.”

Really? The Germans never invaded America, nor could they have, so save the "fought for your freedoms" bullshit. The country and especially can be proud of his service, but that doesn't give him the right to do whatever the hell he wants to.

“My honest opinion is she was too young to be able to think on her feet,” said Northrop. “She was doing her job, she was professionally dressed and she was not being obnoxious. She was trained well, but this was not an empowered young woman. I’m not sure it ever occurred to her to say, ‘Let me go talk to my manager.’ “

No, that's exactly wrong. She did her job. People go to fancy restaurants explicitly because they don't want to see people in shorts, t-shirts and ball caps. Also, no self-respecting man would wear a hat in a restaurant, and I'd especially expect men of this age to know better. But that's another story. If the hostess had seated these guys and someone had complained about their attire, someone who was adhering to the dress code, she would have been fired. Immediately. So what does the restaurant have to say?

“If they had explained who they were and what they were doing, it would not have happened,” she said. “It was a mistake and we’re apologetic.”

So, you have whatever rules you want to establish the clientele you want, but you have to throw it out the window anytime a whiney veteran starts jawin' at you and your policy?