A completely-normal-in-every-possible-way couple from Winnipeg has received a public apology from a Marion Street pub for being identified by staff as “weirdos.”

According to some hard-hitting investigative work from the CBC, one Bryan Douglas and his gal pal were out with a group of 40 or so friends, living it up at the Wood Tavern and Grill on a Thursday night. Good clean fun, you know? No big whup.

Things took an ugly turn, however, when Bryan went to pay his bill, and noticed that someone on the serving staff had referred to him and his best gal as the “Last Weirdos” on the receipt.

“It has opened my eyes to what people can say and what does get said when you’re not paying attention,” said Bryan, who also admitted he was “taken aback” by the unprovoked attempt at character assassination.

The restaurant has offered Bryan and his main squeeze an apology, which they’ve accepted. So basically everything turned out just peachy.

What gets me about this story is, having once spent about a decade working behind the scenes of the food service industry, is not that this happened, but that it was this instance in particular that “opened” Bryan’s eyes “to what people can say and what does get said when you’re not paying attention.”

Oh boy. Is there a statute of limitations on food sabotage here in Canada?

If so, and it is in the vicinity of ten years, then I’ve seen plenty of worse instances of back of the house shenanigans than publicly referring to a couple of customers as “weirdos.” For example, a particularly disturbing example that comes immediately to mind was in fact not directed at one set of customers in particular, but at any poor sap who happened to be seated in Booth 23 of a pizza joint best left unnamed, where an associate of mine used to ash his cigarettes in the pepper shaker after we’d closed the restaurant and were casually enjoying some underage beers (on the house, of course).

Besides, if Bryan and his partner were indeed the last to leave, or the last to order, then at least 50 per cent of the label applied to them would be true, no? And who is to say that their behavior, however “good,” “clean,” or “fun,” it may have been, did not appear to the server in question to be slightly “weird.” At that point the description becomes pretty harmless and rather an easy way to recall who’s bill is whose.

I’m sure Bryan and his lovely, completely un-weird lady friend are swell people. But come on, it’s not like the server called you “a couple goofs” or anything. At least not on your official receipt.

CBC NewsScreenshot/CBC