Why Metro Silver Diner No Longer Has My Business

So...many of you may have seen the crop of new restaurants popping up in "Old Towne" Fairfax. Despite the image of the restaurants and shopping opportunities not really fitting into the historical image of Fairfax City, I was still able to have a rather pleasant dining experience at one new restaurant, Metro Silver Diner, until I was informed about some of their policies.

Purporting to be a new kind of diner, this fast casual establishment, in the vein of Panera and Corner Bakery, serve up a tasty selection of traditional American diner traditions at economical prices. Unfortunately, they're also serving a heavy dose of hypocrisy and gender discrimination. Even though the food was great, the information I learned while I was there more than made my skin crawl.

After a group of friends and I had finished eating and were preparing to leave, we struck up a conversation with our waitress, who was amazing. She commented on my industrial and said how she wanted to have one, but she couldn't because she worked at Metro. She then went on to say how it was even worse for guys though, because they weren't allowed to have any piercings at all. I was surprised that guys couldn't even have an earlobe pierced and when I inquired why, she said that Silver Diner didn't consider it "gender appropriate".

Of course, alarms went off in my head and I was quite angry that that would be given as a reason not to have piercings. I've heard that it doesn't look professional, but never "gender inappropriate". My friends said that maybe she was just misconstruing what the policy was; however, I found it hard to believe that a sixteen year old would use the term gender appropriate unless she heard it from someone else. Wanting to confirm my suspicions, I gave a call to Metro inquiring about employment opportunities and asked about their policy on piercings for men. I was told that it didn't fit into the image of what a male would look like in the 1950's.

Even though the manager didn't quite use the term "gender (in)appropriate", I was still disturbed and somewhat amused by this revelation. First, this is supposedly a new concept for diners, a sort of diner of the future. If that's true, shouldn't they be advocating modern principles and not advocating the gender binary of the 1950's? Secondly, his statement is just full of hypocrisy considering the composition and dress of the wait staff.

Suppose Metro Silver Diner did want to enforce the "look" of the 1950's for its employees. They might want to start by banning the pants all the female employees were wearing. I expect skirts, ponytails, and fully manicured hands. I should only see female waitresses and men should be the ones cooking behind the counter. Oh, wait. I forgot. 1950's atmosphere and we are in Virginia? Considering the likelihood that if this diner existed in the 1950's it would not be welcoming to people of color, they might want to bar people of color from working and dining at the restaurant, just for authenticity's sake. It's also unlikely that their General Manager would be a woman, as it stands now.

Seem ridiculous? A little. But I find it ridiculous that piercings on men aren't gender appropriate for a 1950's atmosphere, yet everything else is. I personally will not be dining at Metro Silver Diner anymore unless that policy is changed, or they give a better reason for it. This whole incident also emphasizes the need for laws protecting gender identity and expression, so this kind of reasoning could never be used anywhere.

Happy dining everyone!
Robert Crofton

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