Since that (for me) infamous Saturday night, I’ve had conversations with various friends who had different opinions on what I should do about it. The suggestions included filing a criminal complaint, filing a civil lawsuit, starting a grassroots campaign against the business and so forth. One friend even suggested I should continue to go there. His thought is that they wouldn’t mess with me again. I’m going to explore that line of thinking here.
As we all know many groups have / still do suffer discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, handicaps, sexual preference and of course gender identity. With all the laws that protect gays, minorities, the disabled and so forth, the transgender community seems to be the most discriminated against group remaining. A majority of those who prefer transgenders as partners are still closeted. They fear discrimination at work or problems with family, if their secret love of transsexuals is discovered.
Those of us involved in this sub-culture want to have places we can go and feel welcome and comfortable being ourselves. I believe that Jamie, the promoter of Tgirl Nights wants that. However, based on what I’ve experienced, Hamburger Mary’s in Long Beach is not such a place. Putting my incident aside for a moment, I have noted on prior occasions that the security staff there are simply nasty to the patrons. I’m not a regular there. But I am now hearing that this type of behavior (such as preventing people from using the restrooms before closing time and yelling at them to hurry up and get out) is common.
It appears that there is no management in charge and the bouncers do whatever they want. They don’t seem to understand that we the customers are the reason they have that job. There are also the basic concepts of customer service such as common courtesy and providing restroom facilities to its patrons that they don’t seem to get.
So I ask myself why should I want to spend my money and time in place in which the patrons are treated with contempt and made to feel unwelcome. I also ask why would anyone want to be treated that way? Why should anyone support a business that treats them or their friends that way? Unless some major changes are made, I certainly will not support this business again.
As before, I welcome comments. I received some interesting emails after my initial post here.
