So up until a few seconds ago I had no idea who “Stefan Sharkansky” is, or that Seattle had any Republicans in it, but apparently they do and you don’t want to be a waitress pissing ’em off by helping anonymously pen a partially facetious blog complaint that they let their child loudly run around the restaurant and then only tipping 10%…

UPDATE: In response to a storm of criticism, Sharkansky has posted a new rebuttal.

After probably getting a Google Alert that someone mentioned the Republican activist online, Sharkansky unearthed the waitress’s real identity, made repeated requests for her to delete her post, conducted opposition research, dredging up all sorts of personal information about the waitress, and posted it on his blog, then sent a relative down to the restaurant to get her fired, then tried to make trouble for her at her temp job with Amazon. Only after taking down her original post and making a public apology did the Sharkanskies stop their campaign.

Thanks to the magic of Google cache, you can still read her original post here.
And Sharkansky’s post, here.

Now, it’s probably not a good idea for a waitress to complain about a specific customer online. Then again, you don’t go to a restaurant to become the source of your waitress’s blog post. And there may be extenuating circumstances on either end that we don’t know about. Was the child really misbehaving? Did they actually undertip? Was the waitress just blowing off steam using a local celeb that blogging Seatllelites make a sport of taunting and baiting? Who knows. But posting the collection of personal and embarrassing information he found on his well-trafficked site was overblown, and there was a number of ways to seek resolution before going to the lengths he did, not the least of which include contacting the manager, hello?! Meanness begets meanness.

Eventually everyone took their blog posts down and went home to lick their wounds. Undoubtedly, the Sharkanskies are not longer regulars at the Fremont Classic Pizzeria & Trattoria, just like the waitress is no longer a waitress.

ORIGINAL POSTS:
Steffany Bell (nee Steffany Anne Hirte) [Sound Politics]
Sharkansky: Blogger, Cheapskate, Monkey father [Meet The Stress]

OTHER BLOGS THAT PICKED UP THE STORY:
End of story [Sound Politics]
Stefan Sharkansky has jumped the… nah, too obvious [Metroblogging Seattle]
Sharkansky: Shitty Tipper, Vindictive Jerk [The Stranger]

(Photo: SeattlePI)

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