Sometimes people have very good reasons to violate dress codes. We usually don’t hold infants to “coat and tie” policies, for example. Someone with no legs shouldn’t be required to wear shoes into a store. And a person who has lost their hair due to the side effects of chemotherapy should, by all means, be allowed to wear a nice knitted cap in a restaurant, even if they don’t normally allow hats. One would think. 

Yet that’s not what reportedly happened during one company’s lovely dinner at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a name that looks like a typo but is not, in Nashville. The controversy began when one woman posted on Facebook that her husband’s boss had been asked to remove his cap or produce a doctor’s note. Having spent a large amount of money at the restaurant for the annual Christmas party, the group found this deeply insulting. Reviews about the experience (most from people who weren’t in any way involved in the situation) began to show up on Yelp, tanking the restaurant’s rating and gathering negative publicity.

“There was a complete and total misunderstanding by our staff who had no idea that our guest had a medical condition,” the restaurant said in a statement.
“Our actions were uninformed and our intentions were not malicious.” The restaurant made a $2,000 donation to St. Jude’s research hospital, and we imagine will be more sensitive in the future.

Reaction swift after Morton’s customer with cancer told to remove hat [WSMV]

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