A man with a facial disfigurement says he was asked to leave a restaurant in south London because staff said he was “scaring the customers”.
Oliver Bromley has Neurofibromatosis Type 1, a genetic condition that causes non-cancerous tumours to grow on his nerves.
Speaking to the BBC, he said when he had gone to place an order at a restaurant in Camberwell, staff told him there had been complaints about him.
“It’s a horrible thing to happen. I took it very personally on the day,” he said.
He said they had told him that although it was a hate crime, it was “unlikely” officers could pursue it further.
That’s messed up.
Welcome to British policing.
“We have determined that this was indeed a hate crime, and therefore we’ll be doing nothing. But if it happens two more times we’ll congratulate them on the hat trick and offer to enroll them in the police academy.”
The paragraph after is golden:
The Met confirmed to the BBC that officers had visited Mr Bromley about the incident and that although no arrests had been made, the force took “reports of hate crime seriously”.
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I’ll take a restaurant full of disfigured people over 1 misbehaving toddler.
As a parent of younger kids, we’re sorry. We come armed with as many activities as possible and will take our kids outside if they’re too excited until food gets to the table. That will help them focus on eating.
We very rarely went out to eat when they were toddlers due to fear of our kids bothering others and understand that our desire to experience some level of normalcy shouldn’t come at the expense of others.
All that said, if the parents are trying to keep their kids occupied, please extend some grace. Being a parent can be extremely isolating and we’re simply trying to pretend like we still get to do normal things once in a while.
This is fine, and we thank you for your efforts.
What were talking about here is a rogue crotch spawn running around or under tables, occupied or not, and generally acting like they’re in their own living room rather than a shared community space.
Honestly IMO if you can keep them at the table, I can put up with the noise. Sure, it’s annoying, but so are kids. It’s a package deal. And everyone was a kid at one point in time and therefore has no excuse to complain too loudly. That’s reserved for when I have to drag a screeching rug rodent out from under my chair and haul it back to the absentee sperm and egg donors.
Haha, our kids do go under our table at times but they know not to go under other people’s tables.
I don’t have much tolerance for absentee parenting either, especially if the kids wind up seeking attention from others, by say going under someone else’s table, because they’re not getting enough attention from their own parents.
If you’re trying, the ire isn’t for you. It’s for the shitty parents that feel entitled to not teach their children to behave, don’t feel it’s their job to or act like they are a victim of a life choice and take it out on the child or others. There are plenty of those type out there and I’m sure you don’t want to be lumped in with those ones, you also don’t have to defend them.
Plot twist, the restaurant full of disfigured people are toddlers.
😭
As someone who formerly worked at a restaurant, I agree.
We were located in a fenced off area owned by the same company that had a string of bars/clubs, so after 8pm only 21+ were allowed in, but on Saturday afternoons the stroller crowd would roll through and let their kids run around making a mess of all the tables.
I’m not against parents bringing their kids out for a meal, but if they’re just sitting there pounding beer after beer and ignoring their chaotic unleashed children then it gets really old really fast.
Then don’t look at him? The man was just trying to eat. Poor guy.
I feel so bad for this guy. Imagine the shit he has to put up with all the time. I used to work with a lady who had a big tumor on her face. She was so sweet, but I’m sure she had to put up with all kinds of horrible shit. I honestly really liked her. I would have asked her out if I hadn’t been in a relationship because we got along really well. I don’t care if you have a big tumor on your face. I’ll get used to it after I’ve seen you for more than a minute or two.
Its that simple. I dont have a hard time ignoring other tables at a restaurant unless they are obnoxiously noisy. How about ya cunts just carry on with your lives and be happy that you dont have to live with that.
I wouldn’t want to look at that while I was eating… SO I WOULD AVOID STARING AT HIM. Complaining about the guy is not the answer. Self control and respect are.
The article says he thinks there wasn’t enough time for someone to complain, the restaurant staff was using it as an excuse.
“He said: "After entering I noticed a cash-only sign, so went straight back outside to withdraw my money.
“I went back into the restaurant to place an order, and they told me to ‘please leave’, because in their words I was ‘scaring the customers’, and there had been complaints about me.”
He added: “There had not been enough time between the time I had been there first, and the time I went back, for anyone to have made a complaint about me so obviously the restaurant staff were not happy with the way I looked.” “
Yeah, I read the article. I was just imagining a hypothetical situation where he and I were eating in the same restaurant.
“at that”… If you don’t want to eat around other people that exist then just don’t go to restaurants.
Woosh
It’s pretty clear that they are saying your phrasing was pretty dehumanizing. They didn’t get wooshed, they were pointing out your well-intended micro aggression.
It looks dehumanizing because they cherry-picked my reply. I referred to him as a person in the very same sentence. When I said “that”, I was referring to the skin grafts and scabs. Those are things. They are not him.
The accusation was not made in good faith, and/or was made by someone with poor reading comprehension. They definitely got wooshed, and it’s pretty clear that you did, too.
Okay bud. This means way too much to you. I think maybe you should take a step back and take a deep breath, because holy fuck.
Yes absolutely, the polite thing to do would be to stare at the man’s disfigurement for the entire meal…
I know judging people on their appearances isn’t right, and he shouldn’t have been kicked out regardless of what he looked like.
… but it doesn’t even look that bad? Like, “I’ve got one eye and a skin condition”, is that really what the restaurant is willing to kick people out for?
Hope he gets some sort of justice out of this.
Some people are just determined to make it difficult to believe humanity is worth saving.
Don’t worry…
Whats the UKs disability rights laws look like? Hope he takes em to task for their discrimination.
There’s a reason this event has made it into the news.
See, Britain just needs Ugly Laws, like what America had up until 1974! Then they could just have the guy arrested!
In all seriousness what the fuck. What goes through a person’s head that they think treating someone that way is even remotely okay?
They don’t want to look at that guy’s ugly face? I bet it looks nicer than their ugly minds.
Probably looks better than their ugly faces too.
It seems that some British hate handicapped/disfigured people. Just read this article about a kid in a wheelchair being excluded from the school photo. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/29/aberdeenshire-pupils-with-complex-needs-erased-from-school-photo
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/04/school-photos-disabled-children
or people complaining about seeing a tv host with a missing arm. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/feb/21/tv-presenter-cerrie-burnell
It’s just good old British Classism that never went away.
Don’t all countries have this problem?
To some degree. Never heard of handicapped kids being excluded from school photos in my country though.
And if you were asked to leave in the US because of a facial disfigurement you could fully expect to have a business closing lawsuit won against you in no time at all. Wa are as litigious AF for better or worse, usually worse.
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Well thats good to hear
Never heard of it. It’s difficult to know how much of the difference is the actual occurrence and how much is the reporting of it.
Oddly enough Australia is one of the most accepting countries I’ve been in when it came to PWD. Elevators for every train platform and if one broke they fixed it straight away. They also didn’t exclude lower income people no where near as much as they do in the US, Canada or UK.
That said, the way they treat women, First Nations and POC or just about anyone who isn’t australian leaves much room for improvement.
Wonder if it’s got anything to do with thalidomide disfiguration.
No, fuck off, that’s got nothing to do with nationality.
This is just a case of some people being cunts.
For a community that prides itself on not being reddit, an unfortunate amount of reddits opinions and (lack of) values made it here alright.
Or maybe that has nothing to do with the community as a whole and is just a case of some people being cunts?
Nah… the british have a propensity for treating different people badly.
Yes, the species is prone to it, it’s a damn shame.
That’s just horrible. And wtf is this “Yes it’s a crime but what can we do?” bullshit. Man I feel sorry for that guy. No body deserves to be treated that way. He just wanted to have a nice night out. Fuck that restaurant.
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That’s fucked.
He said they had told him that although it was a hate crime, it was “unlikely” officers could pursue it further.
But when someone shop lifts from a corporation, here come the cops running
Time to lawyer up. Though I don’t know how the law works there in Britland.
Fuck that restaurant, everyone is too “ugly” to eat there. I can think of many DC restaurants that would love to serve them.
just… put him on his good side.
/s
Turn the other cheeks
i mean, that’s one solution i guess.
