Many London commuters were even more frustrated and stressed than usual this week after having to deal with a 48-hour tube strike – but many people still couldn’t see the funny side of a café’s satirical swipe at the RMT faithful.
After negotiations broke down between the union and London Underground, a tube strike began on Monday night. The strike concerned plans to close a number of ticket offices and cut 960 jobs, with RMT acting general secretary Mick Cash commenting: “London Underground have dug themselves into an entrenched position and have refused to move one inch from their stance of closing every ticket office, in breach of the agreement reached previously through Acas which enabled us to suspend the previous round of action.”
As many commuters faced long queues or even longer walks to get to work, the manager of the Grill Market café in Holborn put a sign outside saying; “No RMT members, 10% off coffee for everyone else”.
On Twitter, people were very quick to post their thoughts on the café’s sign, and many seemed to be rather angry. @SeymourSan wrote: “How about an apology those who’s plight you belittled rather than an apology to all the people your boss saw you upset?” @setalyas wrote: “that’s a pretty terrible joke. They’re losing their jobs, you asses. It’s only a joke if you don’t care abt them.”
The café manager was quick to apologise to people on Twitter and explained that it was just “a really badly judged joke”. He told The Independent: “Most people who came into the shop seemed to find it quite funny, but reading back it back I realise how it sounds… I wasn’t thinking about people losing their jobs, it was just to make people smile who were having a bad day.”
While some did see the funny side – with comments online such as “Ignore them, it was both funny and appropriate. Well done” – it’s clear that an avalanche of anger can build quickly now thanks to social media. Perhaps many of these occasions are an “organised backlash”, or just people jumping on the bandwagon. But these days there are a great deal of people who can’t or won’t be amused – and social media allows them to make that known.