the lesson here: conservatives are vindictive little pricks.

...who can't take responsibility for their own actions, and who MUST, out of some pathological compulsion,blame others for their bad behavior.

Just a note - the internet is a public place. If you don't want it coming back to you, DO NOT POST IT ONLINE.

I'm not saying what he did wasn't nasty, but she is the one who put all of the stuff about herself online.

What a disgusting pig of a man. My hopes that his next restaurant meal comes with well-hidden sides of saliva and foreskin cheese.

#3 -- sorry. I refuse the "she was asking for it" defense.
Here's what I posted to his blog, just in case it gets disappeared.
"The way I see it, if somebody posts something snide about me in a blog that nobody sees, and if I run across it (unlikely, because I don't ego-Google), I can grouse about it, maybe send them a terse reply, but that's as far as it goes. Thanks to your vindictiveness, a lot more people know about this than would have if you'd just dropped it, and many of them (myself included) only know about you through this. And nothing you've written in your defense seems to contradict the crabby, petty image of yourself you've created via this incident. Nice going .."

Give someone enough rope to hang themselves and their true colors come through. He has shown himself to be just an awful person through every choice he as made and continues to make during this saga. He still fails to grasp that the the mention of his monkey kid was a criticism of him and the lovely Irene, not the child. Like most conservatives, he can't be bothered with the facts and refuses to be accountable for his actions...

ECB, you're upset at Sharkansky because he once pointed out your inability to understand the elementary arithmetical concepts of set, subset, intersection, and union.

actually her posts about hereself seem very human. she's admitting to troubles in her own life in a humorous way, and be pretty open about her situation in advance of anyy criticism.

he on the other hand is in total fucking denial and his post just screams:

I'M AN ASSHOLE!!!!

I can't believe the stranger let this prick write for them.

this guy gives conservatives a bad name, but then again so do haggard, craig, newt....

i meant to add...

just another conservative who fucks things up (his child, the world at large) then refuses to take responsibilty for it.

poor, dumb shark.

It's good the "S.S." showed himself before he could get himself, or some other, elected to office--like the county's election office.

@8,

Exactly. Her self-description is self-deprecating and snarky, pretty typical for bloggers who don't take themselves too seriously. So, it makes sense that Sharky didn't get it.

I don't really know anything about this Sharky person but if that's all it takes for him to go all postal on a waitress I'm going to have to assume he's an asshat. His opportunity to be the bigger man? Gone. Gone.

What I like best about the incident is Stefan's utter hypocrisy in writing:

In case she deletes some of her relevant posts, I saved screen shots here: June, July, August.

...and then deleting his own posts on the incident.

You just can't make up stuff like that...

@7 Way to miss the fucking point.

Sharkansky’s fighting the War on Restaurant Staff over here, so he doesn't have to over there or something. What a vile, petty f**k.

Attention Wait Staff of the World:

Stefan Sharkansky has declared war on you; please give him what he deserves (and surprise us!).

Thank you.

P.S. Here’s a picture with him on the left (?).

http://www.horsesass.org/?p=3358

I think Sharky handled it well. I truly do.

What a dickshit.

She sounds, at least, very honest. He does not.

My favorite quote of the whole thing?

"but it seems there are a lot of kids living in XXX now"

Maybe the GOP's ground troops have decided the only thing they can do to salvage the reputations of their pantheon of heroes, from Karl Rove to Alberto Gonzalez to Donald Rumsfeld to their beloved Dubya himself is to lower the bar for personal behavior.

They need to make Mitt Romney's control freak nature seem normal, or Guliani's messy love life seem better than average, if they are going to get one of these creeps into the White House.

At the rate they're getting arrested and hounded from office, though, I don't think they are diving into the sewer fast enough. Look for Drudge to strangle a kitten, and Ann Coulter to be arrested in a men's room.

questioning one's parenting by referring to a child as a monkey is an offense to both the parent and the child. there is no way around this. if you want to offend the parent only, you do not mention the child.

that said, sharky, as i can now see his postings, certainly over-reacted.

How about a new Sharkansky column in the Stranger? "Shark Watch" could be a natural match for Drunk of the Week. Folks could send in their Shark sightings...

example:

"the child was rambunctious -- as any normal 5 year child would tend to be when left completely unsupervised. as the child continued to treat the dining room as a playground, the parents took no steps to discipline him for the sake of the other guests and restaurant workers."

NOT:

"Quite simply, the kid is Damian from the Omen. Might as well be a monkey. The kid did everything except reach in his pants and throw feces on the wall."

Consumerist also dug up the googlecached links -->

http://consumerist.com/consumer/bad-tippers/-294015.php

Jeez, the poor woman. Her life is pretty tough, and now she gets fired because she made some snide remarks about an asshole? This story is so heartbreaking. It's unbelievable that Sharky guy is so oblivious to the real damage he's caused in a real person's life.

Conservatives are all about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but that's hard enough to do without them standing on your neck.

I hope he does sue for slander which would be the only honorable thing to do. The damage a statement made to a blogger that then was posted to an obscure blog would seem small to the child or the parents. Now to prove slander one must prove that the person making the statement knew it was false (Damain in the Omen seems clearly false but also obviously false, i.e. no one could possibly think SS's kid really was the Damain) and the rest of the stuff is either not defaming, damaging or clearly untrue.

The countersuit could be more powerful. Accusing someone of slander falsely could be libel.

Does Shark understand that his child is too young to read any of the "lies"?

I've tried to remain objective about this but fuck that. He went too far. What a bully.

Here's to Steffany Bell's next year improving a million fold and Sharkansky's life crumbling around him.

It would feel great to see someone with more media spotlight, maybe a local musician tear Sharkansky apart publicly and bully him around until he was just as miserable as the Cubs fan who ruined their series chances a couple years back.

Per that Consumerist article, Sharky just posted a new rebuttal!

He could have just asked for her to remove the post because he found it offensive. Isn't that the classy thing to do - to ask in the first place, then, after other attempts have failed, go on the rampage? Class act!

@23 What a load of crap! There have been too many times in too many restaurants where people have been subjected to other peoples poorly parented snot nosed bastardy little Damians. No one sits there are thinks "Oh look at that sweet little tyke roaming around being so precocious while the parents just sit there like fuck wits without a care in the world." It's more like "Learn how to be a parent and be considerate of other people you stupid assholes! Oh yeah, you're kid is a little piece of SATAN!!!!"

One way that a lot of readers on the slog may have a better picture of these events is to substitute Stephan and his family for a gay activist and his family. Then make a conclusion about this situation. What this lady did was so wrong and unprofessional she deserved to lose her job. Just because you are a single mother does not give you the right to do what you want.

i don't want to defend sharky, but what's with the mob-mentality?

did he actually get her fired? i thought she said she quit because of this whole mess. and if you ran a restaurant, would you want your staff posting stuff like this?

didn't he ask her to take down the posts first? wouldn't you ask that if someone wrote that about your kids? and sure, i agree his response was over-the-top. he should have just let it go, but he did ask first, and they refused...

so they both were being rude. and he, eventually, was being way more rude. but it's not like she's a saint in this, or that he is 100% asshole. i'm going for an 80/20 split here.

I cant wait until someone published pictures of his kid. on the internet. with a caption that links it to google searches for "asshole lover"

@30 oh, i agree with you entirely. i was just saying that when you say such a thing it is an insult to the child as well as the parent. and have at it!

but people in this thread, and in prior threads, have asserted that her comments were only negative about the parents, and not negative about the child. that was not the case. she was -- perhaps rightly so -- critical of the child just as much as the parent. (read my prev post @21.)

i maintain she insulted the child as well as the parent. whether you think that's accepatable or not is another issue entirely.

Frankly, I don't see how what Sharkansky did here is any worse than what she did.

Fighting on the internet: everyone loses!

How many people here who have something to say about his child have children themselves? Why is it when a five year old child is not flawless in a family restaurant its the parents fault? You should thank these parents for having kids, those kids are going to be the ones paying for your social security!!

If you are going to talk smack about someone online, don’t get upset if they do something about it, he did not overreact.

Why are people with kids so oversensitive?

Also, what is with the crowd of 8 black folks I saw at ihop today taking up two booths - 3 adults, 5 pre/teen girls - all wearing Bluetooth ear phones (!) (even the 8 year old!) who didn't tip, didn't say thank you, didn't make eye contact with the waitress, barked for to-go boxes and then made her offer them to all of them so they could ignore her for an obviously premeditated 15 seconds and then say, "NO, for HER", and make her separate the check and guess who was related to who and remember who ate what even though they had all started to walk out?

What is with that? Is that gangsta? Oh, the waitress was also obviously from Africa.

Sad. I used to work at a family-friendly place and was appalled at the part of black culture that supported that kind of BS behavior.

If I were a superhero I would follow these jerks around with a horn and make a big fat scene when they acted like that. But since I'm not, I'll stick to the passive/aggressive stuff like licking their silverware and be happy with that hoping it actually does make them wonder for a split second before they go to sleep one night whether I was really being sincere when I was bending over backwards to serve them.

Thank you 37 you have made things clear. All day I have been people have been saying that they spit in food, put things in food, and you said you lick peoples silverware instead of doing what I do, actually verbalize what you feel towards people. Its this concept known as communication, and guess what it usually is the best way to resolve conflict, or get people to change or at least think about their behavior.

Don't be a pussy, tell someone what you feel!

@36 Are you retarded or something? Those little brats are going to be funding my social security checks? Um, I don't think so. Nobody expects a five year old to behave perfectly in a restaurant. However, a five year old behaving in a very inappropriate manner that is tolerated be the parents shows a general lack of respect and consideration for all those around them including the waitress. If Sharkansky and his wife choose not to excercise parental control over their demon spawn then so be it, but to subject others to it is just plain wrong. It's just wrong for any "parent" to subject the general public to a foul tempered turd that just happens to have a head, two arms and two legs.

His mom tried to make him stop and he punched her. The fact is that Sharkansky's kid is Damien, son of the devil. Few 5 year olds are perfect. Most are rather a handful. And a few are a real pain in the ass, even with good parents.

And a few, a very very few, are actually, literally, demonspawn.

And everyone knows our social security will be paid by the well-behaved children of hardworking Mexican immigrants. You all can stop breeding now. Especially if you're named Sharkansky and your first kid turned out to be the devil. No more of your little maniacal monster things, you.

Sweetie> Your right by the time we retire social security will be bankrupt and no longer around. Hypothetically though if social security is still around (Go Utah!) those young and unborn children will be funding our social security.

BTW> when you say, "If Sharkansky and his wife choose not to exercise parental control over their demon spawn then so be it, but to subject others to it is just plain wrong" you are missing the entire point of this whole controversy. That never happened, that is the meat the matter.

Also, why would you call his child “demon spawn” and me a “retard” when you have never met either one of us?

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. She had no call to use his full name like that. It's gossip & she started it. Did she expect people to just read it behind his back but for him to not see it? If a waiter/waitress bad-mouthed me by name on the web I'd try to get them fired too. What part of that is cool? I mean, how is that not *starting a fight* and then being surprised when the person you're dicking with dicks back?

40> best post yet about this subject!

I thought the Shark was a dick before this started. Now I think his wife is the female equvalent.

Lovely people, those.

There's a very effective solution for parents of otherwise normal kids who occasionally act up in a restaurant. When the kid acts up and won't calm down, ask for to-go boxes and leave.

Stefan Sharkansky had erased all evidence of his blog post attacking waitress Steffany Bell from the Internet, including the Google cache of his web page. ... you can't delete a google cache of a web page. google controls that. unless you're saying that stefan can delete data from google's servers, you might want to reword that sentence. otherwise you might look like you don't know how the internets work.

Everyone should stop complaining about the Sharkanskies. They did the right thing by getting that horrible women fired. How dare she insult their monkey-child!

Luckily the monkey is too young now to understand the harm this waitress has done. But one day he will. And it will break his little monkey heart. It just tears me up inside to think of it, it really does.

Daniel @ 42, it's a matter of degree. Spouting off on a very low-traffic blog vs. responding on one of the most popular GOP blogs in the tech-savvy northwest. Shark has a personal blog that states that it's about fatherhood, in part. If he had to go online - and that's part of the issue, did he really have to? Did he have no other choice to get the posts taken down? - then why not use that? The answer is that Shark was bent on revenge, not justice. Don't use the personal blog no one reads, use the big ass political blog to handle the personal issue!

Do you understand, Daniel?

@ 46, why would google do that unless it was at Shark's request? (I can verify that it was deleted, I googled it yesterday and found that the cache was empty. Maybe it was a glitch, but maybe it was something else...)

@48:Would you agree that at the very least she deserved to get fired for complaining about a customer by name online without consent from the owner of the restaurant?

What if you were the owner, would you want the people paying your bills defamed online?

38 -- Guaranteed, if she'd said anything at the time he would have tried to get her fired on the spot and STILL would have said something on his blog.

Long live bitterwaitress.com

@48 -- For sure you are right, especially since he seems to have oodles of photos of the demon spwan himself on that very same personal blog...

Revenge or justice, doesn't matter to me. It wasn't even an offhand comment, there's a whole interview where she goes on at moderate length about how much she dislikes the guy and his family. The force with which he responds is entirely up to him, but if someone said those things about me I'd jab back too.

Did everyone read the post? He's a REGULAR & she gives an interview (10+ questions) to her buddy where she talks shit about him, his wife, & his kid? That's just plain starting a fight. I never heard of this guy before so I guess I don't dislike him enough to join this ridiculous pile-on.

I do feel for her & found the excerpts from her blog endearing but she's in the wrong on this one. What was she thinking?

Seems like he deserves a spot in the Bush White House.

He seems to have the ethics and morality for that ...

In the now-deleted hit piece, Sharkansky accuses Steffany of "slander[ing] him on the Internet because she doesn't agree with his politics" (as opposed to his tipping habits or child-rearing decisions). Where is he getting that? In the interview, Steffany doesn't refer to his politics, or give any indication of even knowing what his politics are. Typical conservative victimization fantasy, perhaps?

No one's comparing this yet to Christopher's posting of that one guy's cover letter last week? Huh. Not to turn into that "Dan Savage supported the war" commenter, but someone's gotta mention the trend: Fighting! On the internet! Makes everyone look bad! But the least powerful participant comes out of it with more dignity than the other guy.

Regrettably, Erica has misrepresnted and/or omitted a lot of the story in these Slog posts. Hopefully her longer write-up will be more faithful to what actually happened. I have a detailed write-up of my own (click on my name) next to the "Posted by" below.

I'll make one point here. I deleted my earlier post naming Steffany (the one that Erica quotes extensively above) because Steffany asked me to. After she apologized and retracted her story as not entirely truthful, I felt that our dispute was settled and I was happy to let it rest at that. She didn't want the exposure, and I didn't desire to keep this story alive any longer, so I acceded to her request and deleted the post from my blog on Saturday afternoon. The whole incident should have died then. But Michael Hood felt compelled to keep this going and posted a largely inaccurate story on Sunday that was loosely based on the actual facts. Unfortunately, Erica chose to quote from Hood's wildly inaccurate story yesterday, without even asking me for a comment first.

As I have said before Sharkansky you are an ass, from now on your name will be the synonymous with Eater of the Wait-staff's creative vengence. You have effectively Santorum-ed yourself. Appropriate justice for you.

Hey Stefan -- you are a prick.
The first step to healing is admitting that you have a problem, but you do not realize that every time you open your mouth on this topic you just futher cement your status as a prick.

You continue to miss the point. The issue is not whether/when you deleted the posts, it's that only a true asshole would have done what you did in the first place, regardless of what the waitress had said or posted.

Are you saying that you did not do all that research on this woman and post bundles of her private information on Sound Politics?

Are you saying that she is lying when she states that she was physically threathened in person by a relative of yours (the wife?)?

You apparently weren't even present for that exchange, so how would you know anyway?

What a jerk you are, big man...

Now run back home to Sound Politics where all your sycophant cronies will be nice to you...

Daniel @ 53, she was wrong, but so was he. Not for trying to get her to take it down, but for resorting to smear tactics.

And that brings up a pertinent point. Why was Shark going after her instead of the guy who published it? Yes, she consented, and yes, the words were hers, but someone else published it.

Whether it was justice or revenge has EVERYTHING to do with it. Don't downplay that point.

@ 50, I actually do happen to agree with that. She could have avoided naming Shark, and she could have described his son without resorting to insults or (even worse) suggesting that he was being abused. That was inexcusable on her part. And I think Shark was justified in trying to get the posts removed. But he crossed the line when he aired it on Sound Politics and ended up worse than her IMHO.

@60 Shark won because: People who hated him before still hate him, people who liked him before still like him and he has had more hits this last week then normal.

Waitress lost because: She now has to find a new job.

Point of the story; Being a conservative in Seattle is kind of like being Gay in Idaho, it sucks.......

Um, did you miss the part saying how the wife probably beats the child? Saying they tip shittily is one thing, but saying accusing them of child abuse is a bit much.

Just as an aside, I (a flaming liberal) thought about how I'd feel if the diners were a gay activist and his family, and I don't feel any different about the whole thing. Unless the complaints said something about how their behavior was wrong-er due to gayness, it's the same situation.

But yes, definite fault on each side, I agree.

It isn't that hard to find another waitressing job. A loss, but not irrevocable.

Meanwhile, Sharkansky has to spend the rest of his life wondering if anybody on the staff of the restaurant where he is eating recognized him and spiked his food. Every time anything tastes funny, he has to wonder. As long as he is ever seen in the public eye, somebody will bring up this episode. It will never die.

Sharkansky totally lost, big time. He completely skunked himself.

Sharkansky is generally a dick, but this waitress was way out of line. It's a shame that many people are so caught up in the politics of the episode that they can't see that what she did was wrong. Complaining about the tip was one thing, but trashing his family, extremely uncool.

elenchos, interesting that you should mention well behaved Mexican children @40. I lived in Mexico for several years and its usual for large families with six or more young children to eat together at restaurants, especially on Sundays. There could be 30+ kids under 10 in the place. How is it that there is never screaming, yelling, whining, crashing, spilling, and running? Adults at other tables can have quiet conversations without interuption? Why can't (some) American parents control their one precious spawn?

This story strikes a nerve because its a miniature of the conservative movement, under George Bush, bullying of this country. These bullies won't be satisfied until their targets are crushed and destroyed, and everyone else is cowering. The target made an utterly human mistake, just trying to cope under the pressure of our degraded social fabric where such bullying behavior is accepted and celebrated. The bullies have their little toadies cheering and piling on from the sidelines, blaming the target. The toadies pick apart each alledged mis-step by the target, which are never as serious, to equalize it with the bully's irrational over reaction.

@59
ECB, a more appropriate nom de plume would have been Rabble Rouser.

Yeah, Sharkansky acted disproportionately and will suffer the consequences, and I'm personally disappointed in his actions.

ECB, I'm also disappointed in your actions. Unfortunately, you won't come out of this unscathed either.

What are you? A reporter, a journalist? A partisan? What are your standards? It's pretty clear who David Goldstein and Michael Hood are. Who and what are you?

I can understand why you personally might think of Sharkansky as an asshole, jerk, prick, and true asshole, but why wouldn't you seek his comment before posting to SLOG, like a professional?

In the past, you've admitted to participating in the election endorsement of a friend without notifying your readers of your friendship with the recepient of the endorsement.

You pursue your personal agenda, pretending to be a straight reporter, treating your readers with contempt.

What does that middle C stand for? Contempt for your readers? Compromised?

I'll never read you in the same way again.

Re further waitressing jobs, & easy to get, probably not easier with this story all over the web despite that the slog crowd thinks she's great. I guess as a journalist, Erica doesn't really care but let's not kid ourselves, this blog post, keeping this story alive is doing this woman no favors.

I was a cook for 15 years, in all kinds of places. the fucking assholes who think cuz they're paying 5 or 500 bucks to eat are also getting daycare ...

ooops!! they're fucking assholes.

most of you dissing the waitress should like the dipshits who buy food service places cuz you've gone out to eat for decades and you're going out to eat cuz you make more money than the smoes in the restuarant, and if they weren't smoes they'd be going out to eat, like you, instead of waiting on you

therefore you should own the place, cuz, ya know, you're so fucking smart.

parents who allow their fucking brats to inflict their horseshit on the other paying customers should NOT be allowed in a place

if I ever own a place, AND it will only happen if I have enough money to NOT need the place to make money

I'd throw your ill bred selfish inconsiderate yuppie / trash ass out so fucking fast your head would spin.

We're certainly smart enough to write a coherent sentence. Stick with cooking.

Does Sharky have a regular job? What does he do for a living?

She's a fool for posting such personal information about herself and her family online. And he's a jackass for letting his kid run rampant in a restaurant and retaliating when someone calls him on it. What a pair.

One bit of misinformation on this blog: While the nasty stuff about Sharkansky was on the minor blog ('MeetTheStress') the only thing that happened was that Sharkansky's wife called the restaurant to complain that the waitress was blogging about customers, namely them. She did not request that the waitress be fired. Only after the nasty stuff was posted on a major blog (BlatherWatch) did Sharkansky post the name of the waitress and some of her crazy writings, (HER writings). What it is that is so over the top about these actions is beyond me.

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