Why I Don't Yelp.

A lot of my friends love, love, love Yelp. I can see the attraction - in only a few minutes you can get a restaurant or service review from someone just like you - an average person. That's what I see as the big problem, however. And here's Yelp's dark side: If, as a business owner, you want to respond to a post, you have to register (i.e., give up some personal info) and add your picture. That's right. A picture of yourself, not the business, not your cat - you.

My business involves being a somewhat public person (today at the Farmers' Market a very nice gentleman asked me if I'd be interested in writing his biography), so I really wouldn't care about having my mug out there. But not every business owner wants to go through that, which is why IMHO you don't see a lot of responses to negative posts. That means that pretty much anyone who signs up for a Yelp account has carte blanche to libel a business with no consequences. They don't have to put their pictures up to do it.

That being said, I believe that most of the reviews on Yelp are honest and that the things that happened really happened, at least from the Yelpers' points of view. Unfortunately, they are far from objective critics and often uneducated about the businesses they're describing. I'll give an example: I've seen comments as fundamentally flawed as complaints about having anchovies in a Caesar salad. Although there is some controversy about whether the original salad (which is Mexican and not Italian in origin, btw) had anchovies, it's pretty accepted that the version in most American restaurants has them. And usually a raw or coddled egg, if they're trying to be authentic.

I was reading about some of my favorite restaurants in Monterey County. One diner commented that she enjoyed watching "the elephant seals" out the window. We don't have elephant seals in Monterey. Made me wonder what else she got wrong. Another diner commented that a particular eatery, people of a particular race were not welcomed and treated as well as others. Following this comment, others of that race went in and mentioned they suspected the same thing. It's possible, of course, but it made me ask this question: Did you, because you read the first post, go in looking for that treatment?

It's easy to pick something apart and find the flaws. Nothing is easier to pick on than food - tastes and palates vary so widely that one man's feast can literally be another's awful dinner. It's easy to perceive someone who's simply rushed as being intentionally rude - I know I've come off that way more than once when frustrated. And it's very, very easy to forget that your server is a human being with wants and needs like your own and a life that starts when the dinner shift ends. That's why I don't like Yelp. It's too easy to bash from behind a fortress of anonymity.