Gainesville restaurant apologizes after customer review goes viral

GAINESVILLE, Texas (KXII) - Residents of Gainesville are up in arms, after a social media post went viral over the weekend- claiming a 14-year-old busboy was abused at the restaurant he worked at.

“It looked like something off of one of those Kitchen Nightmare TV shows, it didn’t seem real,” said customer Whitney Vogl.

Cuss out, berate, belittle and humiliate.

Those are the words Whitney Vogl and her husband shared on Facebook Sunday afternoon, after visiting the Trails Inn Restaurant in Gainesville.

The couple says they witnessed verbal abuse from multiple staff members to the kitchen’s bus boy, who appeared to speak only Spanish.

“Our waitress, who had been really friendly to us began yelling at the bus boy,” Vogl said. “He was the only one cleaning the restaurant. She started yelling ‘come on boy, go clean up your mess, come on boy,’ and she said it multiple times.”

Vogl says it didn’t stop there, she says another man working started in on the boy.

“He called him an effing loser... Humiliating, and making that 14-year-old child cry in a restaurant, full of people,” said Vogl.

Hours later, Trails Inn addressed the incident on Facebook.

“There’s no excuse. Nobody should be spoken to like that, especially a young gentleman just trying to get a paycheck at the end of the day,” Operations Manager Goni Mena said.

Mena says they are doing everything in their power to make things right, starting with letting go of the waitress involved.

“It’s not only me that apologizes, (it’s) everybody in that restaurant. We have three generations of family working there....We want to help and do everything that we can to get back into the good graces with this community,” Mena said.

As for the busboy, a family friend says they are thankful for all the kind words from the community.

“We want to thank everyone out there who had kind words to say about him,” said Bibiana Rodriguez. “How they were helping him, the community has done an amazing job at that. We just want to thank everyone out there.”

The restaurant says they will be giving the busboy a $1,000 bonus check in addition to his regular scheduled paycheck.

Members of the community have also raised over $2,000 for the boy, and his family.

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