Who’s telling the truth? Do we the people ever get the full truth on anything anymore? Even if we do, we’ve been lied to so much that we are sometimes skeptical of actual truths.
Oakland A’s catcher, and the only Major League Baseball player to kneel for the national anthem this year, Bruce Maxwell accused a waiter at an Alabama restaurant of refusing to serve his table. But apparently, the waiter has his own version of what happened last month, and his reasoning sounds perfectly plausible if you’ve ever worked in a restaurant.
The waiter, 42-year-old Matt Henry, told Fox News that Maxwell was “outright lying” about the accusations leveled against him.
“He is outright lying. This is really upsetting as he was given full service, I didn’t even know who Bruce Maxwell was,” Henry told Fox News. “This all started because I carded his friend who wanted to order a beer.”
According to Fox News:
According to Henry, an Alabama native, Maxwell was dining with local Democratic councilman Devyn Keith and another friend who produced an expired ID, and the server refused to serve him a drink — which upset the friend, who followed him into the kitchen.
The waiter said that the councilman then complained to the restaurant’s manager about Maxwell being uncomfortable, and the manager simply swapped me to another table, and that it was “no big deal.”
The restaurant manager on duty that day, Anne Whalen — who requested the restaurant name not be used without permission from the owner — also told Fox News that Maxwell’s story being portrayed in the media could not be further from the truth.
The thing that makes both Henry and Whalen’s story very believable is their explanation of not serving patrons alcohol if they present expired identification.
As someone who has worked as a waiter, bartender and bar security, I can tell you that there are steep consequences for serving someone alcohol, even if they’re over 21 years of age, without proper I.D. The places I worked at in Chicago would fire you immediately, and in some places, you can even be slapped with an up to $20,000 fine.
Good luck paying the fine when you’re out of work after no other restaurant or bar will hire you.
Henry claims that he was just doing his job, and he didn’t even know who Maxwell was.
Here is some of what Henry claims about the Maxwell situation:
He asked me, 'Don’t you know who Bruce Maxwell is?', and told me I was making everyone feel uncomfortable. Nobody was even paying attention to them.
I didn’t know anything about him or the kneeling. All I know is a friend of mine 15 years ago lost his job for serving someone a drink who happened to be underage, so if anyone looks under 30, I’m going to card them.
Judging from experience, Henry’s method of carding people holds water. When we were trained in how to serve people alcohol, we were told that even if someone looks over 21, but under 40, card them. Local police departments, at least in Cook County, Ill., would send in undercover plants to make sure that whoever serves them is also carding them for any alcohol they might want to purchase.
According to Whalen, she absolutely sided with Henry in this case:
Matt came to me and told me that a guy wanted a beer but his ID was not valid and I told him he absolutely could not give it to him, we can go to jail for that in the state of Alabama.
It was his friend causing all the fuss, none of us even knew who this baseball player was. I told him I had no idea who he was going on about. Eventually Matt just asked if we could put another server on the table so I did…I can’t believe the story.
If Henry and Whalen’s response to the controversy is true, then Maxwell needs to come out and say so. But, when you’re a “social justice warrior” like Maxwell, something tells me that’s not going to happen.