THE WHISTLE DILEMMA

A customer asked three cooks to catcall his wife, and when only one of them actually did it, the kitchen turned awkward fast.

The poster is a 32-year-old cook in an open-kitchen restaurant, where guests can see the staff working and even talk to them while they do it. Two days earlier, during a slow stretch, a customer walked up and asked the kitchen for a "favor." He wanted the cooks to whistle at his wife and tell her she looked good when she came by.

There were three people at the station: the poster, a Hispanic cook, and a white cook. Before the poster could answer, the white cook jumped in with, "Yeah man, we got you." The customer took that as a yes and left.

As soon as he was gone, the poster and the other cook turned to the white cook and said they were not comfortable with what he had agreed to. They said they would not be doing it. The white cook pushed back, saying they had already agreed, but the other two corrected him: no, he had agreed.

Then a server came by and said the wife was about to walk past the window.

She did. She came through smiling, apparently aware of what was supposed to happen. But only the white cook followed through. He whistled and cheered. The poster and the other cook stayed quiet and kept working.

After she sat down, the cook who participated and a few servers who knew about the plan said the poster and the other cook were spoilsports and had made things awkward by not joining in.

The poster says the situation felt different for him because he is a Black man. He did not feel comfortable being part of what he called "Black man catcalling a white woman in a public place," even if the customer had asked for it. He also points out that the white cook was the one who had verbally agreed first.

Now the kitchen feels strange. The other cooks and some servers think the poster should have gone along with it. The poster is left wondering whether he was wrong for staying silent when the wife walked by.