Perhaps you would care to share the particulars of that reply with us here - personal information redacted of course.
Any statement as to how customers may expected to be received is most pertinent to all here.
Looking forward to your response.
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Bodo's Bagels Charlottesville apparently Anti-Gun
- Thread starter Jay
- Start date
Perhaps you would care to share the particulars of that reply with us here - personal information redacted of course.
Any statement as to how customers may expected to be received is most pertinent to all here.
Looking forward to your response.
Bodo
Regular Member
Thank you, Grapeshot, but it seems appropriate to wait for the consent of the original poster.
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Originally Posted by Grapeshot
Perhaps you would care to share the particulars of that reply with us here - personal information redacted of course.
Any statement as to how customers may expected to be received is most pertinent to all here.
Looking forward to your response.
Hmmmm.....OK, decorum and proper form being considered; however Jay's intent was obviously for the benefit of the forum.
Let me put it a different way. How may I and others here expect to be greeted/received should we chose to visit you establishment while open carrying?
A vast majority of businesses in Virginia if not actively supporting/promoting the RKBA chose to defer to state law wherein such is allowed if not specifically denied.
I agree Grapeshot. Since we have the actual policy maker here (I assume this is a franchise), there's no need to see the specific response to Jay.
This comes up occasionally and the last time we had the franchise owners become aware of a problem, they reversed the Managers position. Everyone resumed eating there happily.
As Bodo's has been trolled elsewhere with the apparent intent of causing further hard feelings against the Company, it would be refreshing to hear just how we would be greeted now that this is in the sunshine.
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Sheriff
Regular Member
It is my understanding that Bodo's is a local chain of 3 establishments in Charlottesville only. It's not what you might consider a true "franchise". And like I said elsewhere... I and my secretary go through the Bodo's drive-thru on Preston Avenue. I would estimate the visits between her and myself at 25 to 40 a month. They have extremely good food at reasonable prices. Whether they want guns on their property or not is up to them. They don't see my big guns when I go through the drive-thru. And they won't see my big guns if I decide to walk inside (CHP). None of this debate will cause me to stop eating there. And none of this debate is going to cause a substantial amount of repeat customers in this area to stop eating there. I will support open carry, but I will not give up things I enjoy in life because an owner doesn't wants firearms on his/her property.
The parking lot is always full, and nothing Open Carry does or says will matter to them as far as changing policy, in my opinion. Bodo's has un unbelievable following in this area. It's the Starbucks of sandwiches locally.
Yes, like you said elsewhere already.
I'd rather hear from Bodo's unless you're on their payroll..which I doubt!
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Sheriff
Regular Member
I am not employed by nor affiliated with Bodo's in any way whatsoever, except being a faithful customer of course. They could hire me a consultant though with an annual salary of $1.00 if they wanted to though. Having been a sworn deputy sheriff in and around Charlottesville for almost 30 years, I could give them pretty good advice on how to proceed in explaining their position and policy on customers walking around with firearms inside their establishments. It's not rocket science though, and they probably don't need my help.
Yeah...you do have a lot of experience in those dollar a year jobs. I suppose that does make you an expert so go ahead and muddy the waters.
I'm through until and unless Bodo's or Jay comes back.
Sheriff
Regular Member
OK.
As it stands Bodo's will be considered "unfriendly" and reported as such until there is confirmation to the contrary.
That notwithstanding a claim made by another poster that what they (Bodo's) can't see, can't hurt anyone - such avoids the principle and the issue entirely.
Sheriff
Regular Member
Who said dat?
Jay
Regular Member
I apologize for the delay in posting the response that I received from Bodo's. I have been very busy between work, rescue, and my personal life. I am sure that some if not all of you will disagree with their response but never the less it is one. I think most of you will disagree because if you do not have a concealed weapons permit. You will be unable to carry in Bodo's as they will only allow concealed carry. I am not sure if Bodo's management/owners understand that Virginia does not require a permit to open carry. If someone were to conceal before entering their store, and did not have a permit that person would in fact be breaking the law.
I actually do think though it is kind of nice that Bodo's decided to come to this site and create a screen name for themselves and see what we are about. I have taken the liberty of posting the link " http://forum.opencarry.org/forums/showthread.php?57200-Cville-OC-(Charlottesville) " for C'ville Open Carry with over 26 pages and over 600 posts. They (Bodo's) will see from when it first started in 2008 Open Carry was not widely accepted, but over the years more and more business's have accepted open carry. Hopefully then they will realize that by not allowing open carry they are in fact the minority, and as far as I am personally aware of they are the only "retail establishment" in the immediate C'ville/Albemarle area that do not allow open carrying. The manager has outlined specific issues that he has had to address about open carrying and their reason for not allowing it. It is my hope that after Bodo's reviews this site for awhile and perhaps engages in conversation with other members. That they will be able to better understand how to address those issues they have had to face, and perhaps change there stance on allowing open carrying some day.
I thank Bodo's for their response but at this time I do not think any good will come of pushing the issue directly with them any further. If Bodo's wishes to engage in further conversation I am sure you will all be happy to address any concerns or questions they may have.
Without further adieu the response.
Hi Jay,
Thank you so much for writing. I really appreciate hearing from our customers, whatever the reason, but I am especially grateful to have the opportunity to respond when something we've done has somehow frustrated or disappointed.
In this case, I'm particularly happy to get a chance to answer your question, first because it was me who spoke to you this past weekend, and second because I wasn't happy, when it comes down to it, either with my own choice to do so or with the impression I felt I must have left. It was, as you point out, a very busy time--too busy for me to really have time to even explain myself adequately--and that alone probably should've kept me from trying to address anything more than a simple or immediate matter. I'll try to do better here.
The answer to your immediate question, and the locus of most of my unhappiness with what I said to you Saturday, is that we do not have any policy at Bodo's regarding the carrying--open or closed--of handguns by our customers. As soon as I spoke to you, I realized that I had almost certainly left you with the impression that we (I have two business partners) did have such a policy. Because of my dissatisfaction with my own approach, I spoke to one of my partners about exactly that on Tuesday, and what I'd like to do here is give you the explanation I gave him.
We have another regular customer who, fairly recently, began coming in wearing a sidearm. He has always been a pleasure to serve--very polite, outgoing, and often explicitly appreciative of our service--and, although I certainly noticed his sidearm, I didn't have any inclination or occasion to question him about his choice to open-carry. As I've said though, he's a regular, often daily customer, and over the next couple of weeks I started having to field questions and concerns from the staff about his sidearm. I explained that it was legal to open-carry in Virginia, and that he had never given us any cause for concern. But the concern was there, both from the staff and from customers, and it persisted.
Managers, prompted both by the staff and by customers, asked me repeatedly whether there wasn't anything we could do about a situation that was creating, at the very least, discomfort, and, at least in some cases, actual distress for employees behind the register and for customers in the lobby. There were certainly also plenty of staff and customers who didn't express any concern, but the expressed distress of any significant portion of either my staff or my customers is something I take very seriously.
It is, ultimately, my responsibilty to be sure that the stores are not a threatening environment for the people in them, and for a very great number of people, open-carrying is a bit threatening. They feel, I think, as if a weapon is being brandished even though it is properly holstered. Typically, they can only guess about the person carrying the weapon--about the level of training they may have received, their situational awareness, their sense of the great responsibility inherent in carrying a weapon, their intentions, their intelligence, their legal status. What they do know for certain is that there is a gun in the room and that it could be fired. I didn't think that it was unreasonable of my employees or my customers not to want to feel that kind of distress at their place of work or in their favorite restaurant.
I eventually decided to ask this customer not to bring his gun into the store. The circumstances of that conversation were a little better than the one I had with you, and I had a bit of time to explain myself, but I thought, after speaking to you the other day, that I had probably been too broad even then. He did actually thank me, however, for raising the issue and has remained a frequent and enjoyable customer.
I'm sure that we have plenty of patrons who closed-carry in the store, and I don't think that people are often, in that case, even aware that there is a gun in the room, which is very much better both in terms of the real and perceived risks associated with having a weapon present. I'm sure you're also aware, since you have a concealed weapons permit, of the levels of training and screening required to obtain one, and that the permit warrants the competence of the person carrying in something like the same way--if not to the same extent--as does a law enforcement uniform.
I had spoken to this customer of ours not long before I noticed your sidearm in the store on Saturday, and I think I simply extended my reponse to that situation to the new and similar circumstance. I said before that I was unhappy with my decision to speak to you. What I meant, really, is not that I feel any differently about preventing the distress of my staff or patrons, but that I should probably have reset my own response to that discomfort and waited to see whether there would even be a persistant issue to address. To be honest, I'm not so sure that's right. Any cashier standing in front of a drawer full of money _has_ to worry--if they are conscious of their immediate surroundings at all--when approached by a customer wearing a sidearm, and there are plenty of our customers who are actively distressed, both for their own sake and for the sake of others, by a weapon worn openly in a crowded, busy, noisy place like Bodo's.
Since I've had the opportunity, now, to explain the nature of my concern, I hope you will forgive my clumsy approach in the store. It's a difficult matter to address, but it is not something I undertake lightly. I want to thank you again for taking the trouble to write, and I want you to know both that I value the chance you've given me to respond very highly and that I am very reluctant to ask anything at all of customers; I do feel very keenly, however, that I have an obligation to do all that I can to ensure the comfort and safety of my staff and patrons. To that end, I would appreciate it very much if you would consider closed-carrying in the store even in warmer weather. We do not, contrary to the impression I must certainly have left you with on Saturday, have a policy which explicitly excludes guns from Bodo's, but my obligation to preserve a pleasant, unthreatening environment for my staff and for all of my customers remains.
Yours very sincerely,
I actually do think though it is kind of nice that Bodo's decided to come to this site and create a screen name for themselves and see what we are about. I have taken the liberty of posting the link " http://forum.opencarry.org/forums/showthread.php?57200-Cville-OC-(Charlottesville) " for C'ville Open Carry with over 26 pages and over 600 posts. They (Bodo's) will see from when it first started in 2008 Open Carry was not widely accepted, but over the years more and more business's have accepted open carry. Hopefully then they will realize that by not allowing open carry they are in fact the minority, and as far as I am personally aware of they are the only "retail establishment" in the immediate C'ville/Albemarle area that do not allow open carrying. The manager has outlined specific issues that he has had to address about open carrying and their reason for not allowing it. It is my hope that after Bodo's reviews this site for awhile and perhaps engages in conversation with other members. That they will be able to better understand how to address those issues they have had to face, and perhaps change there stance on allowing open carrying some day.
I thank Bodo's for their response but at this time I do not think any good will come of pushing the issue directly with them any further. If Bodo's wishes to engage in further conversation I am sure you will all be happy to address any concerns or questions they may have.
Without further adieu the response.
Hi Jay,
Thank you so much for writing. I really appreciate hearing from our customers, whatever the reason, but I am especially grateful to have the opportunity to respond when something we've done has somehow frustrated or disappointed.
In this case, I'm particularly happy to get a chance to answer your question, first because it was me who spoke to you this past weekend, and second because I wasn't happy, when it comes down to it, either with my own choice to do so or with the impression I felt I must have left. It was, as you point out, a very busy time--too busy for me to really have time to even explain myself adequately--and that alone probably should've kept me from trying to address anything more than a simple or immediate matter. I'll try to do better here.
The answer to your immediate question, and the locus of most of my unhappiness with what I said to you Saturday, is that we do not have any policy at Bodo's regarding the carrying--open or closed--of handguns by our customers. As soon as I spoke to you, I realized that I had almost certainly left you with the impression that we (I have two business partners) did have such a policy. Because of my dissatisfaction with my own approach, I spoke to one of my partners about exactly that on Tuesday, and what I'd like to do here is give you the explanation I gave him.
We have another regular customer who, fairly recently, began coming in wearing a sidearm. He has always been a pleasure to serve--very polite, outgoing, and often explicitly appreciative of our service--and, although I certainly noticed his sidearm, I didn't have any inclination or occasion to question him about his choice to open-carry. As I've said though, he's a regular, often daily customer, and over the next couple of weeks I started having to field questions and concerns from the staff about his sidearm. I explained that it was legal to open-carry in Virginia, and that he had never given us any cause for concern. But the concern was there, both from the staff and from customers, and it persisted.
Managers, prompted both by the staff and by customers, asked me repeatedly whether there wasn't anything we could do about a situation that was creating, at the very least, discomfort, and, at least in some cases, actual distress for employees behind the register and for customers in the lobby. There were certainly also plenty of staff and customers who didn't express any concern, but the expressed distress of any significant portion of either my staff or my customers is something I take very seriously.
It is, ultimately, my responsibilty to be sure that the stores are not a threatening environment for the people in them, and for a very great number of people, open-carrying is a bit threatening. They feel, I think, as if a weapon is being brandished even though it is properly holstered. Typically, they can only guess about the person carrying the weapon--about the level of training they may have received, their situational awareness, their sense of the great responsibility inherent in carrying a weapon, their intentions, their intelligence, their legal status. What they do know for certain is that there is a gun in the room and that it could be fired. I didn't think that it was unreasonable of my employees or my customers not to want to feel that kind of distress at their place of work or in their favorite restaurant.
I eventually decided to ask this customer not to bring his gun into the store. The circumstances of that conversation were a little better than the one I had with you, and I had a bit of time to explain myself, but I thought, after speaking to you the other day, that I had probably been too broad even then. He did actually thank me, however, for raising the issue and has remained a frequent and enjoyable customer.
I'm sure that we have plenty of patrons who closed-carry in the store, and I don't think that people are often, in that case, even aware that there is a gun in the room, which is very much better both in terms of the real and perceived risks associated with having a weapon present. I'm sure you're also aware, since you have a concealed weapons permit, of the levels of training and screening required to obtain one, and that the permit warrants the competence of the person carrying in something like the same way--if not to the same extent--as does a law enforcement uniform.
I had spoken to this customer of ours not long before I noticed your sidearm in the store on Saturday, and I think I simply extended my reponse to that situation to the new and similar circumstance. I said before that I was unhappy with my decision to speak to you. What I meant, really, is not that I feel any differently about preventing the distress of my staff or patrons, but that I should probably have reset my own response to that discomfort and waited to see whether there would even be a persistant issue to address. To be honest, I'm not so sure that's right. Any cashier standing in front of a drawer full of money _has_ to worry--if they are conscious of their immediate surroundings at all--when approached by a customer wearing a sidearm, and there are plenty of our customers who are actively distressed, both for their own sake and for the sake of others, by a weapon worn openly in a crowded, busy, noisy place like Bodo's.
Since I've had the opportunity, now, to explain the nature of my concern, I hope you will forgive my clumsy approach in the store. It's a difficult matter to address, but it is not something I undertake lightly. I want to thank you again for taking the trouble to write, and I want you to know both that I value the chance you've given me to respond very highly and that I am very reluctant to ask anything at all of customers; I do feel very keenly, however, that I have an obligation to do all that I can to ensure the comfort and safety of my staff and patrons. To that end, I would appreciate it very much if you would consider closed-carrying in the store even in warmer weather. We do not, contrary to the impression I must certainly have left you with on Saturday, have a policy which explicitly excludes guns from Bodo's, but my obligation to preserve a pleasant, unthreatening environment for my staff and for all of my customers remains.
Yours very sincerely,
Thanks Jay!
Of course you know that my opinion is this response was worse than saying "No Firearms", but it was an honest response.
I wonder if he serves Indians and Black People or is he just picking out special people to discriminate against?
I especially liked this:
Yessir....highly trained. They took a Hunter Safety class and paid an extra fifty bucks.:lol:
Oh well, they're on several "Do Not Patronize Lists" already, I'll be watching to see how VCDL views it.
Of course you know that my opinion is this response was worse than saying "No Firearms", but it was an honest response.
I wonder if he serves Indians and Black People or is he just picking out special people to discriminate against?
I especially liked this:
Yessir....highly trained. They took a Hunter Safety class and paid an extra fifty bucks.:lol:
Oh well, they're on several "Do Not Patronize Lists" already, I'll be watching to see how VCDL views it.
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It is the good guys, the LAC, that OC for protection and the educational value offered. The criminal element will always hide their gun - that is the problem.
Fortunately for us their are many, many more places to eat that understand the difference.
His house, his rules - may he never have the opportunity to regret it.
Fortunately for us their are many, many more places to eat that understand the difference.
His house, his rules - may he never have the opportunity to regret it.
well, Jay, it's clear he's put some thought into the matter and it's good he took the time to respond as he has.
yet a line in the last paragraph bears close examining...
what is Bodo's doing to ensure the safety (his words) of staff and patrons? are there off-duty leo working as contract security, or maybe an armed security company has been retained to protect staff and patrons? after all, he says he has an obligation (again, his word).
yet a line in the last paragraph bears close examining...
what is Bodo's doing to ensure the safety (his words) of staff and patrons? are there off-duty leo working as contract security, or maybe an armed security company has been retained to protect staff and patrons? after all, he says he has an obligation (again, his word).
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Sheriff
Regular Member
wtf?
BlueRidgeTrapper
Regular Member
VCDL President
Centurion
Details
VCDL looked at this issue some time ago. Obviously we prefer that both modes of carry be accepted. However, if they allow guns in either OC or CC mode, we can't call them anti-gun with a straight face. They might be anti OC or anti CC, but not anti-gun. If they ban guns altogether, that is anti-gun.
It just would send the wrong message to BoDo's that we are going to treat them the same as Buffalo Wild Wings. If we are going to do that, they may as well stop allowing CC, too, and just post a "no guns" sign. If you are going to take the heat anyhow, you may as well go for the gusto!
VCDL looked at this issue some time ago. Obviously we prefer that both modes of carry be accepted. However, if they allow guns in either OC or CC mode, we can't call them anti-gun with a straight face. They might be anti OC or anti CC, but not anti-gun. If they ban guns altogether, that is anti-gun.
It just would send the wrong message to BoDo's that we are going to treat them the same as Buffalo Wild Wings. If we are going to do that, they may as well stop allowing CC, too, and just post a "no guns" sign. If you are going to take the heat anyhow, you may as well go for the gusto!
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