Chris Siri­anni typed four words in cap­i­tal let­ters, hit print and taped the mes­sage to the front door of his restau­rant. The print­out said sim­ply: “BE KIND OR LEAVE.”

 

***

 

Restau­rants and oth­ers in the hos­pi­tal­ity busi­ness have long es­poused “the cus­tomer is al­ways right” and “all are wel­come.” Now, many are re­think­ing that phi­los­o­phy thanks to a surge in toxic cus­tomers and poor be­hav­ior.

 

***

 

More than 60% of restau­rant work­ers said they had suf­fered from emo­tional abuse and dis­re­spect from cus­tomers, and 78% said their men­tal health had been neg­a­tively af­fected in the past 12 months, ac­cord­ing to a re­cent re­port by Black Box In­tel­li­gence, a restau­rant an­a­lyt­ics firm.

 

***

 

Mike Mc­Na­mara, who founded the Hog Is­land Beer Co. in Or­leans, Mass., posted a mes­sage on Face­book, along with hash­tags #the­cus­tomeris­no­tal­waysright and #good-vibesonly, telling cus­tomers who don’t have “good vibes” to “please find an­other place to spend your money.”

 

He de­cided to say some­thing pub­licly af­ter a man in a large group be­came bel­liger­ent, bad­ger­ing a teenage host­ess to seat the party at an un­avail­able ta­ble. When Mr. Mc­Na­mara in­ter­vened, say­ing the group would have to leave, he re­calls the man ask­ing, “Who the he** are you? I’m not done with her and I haven’t even started with you.” Mr. Mc­Na­mara re­sponded that he was the owner. The group left.